Clucking good! (Chickens)

Member Name: alysonfreeman

Product:	Chickens
Date:	25/08/01 (779 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Endless entertainment, Your own free range eggs

Disadvantages: Someone has to get up to let them out!

They say that laughing is good for you – and if you keep chickens you’ll often chuckle at their antics (and shed some tears, too).

We have kept chickens for 5 years now. I am very lucky and live in the country, with a large garden. The previous owners left us a hen house, and it seemed natural to think about getting some hens for ourselves. They had kept theirs in the orchard, with a high chain-link fence all around – just like Chicken Run! There was no grass left, just dusty soil, and it was all rather miserable to look at.

I had romantic ideas about giving my chickens a good life, running free. We were warned about foxes, but didn’t think it would ever happen to us….

Anyway, we started off with half a dozen chickens in an enclosed part of the garden. They were ordinary brown ones, and seemed happy enough scratching around in the grass. We read up on their needs, and bought corn and layers’ pellets for them to eat. They love greens of all sorts, and we would go to the veg market at the end of the day and take away some of the reject green stuff – chickens don’t care if the cabbage is a bit limp! Then I tried to grow some greens for them, but they will eat infinite quantities, so now it’s a special treat! Incidentally, chickens really do love that pesky weed called “chickweed” – better than chucking it on the compost heap.

LOOKING AFTER CHICKENS

Chickens wake up as soon as it’s daylight. If you keep a cockerel, he will start to crow. Watch out for the neighbours! We bought a bantam cockerel with two wives. He was absolutely tiny, with a tuft of feathers on his head, a handsome tail and huge feathery trousers. He would puff out his chest, stretch his neck, and out would come this pathetic little cock-a doodle-doo – so much effort for such a little noise! Anyway, he wasn’t going to disturb anybody.

It’s good practice to
shut up chickens in their house at night, because of the risk from predators – mostly foxes. So the first thing you have to do in the mornings is let them out. Hens are so silly that they think they can all get through one tiny pophole at once, and they often get stuck in the entrance, all flapping and squawking, until one finally bursts free and they all come tumbling out.

My chickens have a de luxe residence with nesting boxes attached, all nicely lined with straw. However, they know better, and as soon as they come out they rush off to the goose’s shed (yes, we have a geriatric goose as well) and queue up at the door for me to open it and let them in to lay their eggs. They all lay in the same place, on top of a bale of straw. (The goose is rather taken aback by this behaviour, and takes herself out of the way as soon as possible!)

For breakfast, the birds get a mixture of corn and layers’ pellets, which we buy in big sacks from the local pet supplies shop. It’s not expensive, and they only get about 3 handfuls a day between seven chickens, the goose, lots of pigeons and sparrows and the occasional rat. The rest of the day, they forage in the paddock, which is fairly large and L-shaped, with trees at the top end so they can get some shade in summer.

Much as I would like them to be, chickens are NOT vegetarians – they will eat almost anything. If an egg gets broken, it will swiftly be cleared up – cannibals! One of the funniest things I have seen is two chickens both spotting the same worm. With a firm grip on each end of the worm, the chickens haul away, with expressions of grim determination on their beaky faces. Meanwhile, the poor worm is being stretched out, until the inevitable happens – the worm snaps back like elastic into one of the chicken’s faces, while the other sits down suddenly. The battle doesn’t end there, though – they will snatch the worm from each other and
rush off with it dangling triumphantly from their beak, only to have it worm-napped by another passing chicken. This can go on for some time! I must admit to occasionally tossing them a worm just to see the action – sorry!

The poultry will polish off any leftover vegetables, salad, bread, cake – almost anything (I wouldn’t give them meat, though). Some people save all their table leavings for the chickens.

They have to have plenty of water, especially when it’s hot – two bucketsful a day. They are supposed to need grit, too, to keep the eggshells hard, but our soil is very stony, so we don’t always bother.

PROBLEMS

Chickens are really very little trouble – you just have to remember to let them out in the morning and shut them up at night. They keep themselves free of pests by having dustbaths. Unfortunately, this means that our paddock is covered in bowl-shaped holes that the chickens like to sit in – dangerous after dark! If you buy them from a registered breeder, they often come inoculated against the major chicken diseases.

Sometimes a chicken will die for no apparent reason. This is sad, but happens from time to time. They can live for many years, but will lay fewer eggs as time goes on. We have 7 chickens of varying ages, and get 4 eggs most days – enough for anyone, I should think!

The worst thing that has happened to us was the day the fox came. It was broad daylight, and we came home from work to see a few chickens running about in the garden. When we took them back to the paddock, it became plain that something was very wrong. The bantams were sitting on top of the wire fence (yes, they can fly if necessary) and several chickens were lying down. In all, we found 8 dead or dying birds, mostly bitten through the neck. It was a numbing experience to walk round with a bin bag collecting up the bodies of my feathered friends. Only the few that we have now
escaped, by getting out the paddock – good for them! It might be possible to build a fence high enough and secure enough to keep foxes out, but I think the chickens are happier having a really large space to run around in, even if they are a little bit at risk. Hey, life’s a risk! (and no, I’m not in favour of foxhunting).

Sometimes a hen will go broody, and want to sit on eggs all day. You are supposed to isolate the hen until she changes her behaviour, but I find that if you just keep on taking away any eggs as soon as they are laid, she soon gives up. We haven’t had any baby chicks yet, as the cockerel died not long after the fox incident, but that’s something I would like to try in the future.

Lots of people keep chickens in much smaller spaces than us, although I believe they do tend to eat all your plants if you let them loose in the garden! There are quite a few books available on poultry keeping (get them from the local library), but really it’s just common sense. If you fancy it, have a go!

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