To have chickens?

[Oldinjuryhelp111037]

We are moving into an old farm house and will have a lot of space. Dh wants chickens. I'm up for that, except, I know nothing about chickens. I have started researching. But before I get in too deep. Is it extremely hard work?

He wants them as he wants the eggs for work as we use a lot!

Can anyone advise if this is worth pursuing? Or is it a thing that's only worth doing if you enjoy chickens, iyswim.

Chickens are fairly easy to keep. We had 11 at the most and 5 at the fewest. They had a chicken house inside a large run. If you keep them in a run they will soon eat all the grass and will be on bare mud, so I would suggest a smaller run than we had and then you could move it to a new patch every so often, you could also leave the run gate open during the day and they can mooch around your garden.
If you get hybrid chickens they will hopefully lay all year round. I had 'pedigree' breeds and they did not lay from November to march.
Chickens are nice, if you get them tame, they will follow you about and make lovely chirruping noises 🥰
Bear in mind that when you go away you will need to get someone to come every day to check they have water and geed and to collect the eggs.
You will obviously only get chicks if you have a cockerel and they are noisy!
Good luck 🐓

Chickens are great. But you have to make sure that wherever they are shut up at night is fox-proof. Also chicken runs are notorious for attracting rats so you need to make sure that any feed, etc, is stored in metal rat-proof bins or similar.

As above but they also go off the lay and your egg supply will stop or you’ll get less. This happens about twice a year. Also need to look out for red mites and keep the coop clean. Hens are very low maintenance and a joy.

Oh golly, yes, go for it! There is a lot of information online, but a very trustworthy source is the British Hen Welfare Trust. https://www.bhwt.org.uk/hen-adoption/

They obviously slant towards rehoming hens, which I'm not against in any way, but for someone new at keeping chickens, they can be tricky. They're often in poor condition and need TLC to recover from previous living conditions, are in the middle of a moult so can be very bare of feathers, need help understanding how to sleep in a coop and scratch around out of doors. Very rewarding, but can be challenging.

Chickens come in all sorts of breeds, so if you want to explore the option of getting Point of Lay hens (POLs or pullets), you can find lots of different kinds and colours. Some lay blue eggs, white, olive, dark brown, light brown, etc. We have standard browns,

The rule of thumb for space is giving them at least 2m squared per bird, and 1 nesting box between 4 birds max. But if you can let them free range, all the better. We have an 8m x 2m run and a 5m x 1m coop, and only 2 birds at the moment - planning to expand the flock to 6 birds in the spring. We have some more gardening to do before we're happy with expanding the flock, to ensure they have plenty of outdoor space but that it's contained away from the main parts of the garden. We're lucky to have a larger than average garden so they can still free range even when cordoned off from the veg beds and lawn.

The run has hard woodchip floor, and the coop has a straw and sharp builders sand floor. They roost overnight in a very specific spot so I have a litter box underneath to make cleanup really easy. A specific compost bin for their waste so it breaks down properly before being added into the other garden compost.

They get layer's pellets and as many bugs as they can dig up each day. Happy to answer more questions! I love these feathered friends.

Amazing. Thank you everyone!

Also, dh wants to get one rooster... but how will we know eggs are fertilised and not touch them of we do get a rooster?

Also yes I was looking at hybrids. Maybe hi-oak brown?

If you have a rooster the eggs will absolutely be fertilised, but this isn't an issue if you are collecting eggs daily. If you get them into a routine and don't let them out until late morning so they all have a chance to lay in a nesting box, you won't have any issues with 'missing' eggs. And that breed doesn't tend to go broody, so you shouldn't have any hens wanting to hatch a clutch of eggs.

I'm not a fan of hatching eggs, you will always end up with too many roosters, and the amount of roos that get dumped on grass verges and random fields is terrible. These are animals that have been domesticated by humans, they can't be rewilded or anything.

Ah ok so this might be a silly question. Can the fertilised ones still be eaten.... if they have been collected straight after laying?

Yes no problems at all. Occasionally people have noticed fertilised eggs in store-bought cartons, a rooster ended up slipping through the cracks in a free range commercial flock. It's fine.

You will need at least 8 hens for a rooster though, so he doesn't over-mate them.

Thank you @KeepinOn appreciate the help!

Happy to help! 🐔

We kept hens for over 10 years and loved having them. We now live in a more built up area so no longer possible to have them.

We had a combination of rescue hens and pedigrees. All hens lay eggs throughout their first winter but after that will stop laying when it’s cold. Therefore, most owners buy a couple of young hens each autumn.

In their second year, hens lay 75% of a first year number of eggs, then 75% of that in their third year and so on. Therefore, older hens lay fewer eggs but of course are still lovely pets.

After losing all our hens when their run door was left open by our holiday help, we kept the hens in an entirely fox-proof run that could be moved easily to provide fresh grass and keep their run clean.

They are very easy to look after. Fed twice a day on layers’ pellets and fresh vegetables, with lots of clean water. I let them out into our garden frequently where they gobble up slugs and snails, but it’s important to have them back in their run by late afternoon.

In the winter I made them porridge with honey each morning!

No rooster as I didn’t want fertilised eggs and wake everyone up early.

Just a joy in every way.

Hens are brilliant to keep, and not that much work, but bear in mind a few things:

1. You will never in a million years save money on eggs, even compared with buying the fanciest Waitrose organic or whatever ones. This is because of Chicken Maths
2. Chicken Maths is when you justify the snowballing of your chicken keeping hobby, because you have become addicted. Chicken Maths never adds up
3. It's true what a pp said about rats, but a farm cat or two will take care of them - I've kept chickens for years and never seen a rat, except in the maws of my cats
4. I personally think chickens need tons more space than is typically suggested - they will roam a long way every day if given the chance, so I think to be truly happy they need a LOT of room. This also works out cheaper, as they prefer to forage than to eat feed, when given the option. When I let mine out in the morning, I put food down for them, but most of them run straight off into the garden. Only the hen who loves sunflower seeds stays behind, to pick them out of the feed before heading off to forage.

For what it's worth, I have kept chickens in the UK where I let them freely roam over the farmyard in the daytime, without any fencing. They came back every evening and I shut them away securely.

I live in Portugal now and tried this, but had to opt for fencing them in sadly, as there are a lot of dogs roaming around the countryside here, and I learned the hard way that they'll come into a garden and kill chickens for fun. They still have over an acre though, with lots of trees and shrubs.

If you have a cockerel the eggs will be fertilised, but they're fine to eat. The eggs only start to develop once a hen goes broody and sits on them continuously. Then you get delightful chicks, and the snowballing begins...

Edited to add: you don't have to obsessively collect eggs as soon as they're laid, once a day is fine, even if a hen is sitting on them all day.

@TheLeadbetterLife thank you very much

Wr have a couple of acres so space won't be an issue.

It's more the cleaning out I'm concerned about!

I’ve never heard this ? I have bantams and always have a cockerel with two or three hens.

Ah cleaning is pretty easy in my setup. I have sharp builders sand on the floor of the coop, and a cat litter tray of it under their overnight perch, where they poo the most. It's just a quick sift with a cat litter scoop every couple of days, dumped straight into my specific compost bin (takes a long while to break down enough to be useable in the garden, so they have their own compost bin). Straw scattered about, especially where they lay, job done. Their run is earth covered in hard woodchip, I will rake it over once a week or so, and with them free ranging most of the day, they really aren't smelly or difficult to keep clean. Easy.

It's been the advice I've read but it might be for bigger birds to be fair. I live too close to my neighbours for cockerels. :)

I am known amongst our neighbours as chicken lady because I tend to walk around the garden with a flock of hens following me. They become very tame. At present we can’t open a door without one shooting in to see me. You can’t have a BBQ without the buggers being put away either, they’re massive beggars, I do enjoy them though.

They are highly addictive. I have rescues mainly but have got a couple of pedigree bantams now. Honestly? The pedigrees are far more highly strung than the rescues; keep going broody and although very pretty they're a bit thick.

They do all follow me around the garden and chat to me. They are real characters and absolutely chicken maths!

I don't bother with pedigrees, in any animals. It's just a fancy way of saying inbred, and they're always idiots, whether dogs or chickens.

Chickens need a secure coop, clean water, balanced feed, and protection from predators. Daily care is essential, but once you get into the rhythm, it’s not overwhelming for most people. If you're not sure whether chickens are for you long-term, you could start with a small flock to see how it fits into your routine. Fresh eggs are definitely one of the best perks of keeping chickens, especially if you go the route of raising them on pasture, which can improve the quality of their eggs. You can also sell wholesale pasture raised eggs in the market for some extra income.

You have to consider them pets with benefits.
If you're getting them purely for the eggs there's no point, as pp have said it won't be cheaper and there will be times if they are moulting etc that they don't lay.
So when you say you use a lot for work... Are you in catering because you'd need a helluva flock to supply a catering business. 😳
They will be the best eggs you've ever eaten though.

Pp have given good advice.

They are animals you'll need to care for so it's a tying responsibility like any pet, but very low key one minute to the next, you can go out for the day and not worry unlike a separation anxiety dog for instance... But you still need to keep them healthy clean and fed and have care plans for holidays.
The worst thing about hens is if you get red mite though, good that's bloody awful and nigh on impossible to truly get rid of.

The sell pasture raised eggs isn't the same in the UK as the link given above.
You can sell your eggs but unless you have a large flock it would only be pocket money scale.
You should also be aware of bird flu rules, when that is going about you have to be able to keep your chickens contained so you'd need a decent run for those occasions even if they normally roam free.