Chicken chat

[chickenwings2]

Has anyone got any advice or experience regarding owning chickens?

Really want to do it but worried mainly about attracting rats/pests

There's a whole topic called chicken keepers- there might be handy info there?

I've got 4 rescue chickens on my allotment. Love them! They're easy enough to look after and so funny to watch. I'm thinking of getting some less hardy chickens to keep in the garden as well. Make sure you make your run and coop totally fox proof! We did this by getting a cosy pet walk-in run and covering it with 16g welded mesh, we also slabbed around the outside. We have foxes everywhere at the allotment, and they've never got in!

We’ve got 3 ex battery hens. They’re fab and I love nothing more to see them happily pottering around the garden. They’re our tiny little dinosaurs 🐔🐓

I had three at one time. I only have a small garden. I had some daft idea of it being like The Good Life or something.

Never again. They completely wrecked the garden. If they didn’t eat it, they scratched it up. My lawn was just mud in the end. I was super careful about leaving food around and everything was cleaned up and removed as soon as they went to bed. I saw a couple of mice and wasn’t too concerned but when I spotted a rat I knew they had to go and I rehomed them.

I would never get any more and nor would I live next door to anyone who has them because they do attract vermin however careful you are. My friend bought a house where the previous owners had had chickens in the back garden and said that they found lots of holes and rat runs under the grass.

I have pekin bantams which are small chickens with feathery wee feet. They're very friendly and they don't dig up the garden because of the feathery feet. I love them!

I do think it all depends on the size of your garden and where you could put them.

If you live rurally and/or have a massive garden where you’ve room to section them off away from the house it would be better. Likewise an allotment where they’re not even near your house. But if you’ve a normal urban garden with neighbours in close proximity I wouldn’t consider it.

Another thing to consider is that unless you get an automated door opener for the coop, you have to let them out and lock them up. Once they’ve gone to bed you have to clear up their mess (they shit everywhere) and make sure food and water is away. As soon as it starts getting light, so 4-5am in the summer, they’ll start chattering wanting to be out.

Personally though, I’d say it was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. Yes, the birds themselves were lovely but they completely destroyed my garden as well as being messy and quite the commitment really. I absolutely would not buy a house next door to anyone keeping chickens. I looked at a house a couple of years back and one of the plus points on the estate agent’s details was that there was a chicken coop. I told them that as far as I was concerned, that put me off!