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

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

A good chicken house must have a roost for the chooks

Just like people chickens like to sleep at night. And just like people they have their favourite bed. Unlike people their bed allows them to sleep upright.

You see chickens sleep standing up. To do so they need to be able to stand on a perch, which is usually housed in the chicken house. Some people are unsure about why there are these horizontal bars in chook sheds, and that’s the explanation.

We’ve been asked how much space a chicken needs to roost on, and what size the perches should be.

Generally speaking your average backyard chook needs somewhere around 8 to 10 inches, say 200 to 250 centimetres, on which to roost. Ours have way more than this however if you look at them at night they are usually all snuggled up together, and one end of the perch is empty. So this distance of around 8 inches is ample.

If you have bantams for instance 5 or 6 inches is probably enough, but if you have some of the larger breeds including meat birds you would need to allow a little more.

What width perches are required? The chickens stand on the perch and so if it is a wide flat surface they cannot grip with their toes. Our perches would be slightly narrower than 2 inches wide, and our chooks seem quite happy with this.

It is important that the perch be lifted above the ground. It is not sufficient merely to lay rods on the ground. Chickens have probably have been bred, over many generations, from wild birds that would sleep in the branches of trees, and the instinct of perching above the ground is still strong. Chickens prefer to sleep above the ground, and although no one knows exactly how high, at least 12 to 18 inches would be the minimum at our guess.

It also important to remember that chickens will still poop whilst on their perch. So you’ll find that a pile of chicken droppings will build up directly underneath the perch. For this reason it is important to ensure that your perches are not placed directly above anything else such as food or water, otherwise these will become contaminated. Read the rest of this entry