Keeping chickens
Several of our friends have expressed an interest in keeping chickens and have asked us whether it is easy, so I thought I would post a few paragraphs here about chicken-keeping. Apparently keeping chickens in domestic gardens has become increasingly popular in recent years, and this isn’t surprising. It is so easy! We keep a few hens for their eggs but we have never killed and eaten one for meat. The children have given them names and they all have their little personalities so killing one would be unthinkable. Instead we keep them until they die, even if they haven’t laid an egg for over a year, and then bury them.
We bought a proprietary henhouse, although making one would be easy enough. The particular features of our henhouse that I would recommend are the external nestboxes with a hinged lid so that you can easily check for eggs without bending down and peering into the house, and the roof made of Onduline which is more hygienic than wood covered with roofing felt. It is handly to have handles so that the house can be moved around the garden or paddock, although wheels would be even better. Another useful feature is a slide-out floor which saves time when cleaning; we cover the floor of our henhouse with wood shavings that are cheap to buy in a big bale. Once a week we slide out the floor, carry it to the compost heap where we scrape the shavings off with a trowel, return the floor to the house and sprinkle a fresh layer of wood shavings onto it (about 2 inches / 5 cm deep). Easy!
In the nestboxes we put a layer of wood shavings (about 1 inch / 2½ cm deep) topped with a thick layer of straw that the hens shape into a cosy nest. Our hens have a feeder that dispenses layers’ pellets on demand (although they don’t eat many because they are out pecking and scratching on the grass most of the day) and two galvanized drinkers to provide water. Layers’ pellets are a pelleted feed that contains a complete balanced diet for a laying hen. Once a week when cleaning the house we also replenish the straw in the nestboxes if required, top up the feeder with layers’ pellets, and rinse out and refill the drinkers with clean water. The whole process takes about 15 minutes.
As a treat we give our chickens mixed corn. We were told by a poultry keeper that mixed corn is like chocolate and ice cream for the hens in that it has little nutritional value compared with layers’ pellets, but the hens love it. We sprinkle about half a jam-jar a day of mixed corn onto the grass for the hens to peck, and while sprinkling we call to them: “chick, chick, chick!”. Thus they quickly learn to associate this calling with their daily treat of corn which is extremely useful for recovering a chicken that has escaped into a neighbour’s garden. Escaped chickens are very hard to catch but a chicken trained in this way will immediately come running when called and follow you back home.
A healthy chicken will lay around 200 eggs per year, although this varies between different breeds. The hens usually produce one egg a day for months on end, regular as clockwork, and then inexplicably they will stop laying for a few months. Sometimes this decline or halting of egg production coincides with the onset of winter but it can happen at any time. Then, just as suddenly, the hen will resume her egg-a-day laying as if a switch has been flicked back on. We have very rarely known a hen to lay two eggs a day, and equally some hens become erratic and perhaps lay 2 or 3 eggs a week.
We keep about six hens which provides more eggs than our family requires, and we either give the surplus away or sell them to passers-by from an ‘honesty box’ dispenser on the fence of the paddock where the hens live. We do not have a cockerel and one isn’t required for egg production. Cockerels can appear to treat the hens quite brutally, and they certainly expect to exercise their conjugal rights several times a day!
All the books on domestic poultry-keeping recommend using six-foot high fencing to keep the chickens in and foxes out. Whilst this is undoubtedly good advice we have never done this. We have found that a four foot fence will keep the hens in and is much easier to erect by driving in 5½ foot fencing stakes. The birds can easily fly over a four foot fence but they do not wilfully try to escape if all their needs are met where they are. Our hens have lived for the last two years in a paddock surrounded by a four foot fence and they have never escaped. However they are fairly stupid creatures so if they fly up to perch on a gate or tree branch near the fence they may land on the wrong side of the gate or fence when they fly down again. Therefore we top our gates with loose chicken wire to deter them from perching on the top. A hen won’t fly up to perch on something unless it looks unobstructed.
At dusk the hens naturally walk into their house for the night without any encouragement, and we then shut the pop-hole to keep foxes out. In the morning at first light we open the pop-hole and they immediately come out to start the new day.
In conclusion, if you are thinking of keeping chickens I would urge you to go ahead and do it. Unlike bees (which I shall describe in another post and which are a different proposition altogether!) chickens take very little effort and provide great enjoyment, as well as lots of eggs.
