After looking back on some earlier posts about Basic Chicken Keeping and What to Feed Your Chickens, I realized that, five years later, I’m doing some things the same, and a few things differently. Some I may not have mentioned, and some things have been adapted to suit a larger flock and larger coop.
I remember when I started this adventure back in 2014, reading the blogs of other serious backyard chicken keepers, feeling somewhat inadequate to the task, but wanting to give it a go anyway.
Some chicken ladies decorate the interiors of their coops…white paint on the every surface, curtains over the nesting boxes, cute decorations on the walls. And they handle their birds a lot so that the chickens seem to enjoy being picked up, maybe even dressed up!
That ain’t me!
By the time I had the big shed/coop built, I did have some dreams of keeping it nice and cozy for the chickens, but mostly, I just wanted it functional for them and for me. I wanted it easy to clean, but didn’t care about paint and pictures on the walls. I don’t clean cob webs out of the ceiling rafters or wash the windows regularly. Dust from the bedding and feed covers most surfaces all the time.
And do you know what?
The chickens don’t care!
Chickens, no matter what some bloggers want you to think, do not have to be treated like pets to perform the function you probably purchased them for … laying fresh eggs. So long as they have decent, safe shelter, adequate food and water, and room to roam around, they are content. Very few of my hens will let me touch them, though they know who I am and what my purpose in their world is – I bring the food and treats! They gather at the “front” end of the run when they see me come out of the house then run around to the other side of the coop where they know I will emerge with something for them.
So, what is different and what is the same five years later?
For one, I went back to basic layer pellet feed from the feed store. The friend who started distributing for the “natural” feed company stopped. People who buy my eggs still tell me how great they taste compared to store-bought eggs, so I’m guessing the pellet feed isn’t all that bad.
I only use crumble feed for starting chicks – they don’t have it in pellet form that I’ve seen. Crumbles, in my opinion are wasteful. The chicks scatter it all over out of the feeder and they don’t really clean up the mess that I can see. The pellets are harder for them to scatter about, and, like other seeds or small treats, they are more likely to actually take one at a time and swallow it versus trying to get a beak-full of crumbles, spilling as much as they ingest. You’re paying for the feed…don’t pay for it to be on the ground and attracting mice or other vermin that you don’t want in your coop/run.
I never did start free-ranging the girls, in part because I don’t handle them and they run away from me. What if they didn’t figure out how to get back to the coop come dusk? I wasn’t in a position to spend time trying to find and corral them. If you check out the page on the Dream Coop, you’ll see that there is quite a large area fenced in for them, including chicken wire over the top of the run, too, to keep predators out. They decimated all the grass in the run before winter set it, and a few strange weeds grow here and there that they don’t seem interested in, but I make up for no grass with other treats.
As for the chicken tractor, well, I’m inherently lazy and, again, it involves catching some hens, putting them in the tractor, and moving the tractor periodically before returning the birds to their coop/run. Maybe when I’m retired and don’t have a job, I may consider handling my chickens more and offering them the occasional field trip, but not now!
Water. The biggest necessity in life after oxygen. There is no plumbing out to the coop from the house and it’s a long walk from the house with 5-gallon buckets of water, not to mention it freezing in the winter. There’s also no electricity (yet) out to the coop.
The first thing I did was install gutters on the shed’s roof and set up a 55-gallon barrel to collect rain water in. It’s not a pretty set up, but it sure made a difference for most of the year! The barrel is set up on the east side of the shed, and with some of the trees back in that part of the yard, it’s pretty well protected from the worst heat and sun of the day, so the water in the barrel is somewhat cool even in the height of summer.
I intended to connect a PVC pipe with multiple nipples to an out-flow from the barrel so that the chickens would always have access to the water and I wouldn’t have to do much until winter when freezing temps would prevent use of such a system. Naturally, I never got that part completed. I still had other water containers with nipples on the bottom so I just fill those from the barrel and hang them about the run.
Come winter, I connect several 100-ft outdoor extension cords (with all the connections sealed with electrical tape) from the house to the coop and have multiple heated water bowls available. Then I do have to carry the 5-gallon buckets of water out, but it’s only for a few months, so I deal with it. Eventually I’ll coerce my husband to install electricity out there so I don’t have to run the extension cords, but I’d still have to haul water. (You may want to think that part through a bit more if you’re setting up your first coop and you live in an area where temps get below freezing at times).
As for the treats, well, up until this year, I was much better about buying fresh produce to share with the chickens, especially since my gardening skills are quite lacking. Produce prices have increased a lot, and I have a job now where frequent trips to the grocery store are not as simple. To still offer them something in the mornings, I’ve opted for canned fruit and veggies, sometimes frozen if there’s a good sale. They also get shelled unsalted peanuts a few times a week. Come winter, their morning treat will consist of oatmeal with some fruit or veggie mixed in. Morning treats also include any table scraps from the previous day’s meals. I also pluck chickweed, clover, dandelion leaves and other greens from the yard for them.
Evening treats in the warm months consists of dried meal worms and black oil sunflower seeds. Some folks only offer these during molting season for the added protein; I don’t see the harm in them having it year round. In winter, they also get the scratch grains mixed in for that boost in metabolism that helps keep them warm on cold nights.
Bedding choices vary and everyone has their preferences. I suppose if I had an easy source for straw, I’d use that, especially in winter since it can be more insulating, but I don’t have that source. I do what’s easiest – bags of pine shavings from the feed store. If they have both fine and medium shavings, I get both – the fine for the nesting boxes and the medium for the floor of the coops. I’d like to say I change it all out weekly – I really did for the first year or so, but since I got the new super-big coop and run set up, the girls don’t spend much time indoors except at night, so I can push changing the bedding out a bit longer. I use a granulated moisture absorbing product on the bare floor, pour the pine shavings over it, then sprinkle diatomaceous earth (DE, shell flour) over it. I sprinkle some DE in the nesting boxes, too. I have the red earth for out in the coops. (I use food-grade white DE for my own ingestion).
My yard has some issues with poor drainage of water after long rains. I tried to install some drain pipes prior to building the shed-coop, but they don’t really help (I don’t think I buried them deep enough, or the end has gotten covered over so it doesn’t drain well for that). Instead of taking all the waste to a compost pile, I simply scatter it in the run in the areas where water may pool; it builds up the earth as it degenerates so the hens have fewer muddy patches to suffer with. After dumping the bedding out in the run, I sprinkle more DE over it as the hens tend to take a keen interest in scratching through the stuff when it’s been moved out of the coop.
I set up a child’s sand box inside the run to offer the hens a place for dust-bathing. They will use it on occasion, but they are just as likely to scratch out some dry dirt on the ground to suit their need in that regard.
Even with the various treats, multiple food and water containers, and several “play” things and mirrors out in the run, the hens do still get bored and will pick on someone – most often my Lil’ Half Blind Girl. For anyone not yet familiar with her story, after combining the First and Second flocks in the new shed-coop/run, the rooster from the First flock wasn’t having his way with the ladies from the Second flock as I had expected he would (too few hens means a roo can’t spread his lovin’ around enough, over-stresses the available hens, and too much stress can cause death. You should plan to have around 10 hens for every 1 rooster). Since the ladies of the Second flock pretty well ignored his advances, the roo and a mate from his original (First) flock started preying on some of the hens from the Second flock, primarily, 2 of the Barred Rocks. The First flock hen (Anya) would help the roo (Rupert) hold down a hen and they would both peck her viciously. One hen had her comb ripped half off her head – she ultimately died from the stress. Another was blinded in one eye – she survived. Rupert was removed and eventually processed.
As for Lil’ Half-Blind Girl, she remains low-girl on the totem pole. Hens know she is vulnerable so they peck on her. She is missing most of the feathers on her rump and hindquarters. She has 2 or 3 scraggly tail feathers left. She has places all around the run where she can get away from them and protect herself, but sometimes they still manage to get a good peck in. When I find her with an area that’s bleeding, I spray Vetericin and Blue Kote on her. Of interest, Anya isn’t top girl herself these days. Once a few more hens came into the flock, Anya has found herself on the receiving end of some others’ beaks! Karma, Anya!
One thing I may do differently this winter is start closing the small coop door. I’ve always left the (approximately) 12 x 12-inch door open 24/7 because I worked a shift that didn’t allow for me to open and close it with the rising and setting of the sun. I made sure the run was predator-proof and have had no issues with any loss due to leaving that small door open. I now work a “normal” job, so I could open and close that door at appropriate times to further ensure the flock’s safety. I haven’t started just yet since dusk is still after about 8:00 here. If you have any doubts about security, you should lock up the flock all night, every night. Some predators may be bold enough – or desperate enough to try and enter the coop/run during the day, but most wait for night.
So, if you’re still new into this project of chicken keeping, don’t worry if you are not living up to the high standards set by some of the bloggers out there. Always remember that chickens in most of the world are treated as any livestock on a farm and they do just fine. If you treat them even just a little bit better than that, you’re probably doing great!
Chickens really aren’t that hard to raise once you have your coop and run set up. That is the hard part. The rest doesn’t take much time or effort at all, so don’t avoid staring your own backyard flock because you think it will be too hard. You can do it!
PreppinWolf 