There’s a good and bad side to keeping chickens, but the good outweighs the bad

There’s no doubt that keeping chickens can be a stack of fun. Our family certainly loves it, particularly the children, and in our view chooks are pretty much the ideal pet. There’s lots of positives to keeping chickens, but there are also some negatives, so let’s have a look at both the positives and negatives of keeping chooks.

Lets consider the positives first.

1. All those yummy free range eggs.

You can’t go past fresh free range eggs to eat. Nothing in the supermarket will beat them. Enough said.

2. Get rid of nasty bugs.

If you allow your chooks to free range around the garden then they will clean up many nasty bugs for you. They love to scratch to uncover those bugs. A couple of summers ago we had a massive grasshopper plague throughout the area where we live. But you should have seen how quick our chickens gobbled up hundreds of grasshoppers every day.

3. Have wonderful pets.

Our kids just love their chooks. Don’t assume that just because they are birds they won’t make a good pet. Chooks are wonderful pets.

4. Have fresh clean meat.

Some people kill their chickens for food and others do not. Some are horrified at the thought of killing their own chickens. We have in the past killed roosters for food as there is very little you can do with roosters and mostly nobody else wants them. Currently however we have found someone else who is happy to take them off our hands.

If you choose to kill your own birds to eat you can be confident in the knowledge that you are getting clean, fresh free range chicken meat that does not have any of the downsides of supermarket chicken. They are not cage reared (see the photo), they are not fed antibiotics and they have had a good life up to a certain point.

Now let’s look at some of the negatives.

1. You don’t get eggs all the time.

Sad to say but most good laying hens will still take some time off during the year for a rest. We generally find that we get few if any eggs during winter. So despite the fact that we have a yard full of chooks we do find ourselves buying eggs over winter. Of course we still have to feed them and despite the fact that we feed them or our vegetable scraps we still use commercial layers pellets which of course cost money.

2. Crows

It seems that where we live has been invaded by crows. This may not be the case where you live near us huge families of crows seem to have moved in. Explanations we have seen include that last year’s bushfires burned a lot of their feed and they have moved into more populated areas in search of food. Sadly they are using our eggs as food.

Crows are particularly wily, and once they discover where the eggs are laid it’s very hard to stop them getting the eggs, we have been struggling with this for some months. Crows are getting into our chicken coop and stealing our eggs and we have not been able to stop it.

3. Chooks get sick.

Whilst it’s probably fair to say that chooks are relatively healthy they aren’t healthy all the time. Currently we have one of our chooks living in a box in the house as she seems to be unwell. And from time to time we go into the chook yard and discover a dead chook. Of course everything dies, but this is distressing to the children.

4. Scratching.

Whilst it is true, as we said, that chooks will eat up so many nasty bugs around your garden they do so combined with lots of scratching to uncover them. This can make a little mess of your garden unless you attempt to control it somehow, though it does aerate the soil.

5. There’s some work involved.

If you are keeping chickens you need to be prepared for some work. This will include regular cleaning of the chicken coop, cleaning of food and water containers and pest control measures. Chickens can suffer from various infestations including mites, which we will talk about another day, however you do need to spend some time and do some work preventing this. Read the rest of this entry

You must protect your chooks from foxes

Some people are entirely happy to build a chicken coop and expect their chickens to live in that all their life. We prefer our chickens to have an outdoors life during the day, because we feel that keeping your chooks cooped up inside all day isn’t a nice thing to do to them.

So if you’re going to let your chooks out of the chicken coop during the day you have some decisions to make.

Will you allow yourchickens to free range around the garden? There are some advantages and disadvantages to allowing your chickens to free range around the garden. They will clean up the garden of many nasty bugs that are probably eating your flowers. However chickens love to scratch and they will also scratch up the garden as well. If you have lots of nice vegetable seedlings recently planted chances are they will scratch these up, so you will need to protect them.

And if you allow your chooks to free range then you must ensure that they are all back in the chicken coop at night, or chances are very high that a predator such as a fox will turn one of your chooks into a tasty meal.

If you prefer not to allow your chooks to free range around the garden but wish to allow them out of the chicken coop during the day you will need to build a run for them. As we live in the country and have plenty of room our chicken run is enormous, and would be at least 30 metres square. This is probably too much but if you can why not.

However chooks can fly quite well and if you wish to keep them in the run you will need to build fences at least 1.8 to 2 metres high. Otherwise they will fly over the fence.

It’s also very important to realise that predators and in particular foxes will make all efforts to get your chickens. This applies in the city as well as the country. There are several ways to protect your chickens from foxes. Foxes will dig quite happily so when you are building your fence lay about 15 to 20 centimetres of the chicken wire horizontally just under the ground pointing outwards so that a fox who digs will encounter this and will be unable to continue. Read the rest of this entry

Image via Wikipedia

Don’t be concerned if your chooks are moulting, it’s normal

If you’ve not seen it before then it might seem a little strange, or even a little scary. There seems to be feathers everywhere, the chicken coop is full of feathers and your chooks look scraggly.

This is the process of maulting when your chooks lose their feathers and regrow them. It is an entirely natural process and perfectly normal.

Maulting commonly occurs in autumn, though not necessarily, and in my experience can occur at any time of the year. Moulting will coincide with your bird stopping laying.

Generally speaking a chook will moult once a year, though on occasions this can occur twice or not at all.

It is not normal for a maulting adult to lose all their feathers. Whilst the moulting takes place in certain feathers at certain times not all will be lost. Generally the feathers from the head and neck are lost first, then through the body and finally the tale.

Don’t be concerned if your birds are moulting, it’s perfectly normal. Expect to see it happen with each bird, and expect your egg production to suffer accordingly, that’s normal too.

Image via Wikipedia

Follow some simple rules and you’ll have happy chooks  and lots of eggs

Happy healthy chooks are a delight to manage and will provide you with plenty of tasty nutritious eggs. However you need to spend a little time understanding what you should be doing to keep your chooks happy and healthy.

The first requirement is to provide a proper chicken coop that is well suited to their needs. The chicken coop should be large enough to house the number of birds that you have as overcrowding can cause fighting and disease. We have talked about the size of a chicken coop before.

Not only that but it must be well ventilated. If it is fully enclosed and is prone to dampness then you will have sick chickens. It needs to have openings to allow for the flow of air, and these should be covered with chicken wire to prevent the entry of foxes.

You must ensure that it is waterproof to prevent the entry of dampness.

You also need to clean your chicken coop regularly. There’s a range of different materials that you can use as litter, my preference is sawdust however straw works well too. However this will become contaminated with droppings over time and you will need to clean out the litter regularly.

If at any time it appears that any of your birds are sick they should be removed from the flock. You should examine your birds for parasites, this is the subject of a different article.

Any birds with parasites should be treated properly and you should also be treating the chicken coop at the same time as parasites happily live in chicken coops.

To treat the chicken coop my preference is commercially available flea bombs, one is sufficient. Cover all openings so that the wind will not remove the insecticide.

Keep your chooks well away for the day as well.

Follow a few simple basic rules and you will have happy healthy chooks.