Wannabe chicken keepers

[chickenwings2]

Hi I would love to raise chickens please can anyone give me the realities of this chicken dream 🐓

Do it! I have 8 now. Should have 9 but lost 1, not sure why, a couple do months before she was due to start laying.

But having fresh eggs is brilliant, and they are the funniest creatures!

I currently have 4, and they are just fabulous animals. But they are highly social, ideally want a very big area to be in, will eat all your plants (a small price imo for their happy bocking around the garden), and foxes are everywhere and will kill them for fun.
Mine are sunbathing at the moment, all puffed up and happy while senior chicken keeps watch

Well, like many small pets, they die at the drop of a hat so prepare
for heartbreak. Apart from that, they are lovely to have around :)

They need a very secure night time coop with a roost and enough room for each to spread her wings, and a bigger daytime area to scratch around in that is reasonably safe from dogs, cats, and foxes.

They need to be wormed regularly and monitored for mites and salpingitis - there are lots of internet resouces to help with these.

You must always have at least 2 (which practically speaking means 3, see my first point), and should always introduce new hens to each other in groups of at least 2.

They will dig up all your vegies in a morning if given the chance :)

They make quite a mess and smell. We have ours in a big enclosed area of our garden but I wouldn't want them free ranging because of the mess. We also have ducks that we hatched ourselves in an incubator, that was fun and can be done with chicken eggs if you're tempted to raise them from scratch! But ducks make even more mess.. both are lovely to watch though and fresh eggs are great.

If you are preparing to hatch yourself have a plan for the boys.....

I have been considering chickens for a few years but have been deterred due to the "flockdowns" as I don't think I can commit a large enough space for an enclosure if they have to stay in it 24/7 for months at a time. Hopefully one day we'll have a bigger garden & can do it!
I've learnt loads from the Fresh Start for Hens Facebook group (FSFH rehome exbattery / commercial hens, but the FB group has loads of chicken keeping discussion and info).

I love having chickens! They’re full of personality. They do poo a lot so be prepared for that.

I've been keeping chickens for over 10 years now and they're fairly low maintenance once you have bought the big items like the housing. Our have a run when we're in flockdown and a recycled rubber ark type coop. Consider getting something decent like an Omlet Cube or a Solway Ark. Avoid wood as it's hard to clean and if you get mites it's almost impossible to get rid of them. You can pick them up secondhand and they do keep their value if you want to sell them on.

Chickens need worming once a year and checking for mites and obviously cleaning out but other than that, they do their own thing and you get fresh eggs each day which are much nicer than shop bought.

I've had to fence off any flowers and veg as they'll eat the lot if they could and the grass gets pooped on (although I don't mind this as chicken manure is great as a fertiliser - when they're cleaned out it goes on the compost).

They can be noisy when laying an egg so if you don't get on with your neighbours it could potentially cause a problem. We give ours a box of eggs each week to thank them for putting up with the noise - we are semi rural now which makes things easier but I have had them on a housing estate too.

I've always had a cockeral. He keeps the girls in line and stops infighting. I realise most people do not have a boy though for obvious reasons - the noise!

HTH

Have you bought Chicken Boy by Arthur Parkinson (I think that's his name). It's wonderful. It will give you some good information and make you want them more.

Like pp, we have Solway recycling coops. We have an omlet and a green frog too but the chickens all squeeze themselves into our Solway recycling ones! They definitely seem to prefer them and they are easy to maintain too. We have automatic doors but you can’t 100% rely on them opening and closing as issues do happen but it does mean you don’t have to get up at 7am at the weekend to let them out.

I know this sounds daft but the Haynes chicken manual (really) https://haynes.com/en-gb/chicken-manual
has everything practical you need to know about chickens from beginning to end . However there are day chicken keeping courses around and if you've never kept I would consider going on one as there are very few vets who will see chickens (they are considered exotic pets) and when the end comes I think it is kinder to do the deed at home rather than stress them out taking them to a vets .

I would put in a plea for ex battery hens , they will probably only live a year or two but to see bald, pale ,skinny egg machines become healthy , glossy chickens who somehow know what a chicken should do is miraculous and goes a tiny way to rebalance the appalling things we do to chickens.