Backyard chickens can make a great addition to your household, provided you have the space, time and your local zoning laws allow livestock. I grew up in the suburbs, but we had over a half an acre of wooded land, and were able to keep chickens. We always had more fresh eggs than we needed, and we usually had about six chickens of different varieties. Chickens will lay eggs everyday, and sometime twice a day.
My best advice is to only get chickens if you can keep them a fair distance from your and your neighbors’ homes. They are noisy and can smell sometimes. You need sufficient space for a henhouse and a mesh, chain or wire chicken coop for your chickens to run in. They will forage for food, exercise and perch, if you provide them with a suitable landing spot. Our henhouse was very small providing a small atrium and about one square foot of sleeping stall space per chicken. Keeping the henhouse small helps keep the chickens warm in cold winter climates, but you must make sure they have another space to run around and express their natural behaviors.
Lining the floor of your hen house with rabbit bedding makes cleanup easier. Our coop was about twelve-by-twelve feet, and had a bush in the middle. The chickens pecked the leaves off of the bush and used the branches to roost during the day. If you raise chickens from baby chicks, they can be very tame, and will even follow people around once they get used to being fed. They can be very entertaining.
Chickens will eat table scraps, but should really be fed commercial chicken feed to keep them healthy and productive. You can also crush up eggshells to supplement their deit with extra minerals. You will also need to provide clean drinking water, and commercial hopper-type feeders and drinking water pans that refill from an upside down reservoir or bottle take most of the work out of taking care of the chickens. All you would have to do is collect their eggs, muck out their hen house, and refill the feeder and water bottle. However, feeding them by throwing handfuls of food on the ground is more entertaining, and helps you bond with your chickens.
The biggest problem we had was with vermin and animals bothering our chickens. Rodents will eat their food. Raccoons will eat their food too, and we think a raccoon might have killed one of our chickens. The old stories are true. If you have foxes in the area, they will kill your chickens, so you need to make sure that your hen house and coop close securely, and that large animals can’t burrow under your fence. One thing to be careful about is having a rooster. If you have a roster, you should have a humane plan for finding homes for the extra chicks.
Chickens are an economical home livestock, that can be kept in rural areas and some suburban areas. They are a source of cheep eggs, and cheep entertainment. Some towns have laws against keeping livestock, so you should check with your zoning official. Remember to be a good neighbor, and don’t house your chickens in an area where they will bother other members of your community. And, remember that a handful of fresh eggs every once in a while can go a long way towards keeping your neighbors happy.
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