Chicken people? Updated with egg pics #66!

[Simkie]

I think I’d like to have chickens. I’d like the eggs, and the bug eating and the little feathery dinosaurs. I’ve pursued the Backyard Chickens site and forum, but am pretty overwhelmed at just the depth and breadth of information there. I need a newbie to chickens primer–can anyone familiar with the site or other resources point me?

What I’m really curious about is:

Just how much work ARE they?

How many do you need for them to be a happy herd of chickens? (Can I have like … four?)

How much space do they need for their run?

I love the coop pictures on BYC, but they usually don’t come with actual plans. Are there plans online? Any resources on how best to position the coop?

I feel like kind of an idiot, because I know there are a ton of resources out there re: chickens, but I need “explain it to me like I’m five” guidance at this point and I’m just floundering.

OH, and just HOW LOUD are guinea hens? I would LOVE them for their tick eating trait, but I don’t want my neighbors to hate me.

[Ms_Red_Britches]

We have a small flock of 5, 4hens and a rooster, and get about a dozen eggs per week. Ours have a smallish coop that we purchased and Built a large run adjacent to it. Our crew isn’t a huge amount of work, filling their defer and waterer a couple of times a week and picking up eggs daily. Their coop is easy to clean…the floor pops out and poop is shoveled into a bucket.

Biggest thing to consider is protection from predators. We’ve lost more than a few girls to a fox.

Lots to consider. We have Marans and while they’re reliable layers, they’re not overly friendly. Not aggressive, just standoffish. We’ve had Buff orpingtons in the past and they’re my favorite. Good luck!!!

[stb]

I will be following this thread closely. My husband and I are interested in having chickens, but neither of us knows a thing about them.

[BeckyS]

Chickens are SUPER easy.

Purchase chicks. Four would be just fine. You don’t need a rooster. Keep them inside (if you live in a cold area) until they are fully feathered. Chick starter feed, water, and a heat lamp. Medium flake shavings–they will eat fine flake and die. Water and feed.

When fully feathered, bring them to an outside enclosed coop (or with outside enclosed run). Setup really doesn’t matter too much, they like a spot to roost (like a shelf) and will need spots to nest. We have two shelves and ten 3-gallon buckets along the wall, as nesting spots.

I like to wait until they are about three months old for free ranging. They will come back at night into their coop.

About four to five months, start feeding a layer feed. They will begin laying eggs soon. At first, really tiny ones, then they will increase in size/quantity. I like to have oyster shells available to cut down on egg eating. I do also like a flock block in the winter, helps them feel like they are still free ranging.

Love my chickens, they are so low maintenance.

[trubandloki]

Some states* have laws about how many chickens you are required to buy. Make sure whatever size coop you build is large enough for whatever number you buy plus the number you will buy because these are so much fun.

*Said by someone who lives in NY that has a law that you have to buy at least six chicks. I have no idea if any other state has a similar silly law.

[HPFarmette]

Love my chickens. Cannot let them free range, too many foxes. The three girls have a coop, about 6 by 6, and a yard attached about 6 by 10. I toss grass clumps into the yard for them to peck at, when grass is growing. Rake out the coop on weekends, daily layer pellets and water. Easy!

[HPFarmette]

@trubandloki

Some states* have laws about how many chickens you are required to buy. Make sure whatever size coop you build is large enough for whatever number you buy plus the number you will buy because these are so much fun.

*Said by someone who lives in NY that has a law that you have to buy at least six chicks. I have no idea if any other state has a similar silly law.

Yes, true in NY. To stop the “one chick as an Easter pet” (doomed to die) phenomenon that used to be. I support that law. If you go to a farmer that sells chickens, you can usually buy fewer than 6. The feed stores are more likely to require you to buy 6.

[trubandloki]

@HPFarmette

Yes, true in NY. To stop the “one chick as an Easter pet” (doomed to die) phenomenon that used to be. I support that law. If you go to a farmer that sells chickens, you can usually buy fewer than 6. The feed stores are more likely to require you to buy 6.

I get the purpose (and the logical part of my brain agrees with it totally) and right now it is working well for me. The part of me that wants more chickens does not like it.

I have four girls. My coop is not big enough for 10 girls, so all I can do is look at the adorable fuzz balls and wish for more.

[btswass]

We love our chickens! We have 8 hens and a rooster. We actually already had a “bird room” set up in one of our barns so can’t help you when it comes to coops. They require very minimal care. About as easy as a goldfish. Food and water and clean out the coop. They do need a place to roost and nest boxes as others have mentioned but you won’t have to worry about any of that for several months after you get them. We have all welsummers except one blue copper marans (she’s so pretty I named her Ophelia) and what we think is a road island red (she was free). Make sure to handle them a lot when they are young. We let ours start supervised free ranging pretty much right away (after week or two). Now they free range pretty much every day and we haven’t had any issues.

Until you are more experienced do not get Guinea hens. Unlike chickens they will not stay on your property, will fly up and roost in trees, and do not come back in the evening you have to herd them back. My DH has been seriously considering them because we’re supposed to have a terrible tick season this year and we’re in the hudson valley where lymes is quite prevalent but guinea hens will probably be too much to handle. We’re hoping the chickens do a decent enough job

[2DogsFarm]

As long as they don’t go crossing the road (see my current thread on Around the Farm), freeranging hens are hardly any work at all.

Even when on Lockdown - as my delinquent hens now are - all I do is refill feeder & waterbowl & scoop poop daily.
I use one of the scoops designed for litterboxes & compost the manure & shavings. Great for your garden when done!
Every Spring I completely sweep out the coop, put down Sevin & new shavings.
Put boards under the roosts & scooping manure is even easier.

My coop is a converted garden shed - tall enough for me to stand up in & probably 8’WX10’L.
Former owners kept chickens & turkeys so I benefited from their homemade chickenwire dividers & door to the fenced yard. Nestboxes are fruit crates - 2 for 6 hens, but there’s always a “Best” box & they all want that one.
I added a small screened window for ventilation (reinforced with hardware cloth on the outside) & ran electric for a light, heatlamp for the worst of Winter & a heated waterbowl

I had to refence the yard & made it smaller, but still at least 10X20,
When you fence be sure to bury about a foot of wire - facing out - so varmints cannot dig into the yard.
My yard is roofed with a grid of baling twine - forms a visual barrier so hawks won’t dive in & does not collapse under snowload.

I’ve kept as many as 7 - 6 hens, 1 rooster - & they had plenty room.
I think the Rule is 1 square foot per bird inside the coop.
I started with 5 9wk old pullets.
I added 2 day-old chicks a couple years later & added 2 2-3yo hens after losing the rooster & 2 hens to a passing fox.
They spent the first month in a 10gal aquarium in the coop, then in a sectioned-off part of the coop & at about 3 months they joined the Big Girls.
I probably wouldn’t bother with chicks again - too impatient to wait the 6mos until they start laying.
And one of them was the “Oops” rooster.
The odds of getting a decently-behaved rooster are too low to bother.
Unless you want to hatch your own chicks, don’t.

When my flock was down to one due to illness & predation, I got 6 young hens from an Amish farmer.
They were laying, but just started as they still had baby combs.
From my current 5 I get 3-4 eggs daily - oldest hen is now 6ish & has either stopped laying or does so infrequently.

They are very entertaining & a lot smarter than I imagined.
A lot of personality in 5# of feathers!

[TMares]

Buy a really good coop that is covered with hardware cloth, not chicken wire. That cheap crap is floss for raccoons.
Extend the wire from the bottom of the coop and bury it all the way around the exterior to eliminate coons from digging under the edges. We lost hens to weasels and coons, and baby chicks and eggs to snakes before we reinforced the coop adequately. Also, the hardware cloth means you aren’t feeding all the wild birds your chicken feed, too.

We have D’Uccles and Barred Rocks. Very good tempered birds and my Barred Rock rooster is a perfect gentleman. My D’Uccle rooster is not, but he’s so little I don’t much care. Both are excellent with their hens, though a rooster is not necessary, they will do a better job watching for raptors and other predators if you can tolerate the crowing. we have two coops to support the two ‘families’.

They all eat flock raiser. I have a good local source who raises them to about 3 months then I get some if I need/want more hens. Very easy to care for them, just know they poop everywhere (anyone who claims they can potty train one is pulling your leg ). I love my funny girls.

[Simkie]

Awesome, thanks for all the feedback!

What’s a typical day with chickens look like? How much time do you spend taking care of them on a day to day basis? Cleaning the coop is a daily thing, or not?

The Welsummers are very pretty! As are the Buff Orpingtons. Any other recommendations on breeds? Ideally “idiot proof”…healthy, friendly chickens.

It doesn’t look like there are any restrictions on # in CT, and my town allows chickens I’m not really sure where to build the coop, though. Thoughts on purchasing a coop vs building it?

@Ms Red Britches

We have a small flock of 5, 4hens and a rooster, and get about a dozen eggs per week. Ours have a smallish coop that we purchased and Built a large run adjacent to it. Our crew isn’t a huge amount of work, filling their defer and waterer a couple of times a week and picking up eggs daily. Their coop is easy to clean…the floor pops out and poop is shoveled into a bucket.

Would love to hear more about this floor that pops out!

[2DogsFarm]

Cleaning the coop - even in Winter when they stay in - takes me all of 10 minutes.
Spring Cleanup takes maybe an hour?

I have had:
*Delawares - nice friendly birds that lay big brown eggs
*Black Stars - sexlinked so you know you’re getting hens, not so friendly, but good layers of brown eggs
*Ameraucana Cross - no colored eggs from my mutt, but she is a dependable layer - more brown eggs
*Mutt hens - my current girls - mostly white w/some black so probably Barred Rock crosses, not overly friendly, but not shy either, good layers - brown eggs again
& 1 Houdan - goofy-looking B/W crested breed that is not known for friendliness, but she was my Pet - liked to be carried everywhere. Laid big white eggs so I always knew when she had “gifted” me. To her, eggs were a present, not an obligation

[BeckyS]

I have a black Australorp who is a capital B, a couple of Barred Rocks who are somewhat friendly, my Isa Browns are pretty sweet, the Buff Opringtons are nice enough, and Rhode Island Reds that really don’t want much to do with people.

All of them seem pretty healthy. I used to have Wyandottes, but they followed the neighbor’s rooster back to the neighbor’s house and haven’t come back. (We…uh…have an open relationship with them?)

[trubandloki]

Chicken upkeep is like horse upkeep. You can have a great set-up that takes almost no daily care and you can have a great set-up that takes lots of daily care.

We pick out the inside and outside area of our coop daily. Fill the feeder tube and water bottles (heated bowl in the winter). Winter also adds adjusting their heat system (two light bulbs in a CMU that radiates heat) depending on how cold it will be.
Chicken care is usually a five minute job at most. That includes raking their outside area sand smooth.

I believe our chickens are called Plymouth White Rocks. Extra large brown eggs.

[TMares]

Building them is easy so long as you plan out how you’ll attach the HW cloth. Ask me how I know…

[cloudyandcallie]

Guinea hens are just a little less noisy than are peacocks. My grandparents had guinea hens and my aunt and uncle had peacocks. Your neighbors will complain.

Hens, chickens, are great but everything wants to kill them from foxes to dogs to hawks, etc. So make sure you have a chicken yard with a top of wire and wire on the ground to keep animals from digging under the fencing. Hens are smart and great pets. I loved my bantams when I was a kid and I loved a nice little rhode island red at one barn. She was so smart and a pet, but the BO kept forgetting to put the hens up at night and the hen was murdered.

[dynamite0319]

My FAVORITE chicken coop are those sold by Omlet. https://www.omlet.us/ They aren’t cheap, but they generally don’t need any maintenance and are pretty easy to move around. Sometimes you can find them on Craigslist.

My husband and I have had chickens for about 9 years and have gone from our first group of 30 chicks to having about 90 hens now. We turned an old horse stall into the chicken coop, added a dog run to the outside for times they have be kept locked up and let them free range about 98% of the time (they do go in their coop at night). I would advise researching to know what predators will be an issue in your area and go from there to determine what coop to get. Also, if you leave your coop in one place they will destroy the grass in a matter of days.

As far as breeds go we have 25 Cuckoo Marans right now and they are some of the most docile chickens we have ever had. We also have Ameraucanas, White Leghorns, Black Australorps, Ancona, Buff Orpingtons and Blue Andalusians. We have also had Rhode Island Reds, Cochins and a variety of Wyandottes. If you live in a pretty cold climate you’ll want to avoid breeds with large combs as they may freeze off during exceptionally cold weather. If you live in a hot area then you want to get lighter (white egg laying) breeds as they do better in the heat. Of the breeds I listed above I don’t have a particular favorite, but the Marans are by far the friendliest right now! Chickens have a much harder time with heat than they do with cold, so keep that in mind when selecting breeds and housing.

For us a typical day is letting them out of their coop, throwing out some scratch and filling their feeder. At night we collect eggs and lock them up. Cleaning the pen happens pretty irregularly. We keep a rabbit hutch around (and call it the chicken infirmary) in the case of a sick or injured chicken. They are more likely to die from shock than the actual illness or injury so it is best to get them isolated and calm as quickly as possible.

[Simkie]

Winter care DEFINITELY kept me from trying chickens in MN–I think it will be much easier here in CT. We’re in planting zone 6, if that helps.

This thing is super interesting! You move it around to give them fresh grass in the run? How do you deal with electric to keep water from freezing in the winter?

I thought this coop looked pretty cool. If I build it in place, I definitely want a run that I can stand up in (for cleaning, it seems like having to stoop to clean the run would really be a hassle??) I like that the entire front opens up for cleaning. It seems to be a pretty neat set up. Feedback?

Has everyone had the electrician out to run power to the coop?

How about the footing in the run, if you don’t use a tractor and move it around all the time?

I do have an extra stall, but am reluctant to have the chickens living IN the barn.

We definitely have some predators here. I see a LOT of birds of prey. I hear from neighbors that we have fisher cats. I’ve heard coyotes singing. I haven’t seen evidence of anything more interesting than raccoons and fox from tracks, but we’ve certainly got a lot of wildlife.

Since I only want a few birds, it looks like ordering the super interesting breeds from the fancy hatcheries is out :lol: Here is the order sheet from my local feed store. Their selection doesn’t look terrible…any thoughts on those specific offerings?

This will likely be a next spring thing…we’ll get it all set up this summer and bring in the birds in a year

[ctmom]

You need 4 sqft per chicken inside the coop and 10 sqft per chicken for the run. We have a shed that we turned into the coop and built a run attached to it. We let them free range as much as possible but the predators are pretty bad around here…I’m in the same area of CT as you and we have lost birds to hawks, coyotes and foxes. As others said make sure you use hardware cloth rather then chicken wire, at least on the bottom three feet of the run and run the wire under the ground and out so nothing can dig through.

We have a heavy duty outdoor extension cord run out to the coop for electric. But for the water we just dump some hot water in to melt the frozen water and it works. There are heaters you can buy for the water but we use 5 gallon jugs with nipples on them to keep poop out, ducks can be pretty nasty (we have both).

I see the sheet you attached is from Danbury Agway. We have gotten a few chicks and ducklings from them and they are not very good at sexing them. All the ducks were males and 20% of the chicks were roosters. We never had a problem with sexing when we bought day old chicks through “my pet chicken”, but there is a minimum you need for them to ship.

Good luck!