Just casually came across this. We are getting chickens next week. Never had them before. So anything I should know going in ?
Congratulations! Chickens are awesome and more people should keep them.
I have answered this question a few times in the past over at the place with the subs. Bellow is a pretty long wall of text, of what I can remember, in a somewhat prioritized order.
- Chicken math! Always build for twice the bird you’re planning on getting.
- Find a reliable source of bird health info before it’s needed. Vetting something you’ve googled, while in a bit of a panic, and your bird is suffering, sucks.
- Have a plan for treating an injured bird. Most vets won’t treat a chicken, so treating may include culling. Figure out how you will be doing that, and have your method of choice ready. Personally we will hold the chicken with the non-dominant arm and whack it in the back of the head with a piece of steel pipe, before applying a designated, and very sharp, ax to the neck.
- You may be planning on feeding your birds kitchen scrap. At least we were. But scraps will seldom be enough feed, and it will never be the right composition of nutrients. So shop around for feed. There may be a difference in quality, quantity and price. Quality is hard to evaluate, but euros/kg is easy and so is the desired quantity. Shopping around meant that we shaved 6% of the feed cost, 15km off of the round trip, and got the feed in 15kg bags, which fit our 15kg feeder, compared to the 20kg bags we used to buy which didn’t fit and then had to be stored open.
- By now you should have the coop ready, but how about feed storage? It needs to be stored dry and preferably close to where it’s needed.
- Do you have a source of bedding material? If not, then the same thing applies as for feed vis-a-vis both acquisition and storage.
- In my hemisphere winter is coming presently, and thus darkness. Darkness means fewer eggs. We counter this by having battery powered christmas lights (white LEDs that doesn’t blink, they’re not party birds) strung around inside the coop.
- Speaking of winter, it appears that chickens can’t drink solid water - if that’s a possibility where you’re at, then plan ahead. We have dug a hole in the run, where we put a long burning grave candle with an old pot on top. That way the water doesn’t freeze over and also doesn’t heat up to unsanitary temperatures.
They shit. A lot.
Like… a lot a lot
Another benefit of raising chickens besides tick control - super great garden fertilizer.
Truth. I’m getting my compost bins hot hot HOT
Good to know. It’s pretty good as manure?
Not only is it pretty good as manure, it is manure
I knew after I’d finished writing it. It is what it is. But it’s good for garden. Hopefully plants like it.
We are only getting 4 to start with. See how we go.
Think about predators - everything: rats, cats, dogs, hawks, mink, snakes, raccoons, foxes, bears, alligators, human thieves etc - depending on where you are. They taste like chicken. Can you predatorize the coop or will you accept a certain rate of loss (be aware that once they know the chickens are there, they’ll be back). And what are you going to do with injured, not dead chickens?
Our run has hardware netting on all sides including the top and under the dirt, and we let them out in the garden to live their best lives when we’re at home. So far this has kept predation down although we have had some curious cats.
Also if you have kids think about whether your chickens are livestock or pets. Ours are pets that lay eggs.