Just casually came across this. We are getting chickens next week. Never had them before. So anything I should know going in ?
They shit. A lot.
Like… a lot a lot
I always describe small farming as food in, shit out, and racing from one crisis to another.
Welcome.
racing from one crisis to another.
Amen to that! Not just farming, but farm life in general. I just hope this is the winter where I don’t have to emergency dig for a sewer blockage or haul the family off to my work for a shower Sunday evening, because the water heater decided to leak 110L of rusty water 5min after the parts supplier closed for the weekend.
Farm life!
My favorite is running out the door telling my wife that Andrew is trying to get his hay off and he needs someone to stack bales right in the middle of doing something for her. Not only do I need to prioritize the time sensitivity of things she’s asking me for but also consider the time sensitivity of calls for help from other farmers.
I got back from driving my daughter to university 5 hours from home late on Sunday night on the long weekend two weeks ago. My wife stayed in Toronto to be close for the week. I fell into bed and my phone beeped. It was a friend from one road over who had no water. I made some suggestions and eventually decided that I needed to go over. So I sent my wife a note telling her that Krista asked me to come over and work on her plumbing. My wife, a good sport, said, “Have fun!” I pointed out that Krista was in a hotel with her daughter and I was actually going over to help her husband. She said, “Oh well then, good luck!”
I’m reminded of a story. We were headed out late to get somewhere. As we drove past our neighbors house his sheep were out in the driveway. I hit the breaks, we went back, and the family herded them back through the gate, found the hole in the fence, and tied it together then jumped in the car and tore off for our appointment with my wife calling to make apologies. My son asked why we had stopped when we were late. I told him that we live in the country and livestock are money and a sheep on the road could hurt someone so we had to go back. Helping and protecting our neighbors was more important than our appointment.
Teach 'em young and teach 'em right.
Another benefit of raising chickens besides tick control - super great garden fertilizer.
Congratulations! Chickens are awesome and more people should keep them.
I have answered this question a few times in the past over at the place with the subs. Bellow is a pretty long wall of text, of what I can remember, in a somewhat prioritized order.
- Chicken math! Always build for twice the bird you’re planning on getting.
- Find a reliable source of bird health info before it’s needed. Vetting something you’ve googled, while in a bit of a panic, and your bird is suffering, sucks.
- Have a plan for treating an injured bird. Most vets won’t treat a chicken, so treating may include culling. Figure out how you will be doing that, and have your method of choice ready. Personally we will hold the chicken with the non-dominant arm and whack it in the back of the head with a piece of steel pipe, before applying a designated, and very sharp, ax to the neck.
- You may be planning on feeding your birds kitchen scrap. At least we were. But scraps will seldom be enough feed, and it will never be the right composition of nutrients. So shop around for feed. There may be a difference in quality, quantity and price. Quality is hard to evaluate, but euros/kg is easy and so is the desired quantity. Shopping around meant that we shaved 6% of the feed cost, 15km off of the round trip, and got the feed in 15kg bags, which fit our 15kg feeder, compared to the 20kg bags we used to buy which didn’t fit and then had to be stored open.
- By now you should have the coop ready, but how about feed storage? It needs to be stored dry and preferably close to where it’s needed.
- Do you have a source of bedding material? If not, then the same thing applies as for feed vis-a-vis both acquisition and storage.
- In my hemisphere winter is coming presently, and thus darkness. Darkness means fewer eggs. We counter this by having battery powered christmas lights (white LEDs that doesn’t blink, they’re not party birds) strung around inside the coop.
- Speaking of winter, it appears that chickens can’t drink solid water - if that’s a possibility where you’re at, then plan ahead. We have dug a hole in the run, where we put a long burning grave candle with an old pot on top. That way the water doesn’t freeze over and also doesn’t heat up to unsanitary temperatures.
That’s fantastic advice. Hadn’t thought about illness. Will need to look into that. Also do birds not lay when it’s dark ? I can string up some solar lights. Similar on brightness to fairy lights. Will need to check on water. We have troughs for cattle so can probably rig something for them. Depending on how intelligent they are. We have running water but don’t want them floating away. The less amount of fencing the better.
Previously my partner had them free roaming so I’m hoping to have them similar. Plenty of water around the property.
I grew up on a small chicken farm. Mostly we just gathered eggs for ourselves and traded them for other food.
The biggest tip i always offer is, if you have an open top coop and you clip wings to stop them from flying out, only clip one wing. If you clip both they can still fly out.
Interesting. I hadn’t thought about flight. Not sure how I’ll deal with them
Another note on clipping wings. When they would get out I would pick them up and toss them over the top of the fence. They don’t fly well but they fly well enough to make a decent landing…unless they have a clipped wing in which case they fly like bowling balls.
Chooks are herd animals. Never seperate out one bird for an extended amount of time, they need company. Listen to them talk to each other and you will learn the sounds for food, and sky predators, and ground predators, and etc, and be able to copy those sounds and communicate with them.
They are also creatures of habit and routine. Start out how you intend to go on, do the same thing each day, and they will be easier to control if they know what is going to happen at the same time each day.
Think about predators - everything: rats, cats, dogs, hawks, mink, snakes, raccoons, foxes, bears, alligators, human thieves etc - depending on where you are. They taste like chicken. Can you predatorize the coop or will you accept a certain rate of loss (be aware that once they know the chickens are there, they’ll be back). And what are you going to do with injured, not dead chickens?
Our run has hardware netting on all sides including the top and under the dirt, and we let them out in the garden to live their best lives when we’re at home. So far this has kept predation down although we have had some curious cats.
Also if you have kids think about whether your chickens are livestock or pets. Ours are pets that lay eggs.
Yeah we have possums that we are slowly whittling down. Only other predators are swamp cats and stoats. The coop should be fully protected but I suppose we won’t know until we get them in.
We have dogs and they know the cows. Will be a bit difficult at the start but they will get used to them. They will know soon enough hopefully. I think dog will get used to them soon enough.