Raising Chickens

Answers to the most common questions about care, feeding and egg laying.

Rebecca Stillwell

©2012 by Rebecca Stillwell

All rights reserved.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: The Author and Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this book, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Author and Publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional. In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly. This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance fields.

Printing, 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Is It Legal To Keep Chickens In Your Back Yard?              3

Are There Any Health Risks When Keeping Chickens At Your House?              4

Can You Have Chickens When You Already Have Cats or Dogs?              5

What Does It Cost To Get Started Keeping Chickens?              6

How Can I Make Money Selling Chicken Eggs?              7

How Do You Keep Chickens Warm In Cold Weather?              8

How Do You Keep Chickens Cool In Warm Weather?              9

What Type Of Chickens Should I Get?              10

Can I Keep Different Breeds Of Chickens Together?              11

What Times Of The Year Do Chickens Lay Eggs?              12

How Do You Keep Chickens Out Of Your Garden?              13

Should You Give Chickens A Variety Of Food Or Keep It The Same?              14

How Do You Keep Chickens From Fighting?              15

How Long Should You Keep Chickens Cooped Before Letting Them Out?              16

Why Do My Chickens Keep Cracking Their Eggs?              17

How Do I Keep Predators From Killing My Chickens?              18

How Big Of An Area Do You Need For A Certain Amount Of Chickens?              19

Is It Okay To Clip My Chicken’s Wings?              20

How Do I Take Care Of Baby Chicks?              21

What Type Of Coop Should I Build Or Buy For My Chickens?              23

What Kind Of Food Should I Feed My Chickens?              24

What Do I Do If My Chickens Become Sick Or Start Dying?              25

Do I Need A Rooster?              26

How Do I Introduce New Chickens Into My Flock?              27

What Is The Difference Between Eggs?              28

Is It Legal To Keep Chickens In Your Back Yard?

Before getting into raising chickens fulltime, one question tends to be pretty vital: “Am I allowed to raise chickens?” Knowing the type of feed to give them and the best care for their feathers and how to construct a perfect coop will be utterly wasted if you discover that you’re not legally permitted to raise chickens on your property. There are indeed restrictions in place to prevent specific problems, particularly noise and animal complaints, but there are also times when everything works perfectly. You’ll need to know the difference between the go-ahead and the full stop.

When it comes to zoning, there are two main classifications, that of Residential and that of Agricultural. As you’d guess, having land that’s designated specifically for agricultural functions deems that you’re in the clear to raise chickens, build coops, and essentially do as you please with your property in terms of poultry farming. A Residential zone becomes more complicated as some neighborhoods and cities permit poultry with few restrictions and others ban them within city limits entirely.

There’s no guesswork when it comes to getting approval as you won’t even need to be the one responsible for the research. The entirety of what you’ll need to do in terms of getting approval initially is call your local city offices and ask them if your property is permitted to house chickens. This will tell you the most basic information as they’ll tell you either yes or no, a fairly straightforward conclusion.

Follow-up questions certainly are your responsibility though as you’ll need to check whether there are any limits in place, assuming your property already has the thumbs-up for chickens. Some towns restrict the overall number of chickens, partly to discourage overcrowding due to a smaller property. Others prohibit males as roosters will inevitably crow and this could very well bother your neighbors. It’s also smart to see if any specific breeds are off limits. It’s rare, but knowing all the facts and getting full approval makes things simpler.

Along with getting the OK with chickens is getting the OK for their coops. Your chickens will need a place to live and the notion of an indoor chicken is pure fantasy. Usually, if your city approves of chickens in the first place, the coop will be approved as well, but it’s good to have this information for sure. More likely you’ll just need to hear the guidelines regarding the size and placement of the coop on your property. A lot of this will be governed by the size of your property and the limit for the number of chickens already in place, but knowing the specifics will save you quite a hassle later on, including a fine.

The goal is always to avoid a fine as few things are worse in the process of raising chickens than to get everything going and learn a few months in that not only do you have to remove your chickens and their coop from your property, but you need to pay a fine as a result of breaking the law. Getting confirmation for everything and airing on the side of caution is going to be the most useful and rewarding tactic you can take in these matters.

Are There Any Health Risks When Keeping Chickens At Your House?

A simple question that people always ask concerning animals is “are there any health risks to raising this animal?” It’s a natural concern as various animals have different needs and are known to have different health issues that should be addressed, but with chickens the main question isn’t so much “are there any health risks?” but rather “how much cleaning should be done on average?”

Chickens are not an inherently dirty animal, at least nowhere near as filthy as they’re portrayed. But they are considered a farm animal. They spend most of their time outside, pecking around in dirt and mud, giving themselves dust bathes from time to time, all leading to a general thought that they must be unclean. Furthermore, they cannot be housetrained, so as they go about their daily routine they just leave their waste where they are and continue moving about. Simply, chickens are uncivilized, but they were never meant to be as they’re farm animals.

Back to the topic of health risks, yes, there are some health risks involved, all due to laziness on the part of the owner. Regularly cleaning your chicken coop, laying boxes, and anywhere else your chickens spend a great deal of time will reduce the likelihood of infections, illness, and general unhealthy side effects. However, letting chicken fecal matter just build up can result in salmonella contamination, as well as just being filthy in general.

That’s the core of most health concerns really. Cleaning up after your chickens will reduce the risk of problems, though being diligent may be more than some people expected to get into. Chickens really don’t care where they go or why they go there. They will gladly defecate in their own food or water without realizing it, simply because their back has been turned and they aren’t thinking about special awareness. This means that the regular cleanings must involve food and water dishes be scrubbed down and sterilized, lest bacteria finds and home and a chance to infect.

Parasites can also be a problem if cleanliness starts to slack. Keeping fresh hay or bedding for your hens will be imperative for preventing parasites from latching to their feathers, and generally being on top of cleanings will go a long way toward preventing problems. Your chickens will take care of their own dust baths, which may sound dirty but actually go a long way toward keeping them parasite free, though if you’d prefer something with a bit or scrubbing involved, bathes can be given that involve the more traditional soap and water technique of cleaning.

So in terms of health risks, when proper cleaning is observed, there are little to none. Chickens pose no direct risk to a household as they can’t be raised indoors anyway and will be contained to their coop, the outside run, or the yard. Regular cleanings will diminish the risk of salmonella from chicken fecal matter and simple bathing will prevent parasites from infesting your flock. It’s all a matter of getting up and doing your duty.

Can You Have Chickens When You Already Have Cats or Dogs?

One of the big concerns for prospective chicken owners is whether already owning pets will be a problem when wishing to introduce chickens to the farm or backyard environment. Assuming your town allows chickens in the first place (which is something you should have checked with your city offices by now), then you have a good reason to wonder whether chickens and other pets can cohabitate. But when it comes right down to it chickens are the same as any other domesticated animal: cohabitation is as simple as you wish to make it.

Starting with cats, chickens and cats tend not to have any problems together. Generally, cats will not pester hens as most cats are smaller than most chickens, so any interaction will be mostly curiosity or the wiliness to play, to some extent. Brooding hens may lash out and more aggressive breeds will yield roosters that will react quicker when bothered, but for the most part you have no worry of cats and chickens, save for perhaps keeping the cat away from newly hatched chicks.

Dogs, however, are more of a mixed bag depending on the breed and amount of training you’ve given them. Dogs and chickens will interact much the same was as cats as chickens with a relationship of curiosity and mutual respect (also known as “live and let live”), but there is the danger that a larger or more aggressive dog will have their predator instincts kick in, resulting in some ravaged hens and some mangled roosters. While this isn’t common, it shouldn’t be a surprise when it does happen, assuming you know your dog even a little. You should have a good handle on how quickly they have a hunter/killer drive to them. If you wouldn’t keep this dog around a rabbit, then you wouldn’t keep this dog around chickens and vice versa.

All other animals essentially just meld together. Chickens are very laid back when it comes to homogenizing a farm animal community, so horses easily make way for the flock, pigs give them their space, goats are fine with them existing, and even ducks and geese will leave them alone, assuming there’s no competing for food. Essentially, farm animals are all domesticated and none of them are on one another’s predator/prey list, meaning there’s no real worry of one eating the other.

Furthermore, farm animals all have fairly distinct diets, so while chickens pick and scratch for insects and eat feed over the course of a day, horses graze in the field with cows and goats, pigs eat their specific feed and slop, and ducks and geese focus more on their own feed and water-based insects. This means that there’s very little reason for food disputes, which would be one of the very few reasons any conflicts would break out. The main cause for problems boils down to space, so if your farm animals are trying to coexist in a very small yard or barn or whatnot, then stress can get the better of them and problems can arise.

Chickens are thankfully very easy to mix with any pet. Some dogs should be avoided, but other than that you can indeed begin raising chickens even if you already have pets.

What Does It Cost To Get Started Keeping Chickens?

Getting into any hobby or starting any business venture is naturally going to cost an initial investment. Keeping chickens is no exception as a handful of expenses will start to build up in order to have a healthy, happy flock. The overall cost depends on how many chicks you intend to raise and for what purpose, but at the very least you can be sure that the simplest setup is still going to cost enough to make sure you’ll only give it a try if you’re serious about raising them right.

To start with you’re going to need to buy some chicks. The cost all depends on the breed you’re looking into, but for the most part a simple average is $3 to plan off of. If your goal is to start raising chickens for breakfast eggs and general egg use but don’t plan on making a business of it, then 2-4 chicks should be all you need, at least to start with.

Purchasing the chicks is simple enough, but they still need time to in grow and a warm place to do that. This means you’ll need to have a box, crate, or general place to confine them along with a good heat source, clean bedding, and clean food and water. How much this setup costs will hinge on what supplies you already have and how many chicks you have all at once, but for the sake of the complete beginner the following rundown will cover someone under the assumption that they have nothing.

First, the box, which will most likely be cardboard, will cost you as much as one cardboard box will normally cost, which is typically free. If you’re strapped for any lying around and can’t find any, it’s possible to get some from a packing company for a dollar or two. Of bigger concern is the heat source, most commonly a lamp. This needs to be a good metal lamp with a regular bulb, costing under $20 for just the lamp and another $10 or so for the bulb itself, meaning we can highball the lamp at $30.

The food and water dishes will be pretty important and need to be easily accessible for your chicks but also easy to clean for you. You’ll find that just a simple dish will suffice, but if you need to purchase something specifically for this task set aside $10 for feeders. The feed itself is actually very cheap, with a 5 lb. bag going for $3 at most retailers, so grab a few bags of that and you’ll be set.

Finally you’ll need some bedding, simple wood shavings for the nesting box. You can find a way to do this for free by just recycling newspaper and shredding it up for your chicks, but if you prefer wood shavings, which are a little easier to clean and smell a bit better, a bag shouldn’t cost more than between $10-$15, again keeping this relatively cheap.

At this point your setup cost looks to be roughly $72 for four chicks, which doesn’t look like that much. However, the big cost is the coop, and while the heated box for your chicks is a good start, they will grow quick and once they’re old enough that they need a full yard, the cost of a coop (over $250 for something relatively small), the cost of the chicken run (between $100 and $1000 depending), and the cost of anything else including feed will very quickly bring the project to a higher price than the casual enthusiast is rest to spend. But if you’re serious and just want to start small, it can be done for under $500. You just need to get creative and search for the best deals.

How Can I Make Money Selling Chicken Eggs?

Those raising chickens typically do so for one of three reasons. There are the usual meat raisers, intending to eventually send their chickens to the dinner table, and the less common show or decoration birds meant only to add some fancy element to a farm, but then of course you have the most common use for chickens: eggs. People want to know how to raise a chicken to make an egg and how to then make money off of said chicken. It’s fairly easy, and here’s how.

First, you need to be aware of the types of chicken breeds available and know which breed, specifically, will yield the most eggs in the shortest amount of time. The best breed may vary depending on your climate, but for a simple choice just go with a White Leghorn, a Rhode Island Red, or a Golden Sexlinks. All three have high production rates and are very simple to care for, making them a great choice for any experience level, though be warned that those looking to make a significant amount of money on egg laying chickens are in for an uphill battle.

The problem isn’t so much with the chickens themselves as the sheer anatomy involved. Chickens at their best can produce maybe 5 eggs in a week with some breeds and hens laying less and some laying more, so for three hens laying consistently, you’re still producing only about one full dozen a week. That’s where the trouble with eggs-for-profit comes into play as it’s all a numbers game. You can make money selling a dozen eggs, but that dozen won’t get you very much. You have to work in high, high numbers before you start to see some major profits. As in over a hundred chickens.

At the very least you won’t have to worry about raising roosters as hens don’t need roosters to lay eggs, so that cuts some needlessly used space and resources right there. But the breakeven point for a group of chickens consistently laying is going to be steep since the more chickens you have, the more feed you’ll need to buy and coops/nest boxes you’ll need to build, eventually demanding a pretty high investment all around.

Still, a few tricks you can use to your advantage that allow you to keep your prices higher than normal without doing anything shady. First, stick to the Rhode Island Reds or Golden Sexlinks breeds as they produce brown eggs, which aren’t different from white eggs in any way whatsoever other than the shell color but which fetch higher prices because brown eggs are considered fresher for some reason. Next, try and keep your chickens free range as that little selling point also allows you to charge slightly higher per dozen. It is healthier for the chickens as well, but on the bottom line it lets you get a higher return on eggs.

Overall, making a business out of selling eggs will be difficult but it’s not impossible. More often than not you’ll find that you’ll have the most luck just selling a few dozen eggs a month to friends and family, which will help offset the cost of raising your chickens in the first place. If you’re not content with just a little extra cash, then expect to go big with the operation, and while it’s not impossible, it does become a job very quickly.

How Do You Keep Chickens Warm In Cold Weather?

One of the biggest concerns when caring for chickens is how to keep them properly heated during the cold months. Some breeds handle chilly or snowy conditions much better than others, but overall there are a few things you can do to keep your flock from suffering in the cold, and most of them require some basic care when it comes to the coop.

The main thing you can do is ensure that your chickens’ coop is in good condition and without holes or cracks that could be letting cold air in. Your chickens need a good safe and cozy place to keep warm and their coop is going to become that safe haven, but if gusts of cold air are constantly whipping through, the whole purpose of the coop is ruined. This also applies for the floor, so if there’s a slot under the door that is creating a draft, you need to fix it so that the draft is gone.

Most of the time you’ll discover that a little personal space heater will do wonders toward keeping the hens warm and comfortable, but this can be tough if the coop is without built-in electricity. Worse, running an extension cord can actually create a potential hazard as extension cords aren’t really meant for long term use. Still, if you can manage to keep the cord out of harm’s way and have a dire need to warm your chicks, the space heater should work beautifully.

Perhaps more important than simply maintaining a well-insulated coop with a good heat source is the need to keep your chickens and their environment clean. Mud and grime can build up very quickly and this leads to the problem of giving any cold breeze an amplified effect. Dirty feathers can’t keep out the cold as well, so they need to stay clean. Sweeping and washing the coop on a regular basis is just simple maintenance that you should be doing anyway, but letting this chore go undone can result in some unhappy and rather cold chickens.

The same goes for their bedding. Wood chips or stray can be rather warm nests of comfort that also stop the cold from affecting the chickens as regularly, but dirty bedding that’s saturated with chicken waste won’t be much of a help for anyone, so it’s integral for your hens that they be sleeping on only the freshest of bedding, otherwise they could be prey to chills. Think of it as an elaborate turndown service and for the extent of the cold months, you’re the maid service.

When looking for breeds that do the best in the cold, you’ll find a lot of luck with breeds that have the most features, though even something strange like the Naked Neck seems to fare surprisingly well in cold weather. The real danger that chickens face is the freezing of their wattles and combs as those are the most susceptible. Help keep those heated and your chickens should be able to stay nice and warm, even when it’s cold outside.

How Do You Keep Chickens Cool In Warm Weather?

Along with wanting to find ways to keep chickens warm when the weather gets cold, finding an effective means of keeping them cool when the weather gets hot can become a vital necessity, otherwise they’ll suffer. When it comes to heat, chickens are capable of reaching points of exhaustion or heat stroke if they’re not properly cooled down, so look for ways to help them out.

Most problems can be traced to the chicken coop and heating is no exception. While a draft is bad in the winder, ventilation is critical when things get too hot. If you have a window installed in your coop, now would be the time to leave it open. Ideally you’ll have a summer coop with an entire side that’s completely open and just covered with mesh or wire to keep predators out and chickens in. This will allow the greatest amount of ventilation and the best method for cooling down, especially if the coop is also in a shady area.

A simple mistake with the coop is to have the roof or the sides be dark colors. Dark colors, especially black, tend to trap heat rather than reflect it, so a coop with a black roof is essentially just allowing your hens to bake, whereas having a white roof will reflect the heat and reduce the temperature inside by quite a lot.

If ventilation isn’t occurring naturally, installing a small fan may be a good solution. You’ll want to keep it blowing only hard enough to circulate air and keep it out of the way of your chickens, lest they get caught up in it somehow. This means you’ll ideally want to keep it up high above them all, or have it installed right into the side of the coop’s wall. If you don’t have one installed, a small portable fan can be used, but be careful with extension cords.

Besides the coop needing airflow, your chickens will need water and lots of it. Keep the flow of cool, fresh water coming, giving them a means to effectively cool off when their natural air conditioning isn’t doing the trick. They can’t sweat, so most of the time they naturally cool down by using their combs and wattles, and that just won’t cut it when the sun is really beating down and they have nothing to drink.

In addition to drinking water, a small kiddie pool can be used to give them a definite place to hang out with some relief from the heat should they decide to go for a little dip. Also, shade will become incredibly important if you’re able to provide it at all. A lot of this will go with preplanning when building the coop in the first place, but any means to add more protection from the sun will be greatly appreciated.

General cleaning will come into play yet again as the value of proper cleaning can never be understated. Dirty bedding can create heat much easier than if it’s clean, so be sure to change it out before it has a chance to heat up and make things worse is important to the overall health of your flock. Do that and they’ll be happy and a good deal cooler.

What Type Of Chickens Should I Get?

If there’s one question you should have sorted out before you start raising chickens, it’s most definitely “which chickens should I get?” This is a loaded question because it doesn’t exactly keep things neat a tidy in the answer department. There is no one correct answer for which type of chicken to buy as the specific breed you’ll want is entirely dependent on why you want chickens to begin with and what your expectations are.

There are some very simple safe answers, to be sure. If you’re very new to the whole experience and just want chickens for the sake of chickens, usefulness pending, something like the Rhode Island Red, the White Leghorn, the Brahma, the Plymouth Rock, or the Buff Orpington should do you just fine as they’re all standard breeds that are easy to raise and have use in most any category and climate.

However, choosing a specialty for your chicken to embrace is where you get into the more detailed answers. The first and biggest category for chickens happens to be egg layers. For that, you’ll want to look for a hen from a breed that can lay consistently throughout the year. Weather can affect the ability of certain breeds to lay properly, but others are specifically bred to handle the strange conditions. The goal is to pick out a chicken that has a high rate of quality eggs, so in that case you’d want the White Leghorn or the Rhode Island Red.

If eggs aren’t the priority and rather meat is why you’re raising chickens, then you need to look at something entirely differently. Even more, if you’re intending to make a business out of chicken meat, you’ll need to change your approach yet again to compensate for the speed with which a chicken can grow to full size since some breeds take longer than others. Rhode Island Reds crop up again, but the Cornish Cross or Delaware breeds both make excellent meat birds as they grow big alarmingly fast. The largest breed though, the Jersey Giant, may be large but they also take a long time to mature, so keep that in mind.

Lastly you’ll have the category of show or decoration birds, which are really two specific things within the same category of “chickens meant for show.” When breeding chickens for the show circuit, you’d do best to look into what sort of chickens are already popular and go from there, as well as how much time and work you’re going to be able to put into care as show birds require a high amount of care and grooming. Similarly, chickens meant just for farm decoration, true pets if you will, can consist of just about any breed as long as you like their look, though bantams are a very popular choice seeing as how they are small and unique.

The chicken you’re looking for will all depend on how you want to use them, and then even more when it comes to how much space you have at your disposal, how much time you have to care for them, and what sort of restrictions your neighborhood has on raising chickens, assuming you don’t live on a farm. There is no one right answer, but this should give you a general idea.

Can I Keep Different Breeds Of Chickens Together?

A lot of times, when you’re just starting out with chickens ever new experience can be stressful. Figuring out the proper feeding schedule, how many chickens to raise, what sort of coop to build, it’s all going to be stressful, and then add on the decision of which breed to settle on and you’ve got a noggin boiler. But the question about whether it’s okay to keep different breeds together will eventually crop up as well and if you don’t know the answer to that, you’ll just be adding more unnecessary stress.

There’s no simple answer there as it can be either “yes, you can keep different breeds of chickens together” and also “no, you can’t keep all breeds of chickens together.” Everything depends entirely on which breeds you’re looking to purchase and what purpose they will serve. So let’s start with why different breeds will easily live together.

Chickens are all about living within flocks. They’re rather domesticated as of this point in history and are used to both people and animals of all sorts. Overall, they aren’t territorial and don’t have a lot of internal strife thanks to the pecking order, which is absolutely a real thing. Every flock will feel the need to have one rooster or hen as the leader (always a rooster unless no roosters are in the flock, then a female will step up and take charge). As long as feed is never in short supply, the pecking order will be easily maintained.

Much of the time you’ll find hens of all breeds interacting with one another as well as cats, dogs, pigs, goats, cows, horses, and so on. Again, as long as there’s plenty of food to go around to every animal, then none of them will feel the need to lash out unprovoked. Generally the only difficulty comes as a result of a confined space, which then leads to an increased amount of stress. If you have a small backyard and know that you won’t have the space to let your chickens really run around, keep your flock very small and consider keeping it exclusive to one breed.

However, the reasons against mixing breeds into the same coop is the same as mixing any random group of strangers together. Some people are more disposed to be nice and relaxed around each other while some people are outwardly hostile. Chickens are the same way, though they’re a bit easier to judge as certain breeds consistently have similar traits spread amongst them. If you mix two breeds that are known to be aggressive, then there is a high chance that the combination will result in fights.

Furthermore, while hens will typically mesh together rather pleasantly, roosters aren’t the same story. They will fight with one another for dominance over the females of the group, especially if their rival is a different breed entirely. This can all be avoided by just not having a rooster. In fact, a roosterless flock is on average a lot less stressed, plus you don’t have to deal with the usual crowing in the morning.

Essentially, chickens can live perfectly fine with different breeds inhabiting the same space, but that all depends entirely on the breeds in question and the environment you’re providing.

What Times Of The Year Do Chickens Lay Eggs?

Chickens and eggs just go hand-in-hand, or rather hand-in-wing, or something like that. The most popular reason to raise chickens is specifically for the added bonus of them providing farm fresh eggs at a regular clip. This is great for your home as you won’t have to go buy eggs anymore, and if you get enough chickens laying enough eggs you might even find yourself able to run a little side business, but the question of when exactly during the year that chickens lay eggs will inevitably come up. And there is no one perfect answer for that, unfortunately.

One of the great benefits of chickens is that most popular egg-laying breeds will be able to lay year-round if the conditions are optimal for them to continue on. Living on a farm with a very temperate climate all year long will result in essentially no difference month to month in your chickens’ ability to lay eggs. It’s usually only when you get to the weather extremes that things change.

Winter is traditionally the time of the year when egg production will slow down to almost nothing or stop entirely, though this again all depends on the breed of your chickens. The reason for the slowdown is because your chickens will be too concerned about the cold weather to need to lay more eggs, resulting in their bodies slowing the process down to focus on keeping warm. Specific breeds, however, have been bred specifically to continue laying or even improve their egg laying in the cold weather, such as the Russian Orloff.

Worse than winter for your chickens is the addition of stress. A stressful chicken won’t lay properly or even at all in some cases, so more often than not the thing to worry about isn’t seasons but instances of stress. It just so happens that the weather getting far too hot or far too cold are factors of stress for chickens, same as with humans, so if they’re finding it impossible to warm up or cool down, their egg production will suffer.

Furthermore, other things can cause stress, such as the introduction of a new aggressive member of the flock or a lack of feed. Small, cramped quarters could also play a huge role in the stress level for your chickens, encouraging the need for them to be free range if you have the room to spare. The fear of predators can also become a problem, so if you’ve had repeated attacks from coyotes or wolves or hawks or such, you need to do everything you can to alleviate the source of the stress. Even having very loud and rambunctious kids constantly chasing your hens around can cause their egg production to slump as a result of the stress, so keep that in mind.

There is no one simple time of year when chickens lay all their eggs but rather throughout the year. The amount of eggs will depend on the individual breeds, as well as factors such as how much stress the hens are under and if the weather is being forgiving or harsh and relentless. This will all play a factor in how often your chickens will lay eggs.

How Do You Keep Chickens Out Of Your Garden?

A general concern with raising chickens, particularly free range flocks, is how easily you’ll be able to keep them out of unwanted places such as a garden. Gardens are very susceptible to the pecking and scratching of chickens as they not only by nature have vegetables that chickens would love to munch on, but also have soft soil that makes hunting for insects very easy. All that pecking and scratching will make a mess and could cause quite a problem, so the need to keep chickens out of the garden is a very real one.

The easiest method involves a fence either for your garden or for your chickens, depending on which you’d prefer to enclose more. When it comes to the garden, a fence is incredibly easy as all you’d need is something simple and, assuming your chickens are very good jumpers or fliers, fairly short. A three-foot fence should easily keep chickens out, regardless of whether it’s made of wood or chain link or something else.

The downside is that with a fenced-in garden, you might feel a bit more cramped, though that’s all assuming that you’re making the fence border the vegetables to an uncomfortable degree. The added plus for the fence is that it not only keeps out the chickens in your own yard, but also the majority of other unwanted pests such as rabbits, deer, and the like. Crows and other birds would require a full top covering as well, though rodents will always find a way around fences.

If you prefer to keep things a bit freer and more open when you’re gardening, fencing off your chickens to a certain extent can solve the problem of their involvement. There are the positives and negatives to fencing off chickens as well, with the big bonuses being that they, too, are protected better from predators that would normally come for them when they aren’t guarded, but the downside comes entirely with how you prefer to raise them. If you want them to be free range, then by definition they can’t really have anything limiting where they can go, just what you would like protected from them (such as your garden).

An alternative is to try and cut them off from the garden by dividing your yard with a fence, separating your chickens from your garden without really containing either, but this can be a bit unwieldy in the execution. The simplest method is still picking one group or the other and creating a fence around it, or inversely getting a greenhouse for your garden so they’re not only contained from the curiosity of your chickens but from absolutely everything else, including the weather.

Fencing is all that will work as chickens can’t be trained to stay out of something. You won’t be able to pull out the spray bottle every time your flock starts pecking and scratching in your lettuce, so you’ll have to get a bit more resourceful and separate the two groups before your garden suffers.

Should You Give Chickens A Variety Of Food Or Keep It The Same?

Chickens need very little when compared to other farm animals like horses or sheep. Their space requirements are relatively small, their cleaning needs are reasonable, and the amount of food they ask for is fairly humble. But a lot of times you may be getting the nagging question of whether they can handle eating something different from the norm, leading you to ask whether they should be getting a nice variety or all just the same thing. All of this depends on what you mean by variety of course.

The typical feed for a chicken consists of just that, chicken feed. They get the majority of their dietary needs met through the specially made feed that stores sell and the best part of all is that they will never get tired of this. Chickens don’t tend to have a picky nature to food in the same way that dogs will eat essentially anything they you put in front of them, but you are certainly capable of giving them a variety of treats.

For instance, chickens can actually eat certain types of table scraps. They seem to love things like rice, carrots, peas, oatmeal, chopped vegetables, and even cooked meat as long as it’s not chicken meat. However, just because they can eat some types of table scraps doesn’t mean their entire diets should consist of it. These are treats and should be viewed more as junk food than anything else. Also, avoid feeding them chocolate, avocado skins or pits, potato skins, or rotten food as all of those are poisonous to your chickens. Processed foods like pizza and the like are also good to avoid.

Fresh vegetables are a wonderful addition to your flock’s diet though as they will improve the nutrition that your birds are taking in significantly. Lettuce is great and simple as it gives them a chance to peck at it and shred it at their leisure. It’s important to keep the fresh food off the ground though as not to contaminate it if at all possible.

You may also catch your chickens out pecking and scratching for bugs and grubs, which is normal, but then see them apparently eat grass, which may seem less normal. Don’t be alarmed by this! Chickens eat grass as a natural part of their diets whether we realize it or not. It isn’t an indication that their diet is lacking as is sometimes the case with cats and dogs, nor is it just something they’re doing out of boredom. It’s just part of their diet, so making sure they have fresh, clean grass growing nearby is something they’ll certainly thank you for.

The great thing about chickens is that they can take care of a handy portion of their dietary needs just by simply being free range birds, capable of wandering about and eating grass and bugs as they please, then returning to the coop for the daily feed when you supply it. Feeding chickens is simple thanks in part to their acceptance of the same meal every single day.

How Do You Keep Chickens From Fighting?

While the typical situation with chickens is a laidback, enjoyable affair, there will be times when you’ll see fit to moderate a confrontation between two or more chickens. No matter how hard you try, these are still animals and they will react in completely unpredictable ways, so even if you’re doing everything right you could still come out for feeding time and find a pair of roosters flapping and pecking up a storm. However, there are certain things you can do to limit the problems as much as possible.

Most conflicts between chickens are a result of stress and anxiety. This is typically caused by overcrowding in a coop or a chicken run and can easily be alleviated with the addition of more space, which is pretty obvious. Along with the restriction of space comes the fear that feed is scarce, or at least that’s what’ll go through a chicken’s head.

This fear of a feed shortage can result in conflicts when a new member of a flock is introduced as there is a definite pecking order to things that determines which chickens eats first and gets first dibs and so on down the line. A new hen in the group means less food to the other hens unless they just naturally assume this new addition has always been here. A lot of this can be fixed by slowly integrating a new chicken by closing them off in either a pen nearby or in a different fenced area. Either way, the goal is to get all the chickens involved to see each other in a controlled environment and get used to one another so that when the fence or restraints are removed, it will appear as if it’s always been this way.

One of the leading causes of strife within the flock is that of a rooster. As males, they’re just predisposed to be more aggressive overall and both show dominance as the leader of the flock or protectiveness over the other hens that he perceives as “his.” One rooster isn’t usually a problem as roosters and hens aren’t really at odds with one another thanks to the different genders and the way the pecking order works, but two roosters very frequently leads to squabbles over females and leadership status. It’s just the nature of manhood in the animal kingdom and usually there isn’t anything to worry about as one rooster will be put firmly into a subservient role and balance will be maintained. The more hens you have, the more roosters you can have though without fights as there will be plenty of females to go ‘round enough that there doesn’t feel like extreme competition.

If you do witness a fight breaking out for any reason, whether it’s a result of males trying to show off or hens brooding with their eggs or the flock just getting frustrated with heat or space or some other random problem, don’t try to run in and stop things as you’re likely to get pecked. Instead, the greatest ally you can have here is universal for chickens: feed. Scatter some feed and 9 times out of 10 the fight will give way to feeding time. Chickens are simple minded, so use that to your advantage.

Essentially, if you want to prevent fights, limit the number of roosters you have in the flock or eliminate them entirely, make sure there is plenty of space for your birds to move around, and provide them with more than enough feed to keep them happy.

How Long Should You Keep Chickens Cooped Before Letting Them Out?

When raising some new chickens from hatching to maturity, there are a few steps that people tend to completely forget or leave out that are actually pretty integral to the experience. For instance, once you have gone through the process of incubating the eggs they hatch and then need to be kept in a warm space for a while until it’s time to move them to the next step. People would wrongfully assume that the next step is instantly letting the newly adolescent chickens free range like the rest of your flock (assuming you’re free ranging your flock), but generally that is a bad idea.

Rather, there is an intermediate milestone to climb, that of acclimating to the chicken coop. This is done primarily for the sake of comfort and recognition. You want your chicks to feel like the coop is a safe, normal place to be. Essentially, you want them to truly think of it as their home. Meanwhile, you also want to establish where home really is so that when they’re allowed to run on their own that they know precisely where they should come back to every night to find shelter and safety.

Thing is, there’s not a real set time for how long this house arrest should be in place as each chicken will react differently to this. You don’t want to make the experience too short as that won’t have the desired effect, but at the same time you don’t want to prolong the experience too much as being confined may actually just stress your chickens out and cause problems like fighting or general anxiety.

As a rule of thumb, one week seems to be just about right. This gives them plenty of time to adjust to their new home and begin to see it as the place where they live and sleep, but not so much time that they’re going stir-crazy. It can be a fine balance to meet but when done correctly it will greatly benefit your chicken’s overall attitude.

A lot of this can change when you have a chicken run though. If you aren’t planning on going the free range route and just intend to have the coop attached to a fenced-in area nearby, then the isolation time need not apply since their world will be small enough that there will be no question about where to sleep at night. This will be the case for quite a lot of backyard chicken farmers where space is a huge issue, so the simple run just makes more sense.

Of course, mixing the two together- that of the free range aspect after the chicken run- can allow your chickens to instantly get used to wandering outside but still confine them to a space that will become home. It may seem strange to have both methods in play at once, but this is actually a really effective way to integrate new members of the flock without any fights breaking out. Try it out and you’ll see that it actually works pretty well.

Why Do My Chickens Keep Cracking Their Eggs?

When you’re raising chickens, it can get rather aggravating if you’re consistently coming out to check on how many new eggs have been laid recently, only to discover them cracked and broken before you’ve had a chance to collect. It’s a problem that pretty much every hen keeper will have to deal with at some point but it’s not a total mystery as to why it happens or what to do about it.

There are generally only a few real reasons why a chicken would crack an egg. The first is that chickens are not as graceful as we’d like to assume. Much of the time they’re simply sitting down on the eggs and accidentally crushing them, something that’s much more of a problem with bigger breeds like the Jersey Giant. Overcrowding can become a hassle as well as too many hens trying to use the same space may start to “accidentally” get rid of the competition’s eggs.

Other hens are very commonly the real problem as hens will get competitive as to which nest is theirs and may crack eggs out of spite or toss them from the nest in order to make space for their own eggs. A good way to combat this is to ensure there are plenty of nests to go around. However, if you discover that there are some hens that just won’t stop eating the eggs of their neighbors, it may be time to consider either isolating the hen by herself, or culling the flock, though that’s a rather dramatic conclusion.

A lot of the time you’ll also find the hen herself eating her own eggs, which may seem rather cannibalistic but isn’t too unnatural. Usually the reason is because she feels she isn’t getting enough protein or calcium in her diet, something you can very easily fix by providing the necessary fill with milk or cooked oyster shells. Cooked eggs shells can also suffice, though don’t just feed them other eggs.

Frequently the habit starts with just one broken egg and the natural curiosity that leads to tasting it. Once they get a taste for eggs, they’ll seek out more, either from their nest mates or from their own nest. This could happen if an egg gets cracked for any reason, or if they just feel bored and start pecking at things, accidentally cracking an egg open themselves. Once they get hooked it can become difficult to get them to stop.

There are a few tricks you can use though. The most effective is to install an egg collector box that allows any laid eggs to roll away from the chicken and into a safe area where the hen cannot get to it, though these may be difficult and expensive to install in an already established coop. Another, cheaper solution plays upon the chicken’s gullibility by replacing eggs with white golf balls. The hen will sit on them, believing them to be eggs, and but when she pecks at them she will be unable to crack them open, eventually making her believe that she can no longer eat eggs that way and causing her to lose interest. Then again, taking an already cracked egg and filling it with English mustard, then replacing it will certainly get the hen to stay away from eggs again.

Still one of the most effective things you can do is be on top of the issue and make regular collection rounds. The less time the hens have to spend with the eggs, the less time they have to crack them either by accident or design.

How Do I Keep Predators From Killing My Chickens?

Chickens face a constant threat thanks to their low rung on the Food Chain. Naturally, humans are already raising them as a means to feed ourselves most of the time, so it’s not a shock when other animals decide to get in on this and take a cut. You’ll usually find predators such as wolves, foxes, coyotes, badgers, wild dogs, and even cougars on occasion looking to score a quick and easy meal from some unprotected coops and the like.

There’s not a lot you can do to stop these hunters from doing what they’re programmed to do, but you can still deter them from getting to your chickens without any difficulty as there are a ton of precautions you can implement to keep the chicken attacks down to a minimum, if not completely do away with them entirely, and all it really takes is just a few simple modifications to the area.

The best defense against predators is just that: the fence. Putting a fence around your chicken’s area will keep all predators incapable of climbing out, which would leave perhaps just the pesky cougars of nightmares. It’s hard for wolves, coyotes, and the like to get through either a wooden or chain-link fence without some extreme difficulty, unless they find a way to either dig underneath or create a hole. You’ll want to be on the lookout for any easily-exploitable weaknesses in your chicken’s fence and repair them as soon as possible.

This does still leave your flock open to attack from above. Hawks and other predatory birds can swoop down and snatch a chick or a whole chicken up and fly away with it, so you need to do something to prevent that as well, which is just as simple as adding a covering over the top of the fence as well. Basically, you’ll be building one huge cage, thus preventing any and all predators from getting to your birds.

If the full fence concept doesn’t really work for you, perhaps because your chickens are free range and need to be able to come and go as they please, you may want to consider shutting them up in their coop at night and then letting them roam during the day. If that is still too restricting, a good idea is to add some floodlights that click on if there’s movement from the perimeter around the coop, which may scare some predators away.

Also, having a few dogs trained to protect the flock will come in extremely handy. A lot of people assume that predators are just looking for challenge but that’s not true at all. They want the least amount of resistance, hence why they generally go after the sickly, young, or elderly first in any setting. Floodlights and dogs will show that these chickens are no easy mark and they may decide to find food elsewhere rather than bother with the trouble you’re causing them.

Keeping your chickens safe isn’t too difficult when you get right down to it. All you have to do is put in a bit of effort and be sure to stay alert to dangers around your farm. Do that and they should be quite safe.

How Big Of An Area Do You Need For A Certain Amount Of Chickens?

There’s definitely one question you should be asking yourself before you start raising chickens and that’s how much space you think you’re going to need. Generally you’ll find that you’ll either need to section off more space of your property to accommodate your growing flock, or you’ll have to make some tough calls about the limited space you do have. Either way, space is critical to happy and healthy chickens.

The big issue with chickens is the amount of stress and anxiety they’ll frequently run into. It doesn’t take much to get a chicken agitated to the point that their lives are affected, most notably in the amount of eggs they regularly produce as well as in how quickly they’ll resort to fighting when another chicken starts to bother them. Eggs will certainly become a source of a lot of stress here as a stressed chicken may look for an outlet to expend some of this pent up energy and start eating their own eggs and the eggs of other hens or just outright tossing eggs out of nests to make room for their own.

All of these situations are typically caused by a severe lack of space. Keeping too many chickens confined to too small a space will cause a very big problem to appear in the form of more aggressive behavior and general stress. This can also present in excessive molting or just weird behavior, so it’s absolutely best to avoid overcrowding in order to have properly adjusted chickens.

The tricky part is knowing just how much space is enough. The general rule is always that more is better. There is a never a point where you’ve gone overboard and sectioned off too much space for your chickens to run around in as they always want more no matter what. Letting them be free range birds will go the longest way toward eliminating the problem of space, but of course not everyone will have the luxury of a ton of space in the country, especially those raising chickens in their backyard. Also, free range chickens are more at risk of predator attacks, but that’s the tradeoff.

Don’t just confine chickens to a coop by the way. No matter how big a coop it may be, chickens need fresh air, sunshine, and the ability to peck and scratch. You’ll actually discover that caring for chickens that have some space to roam around is much easier than having to do everything for a nest-ridden hen. This is because when chickens get outside and dig through dirt and peck at the grass, they’re actually covering a handy portion of their diet that you then don’t have to worry about whatsoever.

Giving them that space is the hard part, but putting in a chicken run is necessary if they’re not going to be free range. If you yard is small though, you’ll need to cut things back to fit the situation. There’s no perfect number to give as smaller breeds considered bantams will be able fit in greater number in a yard than something standard-sized, so it’s all sort of case-by-case. Generally, you’ll find that 2-3 square feet of space per chicken should give you a good idea of how many chickens can comfortably fit within your coop, though always lean toward more space and fewer chickens.

Is It Okay To Clip My Chicken’s Wings?

One of the problems that a good deal of chicken owners will encounter is that of flying chickens. Yes, chickens can in fact fly to a certain extent, though they’re not about to take off and fly into the sunset. They can, however, take flight enough to make it over tall fences if you’re not careful. This becomes a problem when you’re trying to keep your chickens safely secured in one area, only to find them pecking and scratching elsewhere. However, there are a few things you can do to prevent this.

The usual solution is to build fences high enough that the chicken, generally a rooster, cannot hop over it even with the assistance of a short burst of flight. This requires fences to be over 6 feet high, probably closer to 8 or 10 feet in some cases, which can be troublesome to deal with as you’d expect. It can cost a lot to build an entirely new fence and just modifying an existing fence will still be trouble. Either way, you’re looking at a big investment.

This isn’t the only solution though. Just as many chicken farmers tend to favor another, far less expensive method: Feather clipping. There’s an assumption out there that by clipping the feathers of the chicken’s wings, you must be doing so harm or damaging what it is to be a complete and whole chicken. This is why a lot of people prefer to go with the fence method, though there is an exception there in that those raising chickens for shows cannot clip their chickens’ feathers as that will undoubtedly cost them ribbons.

The truth is that not only is feather clipping painless, it also isn’t permanent. Chicken feathers are similar to fingernails to a certain extent in so much as clipping the ends off does not harm to the individual and then if given some time they will grow back. Well, rather with chickens it’s that they will grow replacement feathers that just naturally continually grow during times of molting. At that point, which occurs every few months for a young chicken and up to a year for the older birds, the majority of their feathers will fall out as they’re replaced by new feathers. This will happen whether you clip their feathers or not.

If you do intend to clip the feathers, make sure you have a sharp pair of scissors of sheers, grab their wing, and look for the first 10 or so feathers on the end. These are the flying feathers and are usually colored differently than the rest, making it easy to pick them out. Make sure the chicken isn’t freaking out and trying to get away, then simply snip off the ends, roughly 6-inches or more in length, or 2/3 of the feather’s length. Be aware that new growth feathers may bleed, which you can tell if they have a pinkish hue to them.

There’s no consensus regarding whether both wings need to be clipped or just one as simple clipping one will throw flight off balance, so it’s entirely up to you. Also, clipped wings may be difficult to shed during molting, so you may be required to help the process along. Either way, be very careful not to accidentally harm your chicken in any way. But yes, clipping wings is safe and harmless if you know what you’re doing.

How Do I Take Care Of Baby Chicks?

Once you’ve made the decision on which breed you want to raise and then selected your specific baby chicks, the fun part of actually caring for them begins. Until they’re old enough to join the flock at large, they’re under your care and require your attention every step of the way, which means you’ll need to be watching them almost constantly for the first 4 weeks of their life. If you aren’t able to keep watch, you’ll have to have someone else with experience ready to take over for you. Yes, it’s that big a commitment.

The main objective is to provide a safe and comfortable environment for your chicks as they’re getting used to things, meaning one that is free from predators and from drafty conditions. This means that a garage could work great, or a shed or workshop or basically anywhere else you can think of where they won’t be exposed to harm or bad weather. You may want to locate this someplace you don’t mind getting dusty as the chicks will be digging and scratching in their bedding quite regularly, kicking up a good deal of dust. Plus, while they have a smell to them that isn’t necessarily “bad,” it is one that you may not wish to hit house guests, so keep them someplace accordingly.

Creating the proper home for them though will turn out to be rather simple, but it’s still important to get it right. You’ll need a box of some sort that not only keeps out drafts but also has good ventilation, so usually a simple cardboard box will suffice. This is what’s known as a “brooder.” Be sure that the box has walls that are at least a foot tall so that the chicks won’t be able to escape! Also, plan for how many chicks you’re caring for all at once and provide 2 square feet per chick as this will give adequate room for them to grow.

Also, it’s vital that they have a good heat source, which comes down to a simple heat lamp. They need the temperature to be at roughly 95 degrees Fahrenheit their first week, then 90 degrees the next, and so on in 5 degree increments per week until they’re outside. You can achieve this very easily by raising the height of the lamp one a week so that the temperature changes accordingly. Ideally, you’ll use a red bulb as it makes it easier for the chicks to sleep.

You’ll want to supply the brooder with good, absorbent bedding, a feeder, and a water drinker. Don’t just use dishes for these things if you can help it as the chicks will regularly hop into the bowls, tip them over, or poop in them, so keep it more sanitary with a real feeder and waterer made specifically to keep things clean. A little bit of grit is good as well, which can be sand, small peddles, or gravel. They need this for proper digestion so don’t deprive them.

Some things to consider: You may want to start giving the chicks some outside play time once they hit 2 or 3 weeks old every now and then when the weather is warm enough. Also, don’t forget to clean their bedding regularly and switch out their food and water in order to keep things fresh and sanitary.

A quick note about “Pasting Up”: When you first get chicks delivered, you may see that some of them have a condition known as “Pasting Up” in which their vents (rears) are blocked up with droppings. You need to have this removed immediately as it can kill them if it persists. Use a paper towel dunked in warm water and a toothpick, or just dunk their bottoms in a bowl of warm water entirely in order resolve the obstruction. Be sure to keep an eye on the chicks with this problem as it may reoccur from time to time before clearing up.

What Type Of Coop Should I Build Or Buy For My Chickens?

Probably the biggest investment you’ll have to make when raising chickens, besides the time commitment, is the coop. They need a safe home and you’re going to have to be the one to provide it. They aren’t like other birds where they’ll just build a nest and be done with it. No, it’s your responsibility to build or buy a coop, stock it with the proper amenities, and clean it regularly. But what type of coop should you get, exactly?

Buying and buildi9ng will give you two somewhat different results as they have the plusses and negatives. With purchasing a coop, you don’t usually have to do any preplanning when it comes to blueprints or styles beyond picking the one you prefer. The downside is that should you need to add anything specific, it will be on you to figure that out or to just contract the job out to someone else for more money still.

However, with a coop that you’ve personally built, you’ll discover that all the work is down up front with planning and actually building. This gives you the greatest amount of flexibility in terms of features and space since you can make it to your exact specifics rather than just working off a basic model. The tricky part is determining what you’ll need, exactly.

All good coops require a few basic things. First, you’ll need an opening large enough for your chickens to enter and exit comfortably and said opening needs to be up off the ground by about a foot to prevent a draft. Also, you’ll need to include roosting boxes and possibly roosting poles, also up off the ground but lined up at the same height. If you need more roosting boxes, put them in groups at the same height.

The rest of your coop features will be dependent on what sort of needs you anticipate being of interest. If you live in an area that regularly experiences hot weather, installing a window in your coop will become important so that ventilation can occur. Adding a fan is also a good addition, especially in conjunction with the window or a vent of some sort.

Inversely, if you live in a region known for cold weather, you’ll want to have some sort of heater built in for your coop to help when the weather gests extremely cold, plus extra insulation will come in rather handy overall. The general rule is to plan for the weather you anticipate encountering so that your coop accurately represents your flock in comparison to all others.

Depending on the size of your flock or the size of your yard, the coop may need to also change accordingly. More chickens would naturally dictate needing a larger coop and raising chickens specifically for egg laying may prompt you to build in nesting boxes for easy egg collection, but other times you’ll discover that a portable chicken coop is a good option to work from as you can move them to any area of your yard. This is useful if things get really hot in the summer and you need to move it into a shady area or it gets cold in winder and you need to move it to a less-drafty location.

There is no one definite coop design that will work for everyone. It changes depending on where you live and the size of your flock.

What Kind Of Food Should I Feed My Chickens?

After settling in and determining what breed of chicken to raise and what sort of coop to house them in, as well as what purpose you’d prefer to raise them for, you’ll need to figure out what sort of food to start feeding them. The nice thing about chickens is they really are not picky when it comes to food as they aren’t about to discriminate, plus their normal diet is incredibly simple, so all around you’re not looking at a huge investment. However, there are some things you should consider.

The standard diet for chickens of all shapes and sizes finds chicken feed as the main staple. Any farm supply store will have the generic chicken feed you’ll want to buy, making it the easiest part of raising chickens since there’s no way to fail here. They just need feed and it’s both cheap and simple to locate at stores.

With said feed, you’ll want to give your chickens plenty, either at their leisure or on a more strictly timed diet. You can accomplish this by either setting out a feeder, preferably one that’s raised up off the ground to prevent the usual contamination, or by setting aside twice a day for regular feedings. The second method actually works pretty well to do at night right before the chickens need to be put into their coop as you can feed them inside their coop, thus getting them to return from wandering at the same time every night to sleep safely from predators and the like.

Along with this you’ll want to be sure and include some patches of fresh, green grass for your chickens to peck at and eat. There seems to be some basic confusion here but yes, chickens do require grass in their diets and aren’t accidentally eating stalks of grass. They’re doing this quite deliberately, so providing a strip in their run or in your yard in a location they can easily get to will be very beneficial.

Also, as you’d expect, chickens love to forage for bugs and other insects in dirt, so they need a place to peck and scratch and dig for some grubs. Chickens aren’t herbivores and require some protein, which they get regularly from bugs, so letting your birds be free range or providing them with a nice big run can go a long way toward meeting their nutrition needs. They’re so good at foraging in fact that free range chickens actually require much less feed as they’re so adept at providing for themselves.

It’s a good idea to be sure and provide some fresh leafy green vegetables once a day, put up off the ground so as not to get dirty and contaminated. Just something simple like lettuce or cabbage really helps chickens with their diets. Chickens can eat some table scraps by the way, such as pieces of cooked meat (not chicken) or rice, but don’t base their entire diets on these foods or give them any processed items as those won’t do any good.

Feeding chickens is really one of the easiest parts of the whole experience of raising poultry. The investment for food is small and a lot of the time they will be capable of caring mostly for themselves, making it very simple for you and your wallet.

What Do I Do If My Chickens Become Sick Or Start Dying?

All animals are victim to the inevitability of death, including chickens. Granted, you already knew that and may be raising chickens specifically to turn them into dinner birds. However, you don’t necessarily want them to begin dying before their time, and while a lot of times it’ll be at the hands of a predator, just as often you’ll encounter illnesses and the like that’ll sweep through your flock. There are luckily a few things you can do to prevent these outbreaks.

The best tactic you can take for diseases is to make sure and stay aggressive with cleanings. A clean coop is less likely to contaminate a healthy chicken, so making sure to sweep out often and provide them with fresh bedding and hay on a regular basis will go a long way. The same goes for their feeders and waterers. Chickens can contaminate their own food and water sources just by being clueless and defecating where they shouldn’t be, so clean those out on a daily basis for maximum health for your flock.

Also, knowing how to properly heat your chickens can help, too. Chickens will get sick if they’re constantly cold or if their coops are unreasonably drafty, so be sure to design the coop to be raised up and have nests raised up as well. Plus, whenever there is a break in the coop such as a hole or some such, be sure to patch it up right away, both to prevent the draft but also any pests that could be looking for easy access to your birds.

As with humans, much of your prevention from diseases will be when young via vaccinations. A handful of problems can occur if your chickens aren’t properly vaccinated when they’re young, such as bronchitis and the like, though if they do become ill later in life, you should be able to talk to your veterinarian and get some antibiotics prescribed.

During the day, you’ll discover that chickens being feed strong, nutritious diets will grow up stronger and healthier on a consistent basis. While giving your chickens clean food and water is a good start, be sure that the food has some fresh green vegetables in it and that they have the chance to forage a bit for their own good in the dirt and grass.

If one of your chickens does die though, be sure to remove the body from the flock immediately and dispose of it properly. Chickens do not need time to mourn, so leaving the dead, decaying chicken behind will only give them a higher chance of contamination, which is exactly what you don’t want. Essentially, the same goes for chickens who become ill. It’s always a good idea to quarantine potentially diseased chickens from the rest of your flock, lest they also come down with the sickness.

Basically, if your chicken becomes sick or your flock starts to die, take the infected to the vet immediately. They’ll be able to properly assess what’s wrong and if you need to treat or just outright cull. Sometimes it’s a tough decision, but it’s necessary for the overall flock’s health.

Do I Need A Rooster?

One of the biggest and most pressing question you’re likely to ask when raising chickens is the dreaded “do I need a rooster” one. We seem to believe that roosters are somehow necessary for a flock to survive properly, but that’s not the case at all. Roosters have a few very specific uses, but beyond those you’ll discover that they’re actually more of a hindrance than anything.

Roosters are needed for breeding and that is it. There’s a misconception that hens require roosters in order to lay eggs but that’s entirely untrue. Hens will lay regardless of whether a rooster has inseminated her or not, and in fact, the eggs we eat are the non-inseminated eggs. When a rooster does get his business involved, those eggs aren’t favored for sale anymore, essentially forcing you to toss them. Removing a rooster from this situation ensures that the hens keep laying the proper eggs without worry.

Again, roosters only find real function when breeding is required, and most of the time you’ll have no reason to breed your chickens at all. If you plan on raising chickens meant for shows and such, then yes, you’ll have to begin selectively breeding to work on getting specific qualities from one generation to the next, but in the majority of cases you’ll only waste your time.

People also assume that roosters are necessary for keeping a flock of chickens in line, and that’s also a myth. Chickens are very easy to keep calm and orderly without the need of a male in the group. There will always be a pecking order to things, regardless of genders, and oddly you may even see a hen step up and take charge of things, though that’s assuming that particular flock demands leadership at all. Most of the time, hens will just be content going about their business unbothered.

What roosters do bring to the farm is noise and lots of it. We all instantly think of them waking up at the crack of dawn to perch on the roof and start crowing until everyone is awake or sufficiently bothered by the noise. The problem here is that the crowing is very inconsistent depending on the bird, so sometimes you’ll have a rooster that just feels like crowing now and then for no good reason, even in the middle of the night. Many neighborhoods allow the raising of chickens in your backyard, but quite a few of those neighborhoods ban roosters precisely because they make noise.

Furthermore, roosters are generally the source of all fights and aggressive behavior within a flock. Hens aren’t likely to fight with one another unless they’re living in a very tight coop or some other factor is stressing them out, but two roosters in the same area are very likely to fight and fight often, though this is determined again by the breed. If you want to prevent fights as much as possible, then remove the rooster from the equation entirely.

Basically, roosters are good for one reason and one reason only, and that’s breeding. Sure you can use them for meat birds, but a lot of the time you’ll discover that hens work just as good for that, plus they’re quieter and easier to deal with. So no, you do not need a rooster. They’ll just complicate things.

How Do I Introduce New Chickens Into My Flock?

There comes a time in every flock’s life when it experiences a growth. A lot of times it’ll be from within as hens have chicks and raise them to adulthood, but more often it’ll be you as the farmer to bring in someone new. There’s a big worry here that a new addition to the group will create a lot of problems, and they’re not entirely without warrant, but it shouldn’t be a matter to stress over too much. Adding chickens to a flock is actually pretty easy, though there are a few things to be careful of.

The main issue is whether you’re adding a hen or a rooster. Hens are pretty easy-going when it comes to unknown chickens. They will typically just sort of go about their daily business like there’s nothing entirely out of the ordinary, though there are still times when the flock is more flighty or prone to stress. Roosters, however, are more aggressive by nature, especially when another male is introduced. This can lead to fights over dominance and “ownership” of specific females, so definitely take some of the following steps into consideration before barreling forward.

First, you’ll want to make sure your new chicken is acclimated to the area while also getting the group used to a new member as well. This does not involve instantly throwing it into the flock and hoping for the best though. Rather, you’re going to keep things very basic by just letting your chickens get used to each other by casual contact. One way to do this is to put the newcomer into an isolated area either within the usual chicken pen or in a conjoining pen so that everyone can see one another. The purpose of this is to create familiarity.

After a week of letting the old and the new see each other, you can try integrating them. The goal is to have the notion ingrained that the new chicken isn’t actually new since it looks and smells so familiar anyway. The constant controlled exposure will program this idea into their head, or something similar such as not perceiving the newcomer as a threat or a challenge just by frequent, non-stressful sightings.

If squabbles do come about, one of the best tactics you can take is the distraction method whereas you toss feed into the group when fighting occurs. Chickens have very short attention spans, especially when food is involved, so when they realize it’s time for feed they’ll drop whatever they’re doing and just go into food mode, potentially causing them to forget that they had a problem with the new chicken that had just been introduced.

Another fairly simple method involves adding more than one chicken at a time, preferably a small group that all grew up together. This reduces the chance that the new additions will be picked on as they have a strong support network to help them through things and cuts the chance of a fight down substantially as groups aren’t likely to fight one another.

Adding chickens is pretty simple when it’s done slowly or with a clear plan in place. Tossing a new chicken into a flock could result in a bloodied and beaten chicken, so be careful to take your time with things.

What Is The Difference Between Eggs?

There’s a lot of confusion in the world at this point as to whether store-bought or farm fresh eggs are better for you, or whether one color of egg tastes differently or whether there’s one way to go about things that’s inherently better than all the others. There’s so much confusion about eggs that prices change rapidly between different styles, all because no one reason knows the truth: eggs are eggs.

Typically you’ll encounter a lot of arguments about whether eggs with brown shells are healthier, more flavorful, or just downright better than eggs with white shells, and the majority of these arguments are based entirely off of the power of suggestion. If you’re expecting brown eggs to taste different or somehow “better” than white eggs, you’ll probably say you can taste a notably difference. The truth though is that there is absolutely no difference between the two types of eggs. They both contain the same amount of nutrition. They both contain the same amount of flavor. They both taste the same when you aren’t aware which egg is which.

The whole “brown eggs are better” notion comes about via clever marketing in the supermarket. The majority of consumers aren’t aware that there’s no difference beyond the visual aspect and so assume because brown eggs are less common in stores, they must be better somehow. Again, there’s no difference in the eggs. The different colors are a result of the colors of the chickens themselves, so white chickens with white earlobes produce white eggs and red or brown chickens with red earlobes produce brown eggs. There is just no difference at all.

There are however some definite differences in eggs produced by chickens that have been raised differently. Most store-bought eggs come from chicken farms where eggs are mass-produced almost like an assembly line. The chickens are fed the minimum requirements of food and nutrition as set by FDA standards, resulting in the standard eggs that we have today. But diet does affect what sort of nutrition the eggs themselves will have, so a chicken that’s fed better feed will have eggs that are actually better for you.

A step up from the standard eggs are barn-laid eggs, though be careful not to confuse this with farm fresh. A lot of supermarket chains like to use terms like “farm fresh” and “free range” to sell their eggs, even though much of the time neither of those buzz words mean anything. Farm fresh is relative as all eggs are laid at a farm and free range could mean that the chickens are able to run around in wide open fields or just within a small space indoors. The best bet to get truly healthy eggs is to either raise chickens yourself or to purchase directly from small, local farms.

Organic eggs or eggs that are labeled Omega-3 do have different nutritional values as well as the chickens they lay them are fed organic diets or diets rich in Omega-3 nutrients, respectively. Whether that’s something you’d prefer to put priority is entirely up to you, though the taste is difficult to distinguish between the different styles.

A lot about eggs are what we hear from marketing within stores and in ads. The majority of eggs are exactly the same save for some cosmetic differences, so plan accordingly when shopping for your breakfast materials.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Is It Legal To Keep Chickens In Your Back Yard?

Are There Any Health Risks When Keeping Chickens At Your House?

Can You Have Chickens When You Already Have Cats or Dogs?

What Does It Cost To Get Started Keeping Chickens?

How Can I Make Money Selling Chicken Eggs?

How Do You Keep Chickens Warm In Cold Weather?

How Do You Keep Chickens Cool In Warm Weather?

What Type Of Chickens Should I Get?

Can I Keep Different Breeds Of Chickens Together?

What Times Of The Year Do Chickens Lay Eggs?

How Do You Keep Chickens Out Of Your Garden?

Should You Give Chickens A Variety Of Food Or Keep It The Same?

How Do You Keep Chickens From Fighting?

How Long Should You Keep Chickens Cooped Before Letting Them Out?

Why Do My Chickens Keep Cracking Their Eggs?

How Do I Keep Predators From Killing My Chickens?

How Big Of An Area Do You Need For A Certain Amount Of Chickens?

Is It Okay To Clip My Chicken’s Wings?

How Do I Take Care Of Baby Chicks?

What Type Of Coop Should I Build Or Buy For My Chickens?

What Kind Of Food Should I Feed My Chickens?

What Do I Do If My Chickens Become Sick Or Start Dying?

Do I Need A Rooster?

How Do I Introduce New Chickens Into My Flock?

What Is The Difference Between Eggs?