Chickens: The Back Story

I’m not quite sure when we decided to get chickens exactly.  Chickens are kind of a gateway livestock.  We had decided the first year we had our land that we would get chickens.  It seemed like an easy way to start out.  I’ll detail on the goat page how it didn’t quite work out that way.   We had originally decided on just a few.  We were going for moderation.

I started researching chicken breeds using http://www.backyardchickens.com/ and Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens. The Storey’s Guide is definitely aimed at full commercial production, but it covers all topics with a pretty no nonsense approach.  If you can do math along the lines of, ‘if I need X for 100 chickens, I probably need some random thing that’s kind of like X for 6 chickens’ then you are set.  Because we were wanting to purchase less than a dozen and I had learned that most hatcheries prefer to ship no less than a dozen I started asking around about where to buy chicks locally.  I quickly called the nearest farm store and asked if they would get in the breed I wanted, specifically, the Ameracana, and they said they would and told me approximately when.  The Ameracana is a breed that lays eggs in shades of blues and greens.  I started counting the days until they would get the chicks in, even calling as the time approached to see if they had more specific dates yet.  I was excited!

As soon as they said they had the chicks I rushed to the feed store to check them out.  Greeted by a big metal trough of cheeping, sleepy little chicks I was disappointed to see they didn’t have the Ameracana’s just yet.  I ran outside and called Bengt, who was out of state with work, to get his thoughts and managed to convince him that we should get a dozen and we could slaughter some for meat.  He didn’t need too much convincing hearing the excitement in my voice.  I think I also used the fact that I’d been advised to expect a small rate of loss in the chicks.  I raced back in and picked out two of each breed that they had: Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red, and Barred Plymouth Rock.  They were “sexed” birds meaning the hatchery had attempted to only send pullets, or female chickens.  The feed store put them in to a large cardboard box for me and I picked up a small plastic feeder, waterer, and a heat lamp for them.  The whole thing probably set me back less than $40 considering the chicks only run around $1.50 each.  I drove home giddy, listening to the cheep, cheep in the back of the car.  I had read enough to know that they’d need to stay in a brooder box for the first few months to keep them warm and out of harm’s way, so they went straight in to the guest bathroom away from the cats in the cardboard box that they came in.  The cardboard would do just fine for the first while until we could fashion something else.

The next week we were at the feed store again (it’s also where we get our pet supplies) and
they had Ameracana’s!  Since we had decided on around a dozen I picked up three Ameracana’s and two each of the Black Sex-Link and Gold Sex-Link.  Sex-links get their name because they are specific hybrids.  They exhibit gender related physical characteristics at birth that make sexing them, or determining their sex, much easier.  I think it was on this trip I learned the awful truth of sexed chickens… there is only about a 90% guarantee on the sexing of chicks.  We realized we had to start watching for roosters to develop.  The new chicks, being only a week from the first set of chicks, went in to the cardboard box and the cheeping intensified.

I was a paranoid mother hen with my chicks and went in every morning and evening to check their well being.  I was particularly concerned about “pasting up”, which is basically the result of the runny baby chicken poo getting on their butts which can actually obstruct their anus and cause them a death that I imagine is in no way pleasant.  So every morning and every evening, armed with a damp wash cloth I sat on the floor of the bathroom and wiped little chicken butts clean.   It’s not uncommon to have a few chicks die, but I think this is more often the case in commercial settings, I had taken it to heart though and there was certainly no way it was going to happen on my watch!  My butt cleaning must have paid off because I didn’t lose a single chick.

After a month or two of living in the cardboard box in the bathroom the chicks were starting to get in to trouble trying to roost on the box, flying out of the box (and then letting out car alarm like shrieks when they didn’t know how to get back in),  and soiling their water by roosting on top of the waterer.  We set about building them a more appropriate brooder box so they could go in to the garage.

We built it mostly out of scrap lumber at the local big box hardware store.  I believe the whole project came in around $8 using the cheap lumber and found bits and bobs.  We even had some wheels lying around that we put on the bottom.  We did have to purchase a roll of poultry netting to cover the top but figured that was just the first roll in many that we would likely be purchasing.  Once built the chicks moved out of the bathroom where they had coated EVERYTHING in the room with a thick coating of bedding dust (it took two rounds of cleaning to get *most* of the remnants of dust out of the bathroom) and in to the garage with their new brooder box and their heat lamp.  At this point it was warming up for spring so I was a little less paranoid, but not entirely…  I set up a webcam for the brooder box so I could watch them while I was at work.

They spent another month in the brooder box while we worked on the whole chicken coop
thing.  We had decided the chicken coop location early on, on the back of the garage near the house, but hadn’t decided on a coop style.  After reviewing many plans and the square footage requirements for free range chickens we decided to opt instead for a pre-built cedar shed (some assembly required).  We liked the flexibility it added in that we could turn it in to a shed if we decided we didn’t want chickens or relocated them elsewhere.  It also doesn’t look so much like a chicken coop right next to the house, except when the chickens are looking out their shuttered window.  It was quite a bit more expensive, but it was a good solution for us.

Our plan was try to let our chickens free range as much as possible, we still weren’t quite sure how we were going to achieve that.  Our yard isn’t fenced and while we are on 15 acres, the road isn’t that far away.  We started out by putting up a quick poultry fence off the door of the coop.  Later that same first day, my very large, once feral, house cat let himself out of the house (darn the screen door!).  Once I realized he was out I ran out to the backyard in fear for my young chickens lives only to discover the cat on the other side of the yard playing in the tall grass and the chickens milling around in front of their coop even though the tubby house cat had taken down their fence for them.  I’m guessing he quickly discovered that chickens can be a little fiesty and gave up on the idea.  From then on we gave up on any thoughts of fencing the chickens and let them roam.

For the first several weeks I’d come home during the daylight hours and spend 30 minutes trying to chase chickens back to the coop convinced that they weren’t smart enough to return at night and afraid they’d be lost to predators out in the dark yard.  I don’t know if I forgot one day or what the occurance was but at some point I realized that the chickens know their coop is safety and will return to it at sun down like clockwork.  Silly me to doubt them.  We are now free to go out for the evening and have occasionally come back as late as midnight to simply close the door.  They are still susceptible to predators and more so at night, but I don’t need to entertain the neighbors or the kids by chasing chickens around the yard every evening.  If you’ve ever tried to herd a chicken… I think cats might be easier.

We got our first set of chicks in early March and they started laying in late August.  I was, yet again, paranoid about them not knowing to put their eggs in the coop while free ranging and I spent the evenings scouring the flower beds and under their favorite walnut tree for wayward eggs.  Silly me, I should have learned to trust them by now.  They knew to lay in their box and after several days I realized that they were going back to the coop to lay when they needed to and then rejoining the flock.

At one point we had noticed one of the pullets developing more quickly than the rest and we
thought, ‘uh oh, what was that percentage of sexing again?’.  Sure enough that pullet would turn out to be a rooster.  We had actually had a suspect rooster earlier in the summer but we had lost that one along with a few others to predators over a short span of time.  I was heartbroken at the time, mostly second guessing our decision to try to live in balance with the rest of the word and our chickens by letting the chickens free range.  I was concerned I was doing them a disservice by leaving them susceptible to the world, but was torn over the idea of caging them in any way.  I emotionally lamented that, “there should be a be a halfway house for this” (the urban to rural transition) at which point Bengt looked at me compassionately and said, “I think this is it”. 

Back to the rooster… He would come to be named “Bucket”, since I had been jokingly calling the flock “The McChickens”, and was one of the Buff Orpingtons.  His rooster-hood was confirmed when he started making strangling sounds midsummer and full on crowing shortly after that.  Fortunately for us the chicken coop is relatively heavy and at the opposite end of the house from the bedrooms.  We also thank the previous owners for having the good foresight to install triple-paned windows.  We were undecided about keeping a rooster should one arrive.  At first we just let him be knowing that we had past the time to slaughter him for any sort of good eating.  “Before he crows” was the advise everyone gave, but how the heck were we to know when he would actually start crowing!  As the days went on he grew on us and when we watched him defend the flock from a fox by selflessly *chasing the fox away*.  He’d earned his keep.  He keeps a vigilant watch over the rest of the flock during the day and enjoys their company in the evenings.  It’s always amusing to watch him cluck to the girls that he has found some tasty morsels and then hand it over to one of them and return to his watch.

As the days shortened we made the decision to install a radiant heater and a CFL light in the coop to encourage them to continue laying and to keep them more comfortable.  In return they’ve produced more and longer than other chickens in the area.

Some of the key take aways for me were:

• Yes, chickens can fly.  Not far or fast but they can easily clear a four foot poultry wire fence to get at your blueberry bushes.
• They are smarter than you think they are.  If the people bear treats they will follow those people when ever they leave the house, going so far to peck at the car door to get the attention of the people inside.
• They are quite easy to care for.  They are about on par with a cat, if not easier.  Fill their food and water every few days, change their litter every few months, and hose the poop off the patio.