We did this too and its made life much easier. I actually have the most adorable picture of our dog surrounded by the chicks when they were maybe a month old. Once the rooster started adolescence he began to chase the dog (dog thought it was such a fun game!) but they have an understanding now and are totally cool with each other
my chickens are really free range so pretty much no work. They live in the horse barn as they are there to despook the babies. I bring them home, they live in a wire dog crate in the aisle for about a week then they are out. They roost in the rafters at night, they free range as they please during the day and come back on their own to the barn about an hour before it gets dark. They have a heated water bowl in the barn aisle and I feed them there twice a day when I grain the horses. In the summer they don’t eat much feed as they prefer to forage. Eggs are hit or miss this way though, sometimes I get lots, sometimes the dogs get them first and sometimes I get a mama with a batch of chicks.
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Before this year, I was able to get pullets that were beyond the “needy-chick” age. MUCH easier - no special care required. I think they were about 8 weeks old. I recommend that if you can find some that age. This time, I looked on Craigslist and found a breeder in Scituate, RI who is NPIP certified (poultryimprovement.org), which my previous hens’ sources were not. Probably a better idea to buy from someone who is that particular about his flock’s health. These girls are about 5 weeks old now, and still require a heat lamp. They’re in a large wire crate in my former sauna shed (yes, those pre-WWII chicken farmers knew how to live!) with the lamp on them.
Before I got my first hens and was debating whether to take the leap, like you are now, someone assured me they were less work than a cat. True! at least most of the time… my opinion changes on this point when it’s snowed enough to make me have to shovel! Also, there will come a time when the humane thing is to send them on to the Henhouse in the Sky. Good to either know how to do it and have the willpower to do it, or know someone who is capable. Layers don’t generally expect a nice long retirement after their laying days are done… as I understand it, they get internal issues then that affect quality of life & will kill them.
I used to let my girls free range, but before long they figured out where the neighbor who brought the bread crumbs came from, and made a beeline for his house. Once they trashed their newly planted flower beds, they wore out their welcome over there, so they now remain in their enclosure.
I’ve had “red sex linked”, aka golden comets or red stars, and they were wonderful layers with docile temperaments. Not the prettiest birds, but their production more than made up for it. Then I got NH Reds; prettier coloring, but nowhere near as good layers and rather skittish. This time, I made a point of going back to the golden comets, plus got a few black sex-linked, aka black stars, which the breeder says are almost as good layers as the goldens. We shall see… looking forward to not having to buy eggs!
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I started out with a small coop in an enclosed dog kennel run, then expanded to a shed and once got up to 23 chickens. They sure can decimate an area so runs do well if they have good drainage and you can rake them out.
I have only four old non-laying hens now and I have them in an Eglu by Omlet. It has an attached run and it’s movable. Mine really like their daily free range out and I close them in at night. They range in my back yard, protected by a fence.
If the weather is over freezing I can remove the dropping trays daily and change the shavings in the nesting compartment. It gets stinky and mucky if the weather prevents me from cleaning.
I started out with six chickens, then hatched 9 out from eggs. I them obtained hens from a friend who was moving and going to Canada and learned a BIG lesson.
Her hens were infected with a virus and my entire flock got it, some died, all are carriers and some show symptoms. I have to wait until all my current hens are dead and then wait a full season for the virus to be out of the area. Most folks cull birds with this virus but mine are pets so it’s been about six years with it on my land. My oldest hen, Mildred is 10 years old. Marguerite, Ethel and Vladimira Putinova (Poot) are six.
My Jack Russell needs a firm fence between him and the birds. He’s an unrepentant chicken killer. My little pug mix and Pekingese girls love the hens.
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I’ve only been a “chicken person” for about six months, but I’m definitely hooked!
Chickens are probably the lowest maintenance livestock there are. In the morning, I open the door from their coop into their run, check that their feeder and waterer are full, and listen to them chastise me about how tardy I am (at 5:45 am). In the evenings, I let them out of their run to free range while I do my other barn chores, periodically herding them back form forbidden zones, recheck their food and water, and collect eggs. I shake their scratch bucket (it only takes a handful or so) when I’m finished, and they come running/flying from wherever they are to get a treat while I lock them back into the run. After dark, I go out and close up the coop door. Once a week, I scoop manure off the board under their roost and fluff up the shavings in the floor of the coop. I use a mix of pelleted bedding (fluffed up to sawdust texture) and Sweet PDZ on the droppings board under the roosts and clean it using a metal cat litter scoop. Once a month or so, I strip the shavings out of the coop floor and add a new bag. That’s pretty much it.
I bought a pre-fab coop from Wayfair. I know the manufacturers of these things over estimate capacity, but I use the whole structure as a coop, making it plenty big for my purpose. It probably won’t have a long life, but I’m renting and not planning on living in my current house for more than another year or two, so that’s fine. I use electric poultry netting for my run fence. This means my birds are theoretically vulnerable to hawks, but that was a trade off I made for the affordability and adjustability of the electric fence, and it does a great job against ground predators.
I have five six month old pullets - four of them are laying now (one just started today) - and two more chicks I’ll be adding in a few weeks after they feather out. So far, I am not a fan of my Silver Laced Wyandotte. She’s beautiful but incredibly stupid and not at all friendly. My Easter Eggers are LOUD and love to chatter at me/follow me around. One of them started laying two weeks ago and has only missed two days; the other is still holding out on me. My Welsummer was the sweetest chick and loved to be cuddled; now she’s nearly as aggressive as a rooster and having many “attitude adjustments” weekly. My Speckled Sussex is gorgeous and very curious/friendly; I like her so much that I ordered another one this spring. The other new chick is a Buff Orpington. I have avoided the hatchery minimum orders by piggy backing on a coworker’s meat chick orders. You can place smaller orders through some hatcheries, though, like Meyer Hatchery (although you will pay more for shipping).
Welcome to the club! Chickens really are addictive.
I am also a newly converted chicken lover! I went to my feed guy one day in November and his chicken flock seemed to have tripled. He asked if I wanted any and after a short hesitation I said yes. I got 5 - 4 Red Stars and one Buff Orpington. They were last spring’s chicks and the reds had just started laying and the Buff hadn’t yet. She is now.
They live in my foaling stall - which I added wire on the openings. I had an old tack box that I converted to nest boxes/roosts And a roost bar that they do not use. They all lay in one nest box (they have 5), occasionally I will find an egg in one of the other places. They will argue over who gets to sit in it next.
I pick out the stall at least once a day and I let them out to roam around when I am doing chores. I don’t really want them in the barn all the time - too much poop! But come summer I will figure out how to let them outside during the day.
They will put themselves to bed when it gets dark. They also quickly figure out that you are the chuck wagon and will come when called (as in shaking a bag of treats!).
Mine love cabbage, peas, broccoli, mealworms and shredded cheese. They don’t like green beans. I find them soothingly funny to watch and listen to their little noises. They can also make a LOT of noise, but usually they just cluck and coo.
I like having 5 - I can keep track of who’s who, keep up with the poop and it’s plenty of eggs for me and some close friends.
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4 chickens would be fine, buy them sexed its worth the $1 more a chick. They are so easy to take care of.
OP, you’ve gotten some really helpful advice. I’d like to add a bit more about poultry husbandry.
Chickens are low maintenance, but that doesn’t mean no maintenance. When purchased as point of lay pullets (16 to 18 weeks of age), it is wise to buy from suppliers who vaccinate their stock against diseases such as Marek’s disease, and Newcastle disease, and have been tested for the presence of Salmonella. It is also very important to remember that chickens are affected by internal parasites, as well as external mites and lice.
Worming them with Flubenvet will cover all internal worms. Adding Diatomaceous Earth to their shavings bedding controls scaly leg mite, while acting as a desiccant for any unwanted moisture from droppings in the nest boxes and under perches. Red spider mite is a MAJOR problem for all poultry keepers. They are miserable litter critters that get into crevices, corners, cracks, and on the birds themselves at night when the birds go to roost. The birds must be treated as well as their huts. All bedding must be removed and burned and proprietary products must be applied to all surfaces. If this aspect of poultry keeping is ignored, the birds will become anaemic, unthrifty, and die.
I have not gone into the subject of incubators and raising chicks. I have never had (or wanted) that aspect of poultry keeping, simply because of my commitments to our horses, donkeys, pet sheep, and dogs.
It is not necessary to keep a cock bird with your girls, unless, of course, you plan to breed. Hens get along just fine without a male.
I have found that the problem of broodiness (where hens go off and sit their eggs for weeks on end, even in the absence of a male), tends to happen with purebred chickens. None of my hybrids have ever gone broody. Breaking broodiness is not difficult. I place a small wire dog crate (terrier size) in the hen house. I sit the crate on 4 bricks at each corner. I put a piece of small gauge wire in the bottom of the crate to make it more comfortable for the hens’ feet. The purpose of placing the cage on the 4 bricks is to allow air to circulate under the hen’s body, thus cooling her off. I place a water bowl and her food in the crate and within 3 or 4 days, she’s ready to come out and join her friends.
On the subject of housing, I have always used painted and insulated converted children’s playhouses (called Wendy Houses over here). I always have the houses sitting well off the ground (about 18 inches) on hand-made staddle stones or wood blocks. That way there is no place for vermin to congregate. Being raised off the ground is so much better for my back and facilitates the daily mucking out of the girls’ droppings (I use a cat litter rake). It also acts as a sheltered area for the birds. I place perches inside, and attach nesting boxes on one wall which opens to the interior of the house. I make a pop hole on another wall with a stair or a ramp leading into the hut. I have welded mesh wire over a couple of windows high up near the roof. 4 years ago, I had a huge pen erected. It is 32 feet by 13 feet with a peaked 10 feet high roof. The entire structure is covered in 3/4" welded mesh. We dug down almost 2 feet by 10 inches all the way around the base of the pen. We filled the resulting trench with concrete and then placed the pen on top. We’ve never had a rat, mouse, weasel, or stoat get into the pen. It was worth every hour of back-breaking labor. This pen is in a high, brick-sided crew yard, very protected from the wind. On the opposite wall of the yard, my handyman built another huge pen. We’ve got the girls in there right now, because all poultry in the UK and parts of Europe have to be kept under cover because of bird flu in the wild bird population. When I cover the first large pen with corrugated polycarbonate sheets, I will be getting a small flock of Copper Black Marans hens, layers of very dark brown eggs. I do not let my birds free range because of our fox population.
On the topic of chicken breeds and egg colours, I have never had more than 6 hens at any one time. One way of keeping tabs on the hens’ laying habits is to get several different breeds that lay different colours so that each egg you collect correlates to a specific hen. It’s always worked for me. I had 2 blue egg layers, but their eggs were a different texture, so I knew whose were whose.
I have found that my hybrids have been the most tame and approachable. Because they are bred to produce great numbers of eggs (well in excess of 640 eggs over 2+ years), their lives are not as long as the purebreds.
One last point: hens make a mess of their water containers, daily, and tend to waste huge amounts of their seeds and grains with traditional feed hoppers. I discovered very small-cupped drinkers that are screwed into the lower part of any container of one’s choice. I use 5 gallon BLACK plastic jerry cans which are placed 7 to 10 inches off the ground (depending on hen size). There’s a little, plastic tongue in the drinker cup which regulates the amount of water that fills the cup. I emphasize BLACK because it does not promote algae. Beware of white, light-coloured, or clear drinkers. They are major algae producers.
As for the feeders, there are no end of shapes and sizes. I found a very clever feeder I had to make, but it is the least wasteful I’ve ever used. Two round holes are made low in the side of a plastic container (I use white plastic round or squared 8+ gallon covered buckets). Into the holes I place 4 inch, thick, plastic 90 degree, plumbing elbows just high enough so that the elbow does not touch the bottom of the inside of the container. If done properly, the elbow fits tight enough so that glue or silicone is not needed to secure the elbow in place. I set the container on a large hollow tile, so that the opening is at the hens’ head height. The bird has to stick its head into the elbow to get to the seed. There is so little waste that a 20 kilo sack of poultry feed lasts me weeks instead of days.
I hope these little tips help the poultry-keeping newcomers with their feathered friends. Good luck!
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I was following this thread since I too would love chickens one day. But this link just made my day! I’ve been looking for the perfect outdoor hutch for my Guinea pigs to get some fresh air in (they still would come inside at night and when not supervised). Thanks dynamite!
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Loud. LOUD. L-O-U-D. Want me to record mine when I feed them in the morning? 
They are great for bugs, but dumb as rocks. And loud as all hell.
I love chickens, I haven’t had any for a while, but this thread has convinced me to get some again.
They are such charming creatures, I love to watch them root away in the manure pile and around the garden, and hardly mind when they dig up plants.
They are so much fun when you give them something interesting to eat, like strawberries or rice, or over ripe peaches.
Off to look at coop building plans.
Thought this deserved an update :lol:
My first post is SO FUNNY. FOUR CHICKENS?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
So. I went deep down the rabbit hole and googled and researched and read books and joined facebook groups and stalked backyard chickens. I’ve even purchased the APA Standards of Perfection book. :eek:
I ordered chicks from a breeder in December for March delivery and he flaked out on me, sad 
Looked around for what I wanted and had a bit of difficulty finding chicks, but hatching eggs were easier. Hmmm, I can do that. :yes:
So my 9 birchen marans eggs turned into three baby chickens, and the three crested cream legbar eggs the breeder included turned into one little chipmunk striped wee baby pullet. The 6 salmon favorelle eggs turned into three wee little yellow salmon favorelle chicks. And the 13 isbar eggs turned into a WHOPPING 11 baby isbars!
A breeder in Maine was hatching some crested cream legbars for me, but had a power outage and lost most of his hatch…so is sending me a dozen eggs instead. And I’m working on a dozen really impressively dark black copper marans. So I am basically insane.
But! Pictures! Of baby chickens!
Here is the birchen marans trio. The little black one here was the first to hatch and is now my best friend, LOVE. 
And the little cream legbar: [IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:"https://i.imgur.com/ZYLQr9w.jpg)
One of the favorelles (he is SUCH a loudmouth!) [IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:"https://i.imgur.com/AyVNfP8.jpg)
The whole crew today. Lots of isbars in there, but I haven’t gotten individual shots of them yet. [IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:"https://i.imgur.com/Fpp7LB7.jpg)
This little splash birchen marans is getting her feathers (hatched Wednesday) and it’s SO ADORABLE OMG. [IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:"https://i.imgur.com/gV7fo6z.jpg)
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Here, TSC and many feed and hardware stores sell chicken coops of all kinds.
There is a company on Craiglist that also sells those and will make any one someone wants:
https://amarillo.craigslist.org/grd/d/quick-sheds/6521705596.html
I expect you may find some in any of those places where you are, if you go checking around.
The portable chicken “tractors” are great, you can move them when you want and let them scratch around a new territory.
We used to get 30 chicks and by the time they were grown half were frier roosters.
The hens then went to laying and our local restaurant would buy all eggs we could sell them.
They used them for their pies, said they were the best for that.
We most had white leghorns, that were the best layer breed long ago and extremely quiet and friendly and had the least problems with aggression or cannibalism, even with their white feathers, that would show the odd spot here and there, that is one reason that starts them pecking on a hapless one.
If your chickens free range any, you will be surprised at all they will eat.
Anything that won’t run fast from them, snakes, baby birds, lizards, mice, all kinds of bugs are fair game.
We used to let them roam when we were close, but still the rare time one went missing and that was not acceptable, so we quit letting them out and ours didn’t seem to care at all.
Now gineas, the attrition is way to big, they just don’t last long if you have predators around.
They make a big racket, but I don’t think it is that loud anyone would object to them?
If you have any kind of traffic close, don’t get any, they get run over regularly, never become traffic smart.
I think that everyone should have chickens to enjoy at least once in their lives.
Give it a try, then you will have your own fun chicken stories.
Looks like you did good, what beautiful chicks those!
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Thanks for the update! I love baby chick season. I have four Easter Eggers and a Rhode Island Red occupying my dog’s crate in the living room right now. :lol:
You’re going to LOVE your Salmon Faverolles chicks! I have one who is almost a year old, and she’s a character. I will warn you, though, that they don’t get any quieter with age!
HAAAHAHA! Really? Oh boy :lol: :lol:
Here 
They’re growing SO fast. And their feathers are so cute, omg :lol:
Here’s the first one hatched, the black birchen marans. He’s my best bud.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/4kg0b8V.jpg)
And the light blue birchen marans. She’s really got a jump start on the wings.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/QGw7pdc.jpg)
Thank god the Isbars are clean shanked, otherwise I’d really struggle to tell them apart from the marans. This is the group of blues.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/dx90BMG.jpg)
And one of the black ones…
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/TQskQa0.jpg)
Another very sleepy little chicken. It’s hard being a chicken!
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/aqF3TxE.jpg)
I’m handling them a lot and hanging out with them, but most of them still think I’m terribly scary. Maybe I need to bribe them with mealworms? :lol:
I should have another dozen crested cream legbar eggs tomorrow and some dark dark dark black copper marans eggs on Thursday. SO excited about those. MOAR CHICKENS, yay!
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Oh goodness, they are like little poofs of preciousness. How do you know whether they’re he’s or she’s at this age?
[quote="![](arla 100,post:57,topic:428578"]
Oh goodness, they are like little poofs of preciousness. How do you know whether they’re he’s or she’s at this age?
[/quote]
Oh I’m mostly just guessing :lol: :lol: Although I will be SHOCKED if that one black chick is a girl. He’s cocky!
The little brown chick is 100% a girl, though–that breed comes out of the egg with different markings if it’s a boy.
Some breeds can be sexed by their feather growth–girls feather out faster. So if you have multiples, you can compare growth and make a call. So the black and darker blue marans chick would be boys, and the lighter blue one with the wings is a girl by that method.
You can also guess based on how they carry themselves. Boys stand more upright than the girls. You can see the difference in the big black marans chick and the light blue girlie.
The yellow ones will eventually feather out really different. Here’s a google pic of them all grown up. The dark feathering on the cockerels should start to become apparent in the next couple weeks. I think I might have two pullets and a boy out of the trio, which would be perfect. 
[IMG]https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8337/8197938344_c289012343_b.jpg)
The dozen crested cream legbar eggs (more like the little brown chipmunk stripe baby) came in today and are resting before going into the incubator tomorrow. The seller sent three olive eggers, too, so we’ll have some of those!
And a dozen black copper marans eggs from JG Marans come tomorrow and I am SUPER excited about those. Check out that egg color!!
Hatching eggs are risky and 50% hatch rate is considered good. Hopefully things go well!
Since you’re going to have way more chickens than you first imagined, do you have the coop/run for them all once they’re ready to go out? It will come up faster than you think, and homemade construction might take longer than you think, so I’d get on it if you’re not ready yet. You’ll also have to start thinking about what to do with the extra baby roosters you’ll inevitably end up with.
I got 5 chicks last spring to go with my lonely elderly hen. I’m averaging about 4 eggs per day now, and they build up fast! I give dozens away to friends and family, but still have a few dozen in the fridge at any time.
The first treat my baby chicks went nuts for was chopped up hard boiled eggs. Way cheaper than mealworms.
Thanks for the advice, but yes, we have the space. Extra cockerels will be sold, given away, or butchered.
Tried hard boiled eggs for the babies yesterday and they weren’t interested! Suspicious lot :lol:
