tdeveson Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 (edited) Chickens were mentioned in a couple of posts today and it started me thinking. We live out in the suburbs and I know some of my neighbors must have chickens because I can hear them in the mornings. (I actually like that sound.) I have plenty of room out back (1/2 acre) and ds has been hounding me about having chickens. When I was a little girl, my favorite thing to do was to go to grandma's house on vacation. She had a little black hen and a little white hen and they each lay an egg each morning. The little white one laid my egg, and the little black one laid grandma's egg. Every morning I'd go out back and look in the bushes where I knew they'd lay their eggs, and every morning my grandma would cook my egg just so. I loved that so much, I still remember 45 years later. Dh had chickens many years ago, but it didn't work out. After he raised the flock, he couldn't kill them, and he couldn't sell them because he knew they'd kill the chickens. So he ended up with 20 or 30 pet chickens and the people at the feed store would laugh and tease him about it. ;) I wouldn't kill a chicken I know and then eat it, but I'd love fresh eggs! Is having chickens a huge deal? Also, my dog will want to eat them. How do you keep them away from the other animals? How many hours per week do you spend caring for your chickens. Is it cost-effective to get eggs from chickens instead of going to the supermarket? I know -- lots of questions -- but I was reminded by the posts and ds was asking again today about us having chickens. Edited October 22, 2009 by tdeveson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milovany Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We live in town and have four chickens; dh gave them a 10x10 outdoor space -- and that's more than what they "need" according to dd's book ("Keep Chickens"). They also have the inside of the coop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdeveson Posted October 22, 2009 Author Share Posted October 22, 2009 Thank you. I'll look up the book. How do you like having chickens around? Is it a lot of work? (Asking because I know sooner or later it's going to be my job.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We use a "deep litter" system in the coop (about 8-10" of wood shavings on the floor of the coop), and skim off the poop once a week or so, but you can also just keep turning it and let it compost. Daily chores take about 3 minutes: change the water, give them their scraps/grass/grain, and collect the eggs. That's DS11's job, and he actually likes it. He loves having an egg for breakfast every morning that was inside a chicken only minutes before! We use a small, cheap plastic shed as a coop, with an attached wire mesh run (ours is 20' x 20' X 8' high, but that's just because we have the space and I like to give them plenty of room). In the fall, we rake up all the leaves and throw them in the pen ~ it's over a foot deep! It keeps the ground from getting muddy, gives the hens something to poke around in for fun, and it turns into the most fabulous compost! Whether the eggs are cost effective depends entirely on what you feed them. Organic layer's feed is so ridiculously expensive here that if I fed my "girls" nothing but that, we'd be paying about $8/dozen! But ours get lots of grass as well as stale bread, vegie trimmings, apple cores, etc., and just a little commercial organic feed. DS7 also delights in catching huge grasshoppers for them. :tongue_smilie: The grass and bugs in their diet make the eggs higher in healthy Omega 3's. Even if it ended up costing us the same as the going rate for local organic eggs, it would still be worth it for the taste of a just-laid egg! If you don't need organic feed, and can give them mostly grass and scraps, your eggs could be close to free. I highly recommend the Backyard Chickens website, it will tell you everything you need to know, including lots of photos of different coops, ranging from mini pens you move around every day to luxury coops: http://www.backyardchickens.com/ Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Here's a cool thread, with photos, about converting an old Little Tykes playhouse into a lightweight, movable chicken coop. I actually wanted to do this myself, but couldn't find a cheap enough playhouse on craigslist. I think it's a great idea, though! http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=177454&p=1 Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We love having chickens. Because we have a good-sized suburban yard and not a "farm" we keep a flock of "bantam" Rhode Island Reds, rather than standard-sized chickens. The birds are much smaller, more manageable, but the eggs are only slightly smaller than full sized chickens. One note on chickens. If you just go to the "feed store" you are likely to get "production chickens." These birds have had natural qualities and good sense bred out of them (so they can endure commercial hardship) and still crank-out eggs (for a short while). But these ain't the kind of chickens I want. No sir. It's too much fun watching old-fashioned "classic" chickens do what chickens do. Classic lines are much harder to find, but it is possible (and worth the effort) IMO. The coop is the hardest part. They must be very secure because everything like to eat chickens. I had ours built off the ground, so bottom panels made of redwood frames with heavy aviary mesh (which we cover with layers of plastic bags, then newspaper, then shavings, that can be cleaned easily. Like a big parrot cage, as an alternative to deep-litter. And no back-bending. And no soil contamination (this minimizes disease and parasite problems). My wife constantly says chickens are the easiest pets she's ever had. We enjoy them throughly. The structure is the hardest part. I also had nest-boxes hug off the outside of the coop (with the chicken entrance from inside and a securable clean-out on the outside. This means roosting chickens in the main area of the coop can't poop on a nest box. So things stay really clean. Little "design" items can make things so much easier. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdeveson Posted October 22, 2009 Author Share Posted October 22, 2009 Thank you, Jackie and Bill. I took a chance and posted thinking I might get a link or two. Both your posts are super helpful. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peela Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We love our chooks and we have 4 in a pen about 2 metres by 2 metres. I used to call them battery hens because for quite a while they lived in a much smaller pen, which was in fact a rabbit hutch. We used to let them out regularly before I planted out my vegie garden. But even if they do escape they dont tend to go there - but I dont want to risk it. We have two dogs. They have chased and killed our pet rabbits before, but not our chickens. They seem to find them intimidating :) However, I owuld watch your dogs closely and train them well before just leaving them around your chickens. Chickens are a wonderful pet. We have friends who cuddle their pet chooks daily. We dont go that far, but I talk to them a lot when I am down there. The kids take turns feeding them our scraps and their pellets, and collecting eggs. I think it s a wonderful, wholesome activity for city kids. A while back one of our chooks got a fungal infection and wesprayed her with tea tree solution. It went. Other than that, we have had chooks peck a mate literally to death, but only once, when I added two new chooks to the pen. Mostly, they are very low maintenance animals. My dream would be to have 20 or so chickens and breed them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amber in AUS Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We have 3 'free range' chooks. They have the entire backyard, about 500 sqm and our cat doesn't touch them. She did try once and they pecked her before she got too close and now she is scared of them. They don't have a coop yet, but we are building one ATM about 2m x 2m with off the ground nesting boxes. We put the chickens before the coop owing to finding a lonesome chook at the beach and her needing a home and then friends and so the story goes on. They are VERY easy to look after. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katemary63 Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We have some in a 10X10 chain link dog kennel. They are easy to care for. No, you don't save money on eggs but that is not the point! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angela in ohio Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 We have a very modified version of the playhouse coop. It was about $250 to get set up (lumber, fence, water and food containers, etc.) We "rescued" 6 production chickens (leghorns of some type.) We are practicing on them while I research to find out what type we want to get to keep. Like Bill said, they have no sense at all, which is pretty amusing. They are very nice, though, and seem relieved not to be back in their old place (6 to a cage.) I have posted before about their massive laying ability. :D We are now getting about 8 eggs a day on average out of 6 chickens. They have fabulous shells (we supplement egg shell and oyster shell,) and they produce identical white large eggs. They eat mostly feed, but we also grew sunflowers for them, which they adore, and feed them kitchen and garden scraps. We would love them to be free range, but the neighbors raise hunting dogs, and the back of our property is a field that attracts a lot of raccoons, etc. They stay in the coop or run all day. We didn't secure the contraption into the ground, so we can move it to fresh grass if we want. Dh is going to build them a chicken tractor to travel about in next summer. The eggs cost a little less than purchased eggs, but the quality is so much hgiher. The kiddos throw bugs into them all day, and they have the brightest orange yolks. It takes ds about fifteen minutes to care for them in the morning - washing out and filling water container, filling feed, filling supplement. They put themselves to bed, and we lock it up once they are all roosted, which takes about a minute. Once a week it takes maybe a half hour to clean up the coop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMA Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 I would check zoning for your house first. My friend's neighbors bought chickens and a rooster and now no one in the neighborhood is happy. It turns out that you have to be zoned agricultural to have chickens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milovany Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 I would check zoning for your house first. My friend's neighbors bought chickens and a rooster and now no one in the neighborhood is happy. It turns out that you have to be zoned agricultural to have chickens. Yea, you can't have roosters in the city (usually!). But our city council just approved chickens in the city (pop. 17,000) in the last six months here. We went and spoke before the council on the "pro" side (there was no "con" side). It was fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remudamom Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Room isn't an issue for us, around here it's more of a what I can talk dh into situation. But he loves fresh eggs, so it's not too hard. Right now I have two flocks. The big chickens that I count on for eggs, and my little banty flock that are just pets. Banties are lovely and lay the cutest little eggs. Silkies are especially sweet, lay eggs, make good pets and will even go broody for you. (Course you have to have a roo to get chicks in those eggs.) My two chicken rooms are 8x8. They are in a big building that I use for a tackroom/carriage house. They have people doors inside the building and chicken doors leading outside. Walls are made with chicken wire so I can look in. All the chickens free range. We rarely have one get killed, but it does happen sometimes. I close them up at night. If you already have some sort of building/shed whatever in your backyard it's easy to convert. I'll look for a pic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remudamom Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Here's where my chickens live. We built this originally as a chicken house, at one point we had 300 chickens. Got tired of them, sold them, converted chicken house into tack room. Missed the chickens, added chicken rooms in the back. Here's what the rooms look like- there are two now, side by side, sharing a common wall. Freezer keeps critters out of the bags of feed. Each room has a person door and a chicken door leading to the outside. Chickens are easy and can live in all kinds of set ups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remudamom Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 And check out Backyard Chickens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonshineLearner Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 Bill, We need a picture of your setup:-) Carrie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanchGirl Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 our city doesn't allow chickens but we are getting a place in the country soon. Unfortunately we'll only be able to visit it on weekends at first. I assume chickens would need daily attention. Are they loud? I know the rooster would be but just wondering if the hens make a lot of noise! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 Are they loud? I know the rooster would be but just wondering if the hens make a lot of noise! Our hens make very little noise. A little clucking sometimes (nothing that could bother anyone). Only if they are under immediate threat of predation will they briefly squawk. They are very quiet over-all and even close neighbors are unlikely to notice them if you have a small flock. ETA: This applies to Rhode Island Red "bantam" chickens, standard-sized chickens or other breeds may (or may not) be louder. I dunno. Bill (whose experience is limited) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corraleno Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 I have Buff Orpington hens that lay HUGE eggs ~ and they do squawk quite loudly when they lay! (Having delivered a 9+ lb baby, I don't blame them a bit!) Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angela in ohio Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 our city doesn't allow chickens but we are getting a place in the country soon. Unfortunately we'll only be able to visit it on weekends at first. I assume chickens would need daily attention. Are they loud? I know the rooster would be but just wondering if the hens make a lot of noise! Not at all. You can hear them chit-chatting sometimes, and they make a little fuss when someone walks by. But it is very quiet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OHGrandma Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 Chickens also make great 4H projects! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravin Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 I was thinking about getting chickens, but decided we don't have the money to commit to it now. Also our yard wasn't conductive to it (low back fence onto golf course; I have visions of chasing chickens across the green!). If we had a yard as large as the OP's, though, we'd give them a mobile coop/yard with no floor and a couple of wheels, that could be moved around. That way, you just move it every few days so you don't get concentrated chicken doo, the chickens get access to fresh patches of ground to pick bugs out of, and it stays more secure than free range. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remudamom Posted October 23, 2009 Share Posted October 23, 2009 The only thing I don't like about our chickens free ranging is that they will get in my flower gardens, and poop on the sidewalks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanchGirl Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Angela and Bill, thanks for letting me know about the noise. Now just gotta convince the neighbors, maybe a few eggs a week will keep them from being annoyed with me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Angela and Bill, thanks for letting me know about the noise. Now just gotta convince the neighbors, maybe a few eggs a week will keep them from being annoyed with me! Our neighbors love them. They send their children and grandchildren to see them. But eggs? You will be surprised how many people will give you a funny look if you offer them eggs. But they didn't, uh, come from the store. How do I know they are safe? :lol: Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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