You’re all set up for your chickens but you don’t have any

We’ve talked at length about the benefits of keeping chickens. All of those wonderful free range eggs in the fridge, all the benefits of chicken fertiliser to the garden, how much the kids will love them and how interesting they are to have around the house.

So now you’re convinced. You’ve spent some time learning about chicken houses, you have sourced a good henhouse or built one yourself, you’ve fitted it out with roosts and nesting boxes and food and water and you’ve decided whether you’re going to allow your chickens to free range around the garden or range in their own chicken run.

You’re all ready to go. Now you need to get your first chickens, but where do you get them?

It’s much easier if you live in the country of course however even if you live in the city there are plenty of places where you can source chickens. And whether it’s the country or the city it’s always much harder to get good laying hens than it is to get roosters, in fact you can probably get a rooster or 10 for free.

It is entirely possible to buy day-old chicks. It is unlikely that you will get all females, and you will need to hand rear your chicks yourself. We have done that ourselves and it’s a lot of fun but it’s also quite a bit of work.

Or if you’re really serious about getting chicks you could even buy an incubator and hatch them yourself. There are companies which will send you an incubator together with fertile eggs and post all these to you so you don’t need to leave the house. We have also done that and I can tell you the kids take huge delight in watching the chicks hatch through the lid of the incubator.

Or else you can buy your hens as point of lay pullets, in other words hens that are almost ready to begin laying. Young hens begin to lay around 16 or 17 weeks.

If you get online you’ll find places where you can source all of these things. Alternatively try the Yellow Pages for some chicken clubs, called poultry clubs, give them a ring and they should be able to help out with some suggestions. And there are chickens shows where you can make some good contacts and learn much more about keeping chickens as well just by talking to the exhibitors. Read the rest of this entry

Some chickens and a good chicken house and you have the perfect pet for the children

If you’re looking for the ideal pet for the children, one that is both productive, easy to keep and cheap, consider chickens. A few chickens, a good chicken house and some enthusiastic children and you’ve got the perfect combination of happy children, cheap and easy pets and productivity.

Chickens are cheap to buy, cheap to feed and cheap to house. And, taken from my own experience, children absolutely love them.

We have somewhere around a dozen chickens. Some we raised ourselves so they cost us nothing, some we bought and some were given to us. If you take both the cost of the chicken house, which we made ourselves from scrap materials, as well as the cost of the birds, we got our entire flock and housing for well under $100.

And our children love them. They will happily pick them up and carry them around patting them, and would, if we allowed it, bring them into the house and turn them into house pets.

And all children should have a pet, it’s one of the rites of passage of being a child.

Of course you could buy them a dog, but dogs are quite expensive, both to buy and feed, and a big commitment as well. And what do you do with a dog when you go on holidays?

Or you could buy a cat, but a cat can also be quite expensive, and also a problem when you go on holidays.

In fact one of the biggest problems with having pets for the children is accommodating the pets when you’re not around. It can be seriously expensive to do so.

Chickens however are ideal. We can leave ours all alone for 2 weeks or more, with a large supply of food and water available, and they happily take care of themselves.

On top of all that chickens have one huge advantage over any other pet. They’re productive. I can’t think of another pet that produces a useful product for you, but chickens will do that. Every day you have a new supply of healthy, nutritious and tasty free range eggs for the family to feast on. What other pet does that?

So if you’re looking for the ideal pet for the children consider chickens. Buy a few chicks, build a chicken house and you’re well on your way to a cheap, simple and easy to care for pets of the children that is productive every single day.

You won’t regret it.

How to check your chickens and treat them for parasites

Keeping chickens is a lot of fun, but there is some work involved as well. One of the jobs involved in keeping chickens is checking for parasites and eliminating them as best you can.

Lice and mites are just two of the parasites that you may find on your chickens, there’s more. Generally speaking you will find these little critters on the skin of your chooks with a good inspection.

Not only will it be unpleasant for your birds to have parasites on them, it can make them sick and reduce their ability to lay eggs.

Of course this is just like all other pets, just about any pet can attract unwanted bugs. Just try keeping fleas off your dog.

Roughly once a month you should inspect your chickens. Spread the wings and look through the feathers underneath the wings checking for red and irritated skin, little clumps of eggs or even lice themselves. The lice are big enough to see.

And after checking underneath the wings look under the breast feathers as well.

If discovered you should treat your birds with a proprietary powder. However it is not sufficient just to treat the birds, you should also treat their chicken house as well.

The way I do that is to use a flea bomb that I get from the supermarket. It is one of those things intended to be let off in the house in a closed room to get rid of fleas that may be living there from your cat or dog.

I put a sheet over the ventilation areas of the chicken house, close off the entrance so that the chickens cannot get in, let off the bomb in the morning and keep the house locked up all day. Works a treat.

This won’t kill all of the nasty bugs, but will kill many of them, and will keep their numbers down until next time.

Here’s a short video showing you how to inspect your chickens.

 

And here’s a little more reading.

 

 

How do you raise chickens to be the perfect pet?

We’ve spoken on our website before about keeping chickens as pets. Normally people would keep chickens because they are productive and useful to have around. But today we wanted to look specifically at how to make sure your chickens are a good pet, particularly for the children.

There’s no doubt children love pets. Ours adore their chickens along with our other pets. However there is nothing quite like having a pet that will sit on your lap and curl up at night with you to sleep on your lap.

Now you can’t really get chickens to do that can you?

Yes you can. It’s not easy and you can’t do it with all chickens but its perfectly possible to get chickens which are as good a pet as a rabbit or a guinea pig and which will happily sleep on your child’s lap in the evening.

Here’s how you do it.

You need to start with young chicks. Preferably day-old chicks. You will need to provide housing for them with warmth and feed, so you will need to research a little about raising chicks.

It’s not hard, we do it all the time, with a simple box in the laundry with a light bulb suspended above the chicks for warmth. You start with a 100 watt bulb for maximum warmth then gradually replace those lightbulbs with bulbs of a smaller wattage as the chicks get older.

That will not, of it’s own, produce chickens that will be the perfect pet for children. What you need to do is to spend time every day with the chick, treating it as your pet.

We did this very successfully with a silky bantam hen which we raised from hatching in an incubator which we borrowed. Every day from day one my 9-year-old daughter took that chick from its box, kept it on her lap whilst sitting on the couch and patted it.

Once it was older it was completely tame and would run up to her and stand on her shoes whenever it saw her. It was happy to be picked up and cuddled and if you sat down it would snuggle in your lap. Read the rest of this entry