Home grown chickens to eat? (Merged Discussion)

poppet

Hi, keeping a couple of hens for eggs can be a wonderful experience, they are no so hard to look after - they need somewhere dry and safe to sleep and somewhere to lay their eggs, they need feeding and fresh water every day.
Its not worth telling you that they wont smell, they probably will smell a bit (dont all animals) but you can reduce the smell by changing their bedding regularly and shovelling up their droppings.
Rats will be attracted by the chicken feed, so if you store it somewhere rat-proof, and dont leave great buckets of it out for the birds to graze on all day, you might escape me ratty. Just kep your eye out for obvious signs of rats and deal with them swiftly. Many many homes get visits from rats, its not just houses with chickens.

First thigns first you need to concider how your dog might react to the chickens, is he going to be sniffing and barking like bad at their pen all day? is next doors dog going to go crazy at the smell of the chickesn under the fence?
Are your neighbours likely to object? The hens will make a little bit of noise, a bit of clucking and gurgling, they are certainly not silent, but the noises they make are less than those a dog may make.

Measure the area and calculate how many square meters the birds will have.

Moozle_2

I am in the same two minds about chickens. Luckily I already have a trashed area :-P and i'm only going for it because we are semi rural and we have good neighbours who will be quite happy to put up with the chics in return for a few free eggs. So, I guess it depends on how the neighbours will react really? and how the dogs will respond?

tigerlily

I got 3 light sussex chickens 10 days ago and they have been lovely. They have a hen house with a secure run which they go in when I am out, as I type they are free ranging in the garden. The only noise they make is when they hear me coming up to let them out in the morning, other than that they do "speak" but its less noisy than a barking dog.
I have a dustbin which I keep all their food in and when they have gone to bed and I go up to shut them in I take the food from the run and put that away till the morning.
They do need letting out early in the morning and then shutting away after they have gone to bed at dusk, its very important to shut them up promptly as not matter where you live there will be a risk of foxes visiting.
They need cleaning out regularly and also the house needs disinfecting regularly to avoid disease and pests.

turbo

Thank you Moozle, poppet, Maximum Impact and tigerlily for your quick replies and useful info. I will show them to my husband.

Turbo

arkonite_babe

We have a thread similar to this already, I'll add your query to it so all the replies are together. Posts are listed in date order so you'll need to read from the beginning to catch up

MaximumImpact

They do need letting out early in the morning and then shutting away after they have gone to bed at dusk, its very important to shut them up promptly as not matter where you live there will be a risk of foxes visiting.

Another quick point...it's not too bad in the late spring, summer and early autumn. But when it starts getting dark early and the nights draw in, your chickens will be shut away for around 15hrs a day...thats when it starts getting very dirty and very smelly in the hen house!!!

Personally, I collect the mess the chickens have made and store it right at the end of my garden then burn it once a week....You'll probably find that even with a couple of chickens, you'll have more compost than you know what to do with....

To be more MSE, use aubiose or hemp bedding as it requires changing less often and composts down quicker. Aubiose is around £13 for 20kgs Bale and is horse bedding. I use a bale every 6 weeks and I bed 10 chickens down on it as well as separate 2 houses for ducks and geese.

Spirit_2

turbo wrote: »

Hello, I need some advice on keeping chickens. My husband would like to get some chickens and intends to keep them in a narrow piece of garden between our house and next door's house (which is only about 4 feet away). Do chickens make a lot of noise.? Are they smelly ?
This small strip of land is in a very shaded area and the rest of that side of the garden is our vegetable patch. If any one had any suggestions about what we could grow in this shaded narrow strip it might dissuade my husband from wanting chickens. We also have 2 dogs but the vegetable garden is fenced off. Next door also have a dog.

Turbo

My chooks are good friends with our neighbours, we live in a semi-detatched cottage - so close proximity! When our chickens free-range around the garden which is about half the week one of them always goes next door to lay an egg and for good measure will excavate garden pots and tubs:eek: We also have a cockrell - we live in a rural area though so everyone is livestock freindly.

We have a large fox proof run for them and they roost in a stable, it is cleaned out really well once a week and droppings swept out a couple of times in the week during the summer. If you keep to a routine it is not smelly in an offensive way. We compost the litter, currently using shavings, about 1 bale every 2 months. More shavings in winter as we are on clay soil and in the worst weather the chickens stay in their stable. In the summer we hang a fly strip up to catch flies.

It may depend on the nature of the dog. Our dog, a retriever ,(until he died last week) had got on fine with the chickens, the cats give the chooks a wide berth and the bunnies free range with the chickens when they are in the garden.

We love having chickens - it has had its scary moments - I posted on another thread that we had suspected Newcastle disease a couple of weeks ago -which was a bit of a shock, but I remain very pleased that we have them. A last couple of points, you need to provide for vets/their health care and if needed their despatch.

Good luck with your decision

Spirit

turbo

Thank you for your reply Spirit, it sounds lovely where you live. Sorry to hear about your dog, you must miss him. We have a labrador (9) and an English springer spaniel (10). They are used to going out shooting with my husband. Our neighbours are very friendly but both their house and garden are immaculate and I don't think they would like chickens so near. The dogs are walked for two hours every day and I work full time and it does sound quite time consuming. I think I would be doing the majority of the work.

Turbo

turbo

Thanks Maximum Impact, this information is useful. I will make sure my husband reads all the replies.

Turbo

Spirit_2

although our garden is the worse for wear, my neighbours also have lovely gardens, one is a picture post card type. However they are nice folks and quite like sharing our pets without them having all the hassle themselves .

If you only get a couple of chooks it really is not a big deal. Mine are like walking garden ornaments and very entertaining. Some are very pretty and bantams very sweet.