Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

ShelBell

Anyone who has chickens, can you answer the following for me?

Are they easy to look after?

Are they ok outside over winter (obviously with proper chicken house)?

Do you get rats round their house/coop?

Does anyone have chickens and cats? Do they get on?

I'd really like some chickens for eggs but DH isn't convinced.

Magentasue

ShelBell wrote: »

Anyone who has chickens, can you answer the following for me?

Are they easy to look after? Yes, very.

Are they ok outside over winter (obviously with proper chicken house)? Yes.

Do you get rats round their house/coop? Not a problem we've had. Just need to be tidy with food etc.

Does anyone have chickens and cats? Do they get on? Yes and yes!

I'd really like some chickens for eggs but DH isn't convinced. What does he know ?

Check out this thread http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=4876&highlight=let%27s+keep+chickens

Penelope_Penguin

ShelBell wrote: »

Anyone who has chickens, can you answer the following for me?

Are they easy to look after? Yes

Are they ok outside over winter (obviously with proper chicken house)? Yes

Do you get rats round their house/coop? I've never seen them

Does anyone have chickens and cats? Do they get on?

I'd really like some chickens for eggs but DH isn't convinced.

Go for it - once DH has had a really fresh egg, he'll be convinvced

I'll add this to the existing chook thread so that you can browse ideas there.

Penny. x

motherkitty

Shelbell
Chickens are quite easy to look after but you do need to keep them veryclean as they can get quite smelly! We started off with ours in a grassy run as we thought it would be nice for them to scratch about. They killed the grass in about 2 days and the run was impossible to keep clean and started to smell very bad! They now live in a concreted run during the day and we let them out into the garden when we get home. The run is washed out with disinfectant every day which takes about 10 mins. They will get in your flower beds though and wreck flowers/plants. The eggs are lovely and the chickens are sweet friendly creatures who get used to being stroked and cuddled. Next doors two cats are a bit wary of them and don't tend to come too close! Have had no problems with rats and the chooks are fine in winter as there is plenty of hay in their shed to keep them warm. Watch out if you have foxes though. We have an electric fence round the run which seems to be the only way to keep them out. Once a fox gets zapped it won't come back!

Magentasue

Would agree with most of what kitty says. In our last garden, the hens free ranged all day - took them a winter to ruin the grass but it recovered and was OK in subsequent years. Now we have a small garden and hens in an eglu and run. This is moved every day and grass is looking good. The droppings tray gets empted every couple of days. Proper clean every week.

Never had a problem with foxes but it depends on where you live. We have a dog and I'm sure that's a deterrent.

Biggest considerations - they need someone to let them out and lock them in every day (they like to be out early but put themselves to bed). Also, you need someone to do this if you go away. Other than that, they need less daily care and attention than most pets once you've got everything set up.

Steel_2

lindens wrote: »

Well here is my finished coop and run



here is henrietta


and lucy


and clementine


I got them yesterday and they have settled in really well. There was just a big fight when I threw in a slug lol.

Lindens, I would think about adding about a ten inch skirt of chicken wire or something more permanent all the way round the bottom of your run and coop. Foxes can and will have a go at digging under a run if they can get close to its margins, but won't attempt to do so if there is a largish distance to the coop as it's too much digging to do to get in.

We have a wooden ark and run which we move around and we have laid down a strip of roofing tiles all the way around the outside to make it difficult for Mr Fox to dig under. It only takes us a few minutes to gather them up and put them back down when we move the ark to a new spot.

Steel_2

I thought I'd add my experience of keeping chickens for the last four months in case it helps answer any questions for those thinking about taking the plunge. Sorry it't a bit long, but I tried to cover everything I thought a person new to chickens would be interested in knowing.

We were given a rickety traditional wooden ark last year which hubby cleaned up and fixed, adding a nice big extension to the side for nest boxes and new wire. Although we don't have a skirt of wire dug into the ground, we laid roofing tiles all around the outside to provide a physical barrier for foxes.

A farmer friend gave us three Warrens that were originally ex-batts, but had spent a few months recovering from their ordeal and seemed to be reasonably fit. The girls had all their feathers, although they did have the squits, worms and scaly leg when they turned up. We wormed them, sorted out the lice and spent the first two weeks bathing and cleaning their legs to help the scaly leg heal up.

We very quickly realised they didn't like perching and preferred to sleep on the floor of the coop, so we removed the perches. Now they all squidge up side by side and sleep in the nest boxes. We use normal pet wood shavings in there with loads of hay, the latter of which they scratch up into a nice warm bed.

They were quite skinny when they arrived and their feathers didn't look in great condition. Their combs were also pale and floppy. For the first week we kept them in the ark run, giving them layers pellets in the morning, a big handful of mixed grain in the afternoon, spinach or cabbage hung up to peck throughout the day, along with a bowl full of grit and water. We hunted regularly throughout the day for slugs, snails and other insects but only one of them seemed interested. For the first month I did scraps for them every evening before they went to bed to fill up their crops, and mixed in a spoonful of live natural yoghurt to give them some good bacteria and clear up the squits.

Fast forward a month, they were bright-eyed, bushy tailed, filled out a little, had glossy feathers and big red combs that were nice and full. Hubby opens the coop on his way to work at around 5:30am and they put themselves to bed around 9:15pm. On Saturdays he opens the coop at 4:30am as he works earlier that day and he says there is usually a small indignant cluck from one of them at being woken up early! Sundays they have to wait for me to open up at 7am so hubby can have a lie in. By that time in the morning there's lots of high-pitched annoyed clucking and chastisement from all three of them because I'm 'late' and all sorts of jostling and shoving as they stamp on one another to get to the pellets first.

I started cutting down the evening feed after a month and letting them out in the evening to fill their own crops before bed. Now all three of them love live food and can regularly be seen haring across the garden after grasshoppers. If I'm working out in the garden I'll let them out as well, but they always go back if I have to leave the garden for any length of time.

I doubt whether I could ever leave the girls out on their own. I live in the country and one of my cats was a stray from a very early age and will bring down anything he can. We also have daytime foxes and weasels, along with four other neighbourhood cats, that use my garden as a short cut to a field. I have also had to deal with next door's sheepdog cross which has escaped on a couple of occasions and got into my garden. His owners tell me he has managed to catch and kill several pheasant this year after slipping his lead, so i take no chances.

The girls - we called then Bisto, Oxo and Paxo - are very obliging, squatting down when I put my hands on their back so i can pick them up, and lay an egg a day each and have done since the first day they arrived. The week before last on one day we had five eggs, this week on one day we had four. I've just started throwing in a handful of oyster grit for extra calcium, as their shells are a little thin. Every month I worm them and de-louse them. I'm positive one of them has a permanently runny vent, but I keep an eye on her and keep her clean so she doesn't get fly-strike, sitting her in a bowl of warm water for a while and then gently cleaning the area. She just drops off to sleep while I'm doing it!

Every morning I clean out their bed of nightime dropping, which I find very useful exercise to keeping an eye on their health. Once a month they are cleaned out completely. we move their run every 3 days or so, but if it rains always try and put a nice deep bed of straw down to stop them getting too muddy. Every evening their food is removed from the run and any excess food scraps that haven't been eaten during the day to prevent rats and mice getting it. To be honest though, with cats, foxes and weasels, anything small and furry doesn't stand a chance so I'm not to worried. Their food is kept in the conservatory and not outside, again to prevent rats and mice from getting it.

They talk all the time and have quickly associated the sound of the back door opening with us coming to see them. They make a tremendous kerfuffle when they hear us, which is very sweet. They like to hang around me while I'm digging the kitchen garden bed over, although they have to be prevented from going onto the onion bed. Bisto is the biggest of the three and just stamps the onions flat into the ground or tries to perch on top of one, snapping the leaves off.

I say to anyone thinking of keeping chickens, go for it. if you don't get on with it, there will always be a line of people willing to take them off your hands. Don't be afraid to give it a go.

Steel_2

Ok chicken wranglers - help is needed over here with thin egg shells from one of my girls.

They get lots of greenery, lots of pellets and oyster grit, but still my smallest girl lays eggs with really thin shells. You can literally put your finger through one when getting them out of the nest box.

Any ideas how to get them thicker and stronger?

Magentasue

Steel, although it's often diet related, I think it's just as often:

1) An individual chicken thing - some hens are not sustained layers
2) A breed thing - some breeds have better shell quality
3) Age - egg quality deteriorates, again some breeds more than others
4) Seasonal - moulting and feather growth times sometimes affects egg shell quality

Steel_2

Thanks Magentasue

If I had to lay bets on any of those, I'd say possible seasonal and age then.

She's a ex battery Warren and a great layer of big eggs. So far she's not missed a day's laying since we got them a few months ago. Nothing seems to knock her off her stride.

But she is looking a rough at the moment and think she's about to start moulting. In fact all of them look a lot less preened than usual and there's a good few feathers lying around and also sticking up from their feather layers.