A quick chicken tutorial

Over the last week two friends have asked some questions about keeping urban chickens. The first question is pretty simple - "Are we allowed to keep chickens in the city?"

Answer: "Check with your municipality!" We are allowed to keep chickens in our neighbourhood, but not a Rooster.

The other question is more in depth so here is a quick tut on setting a coop up and the care of them for beginners.

Housing

When we got our girls in June 2008, we planned on getting just two. We built a very simple coop for them which we could lift up to let them out. It was easily portable so we planned to move it over half of a raised bed each week in a rotational way. It was about 2.5m X 2.5m.



However, we came home with 4 chickens (I mean, how can I not get each child a chicken?!?) and the coop sufficed for a few months while the chooks were small.

We added a pole across the width under the sheltered part for them to roost on at night. We also made a little area for them to lay and sit with straw in one corner.

We did let them out daily for a couple of hours while the dogs were locked up, but I still felt that the coop was too small. Superman didn't want to make anything permanent until we new we were keeping the girls...he was a bit hesitant to have chickens in the gardern.

The second coop was built in April 2009. This is a permanent feature at the end of the initial veggie garden. It is +/- 5m x 2 m. The back half has a wood roof and sides. In winter with all our rain we cover it with builder's plastic as it is not waterproof. The front half is meshed inside what used to be the veggie garden fence as the support. It has a loose lid on the meshed side to lift off so that "Robyn" can clean it weekly.



In the back are two roosting poles and two tyres for them to lay in. The straw is replaced weekly. The old straw goes to the compost heap. While there are two tyres, they tend to prefer the one that is in the darker corner.

This coop has a sand floor which they still scratch in and sandbath. When we added our two new girls we found that they have ample space. Half is in the shade and half in the sun. Beside a sand bath, they love to sunbathe.

Food

We buy 25kg's of chicken feed every 3 months. We give them one large cup twice a day. I mix it up with more sunflower seeds and laying pellets. Although sometimes we go without the laying pellets and it doesn't seem to affect their laying.

They also get lots and lots of greens. All my vegetable leaves that are too holey go to them, all the outer leaves of things like cabbage and broccoli, as well as apple cores, tomato ends that we don't cook with...well you get the idea. Oh, and they LOVE cucumber.

To entice them back into the coop after their walk-about, we crumble two old crusts from our bread. Then it is like a feeding frenzy!



We used to have a lot of snails, but they sorted that population out in a blitz. So now I embaress my family and on a Sunday go for a walk around our block and collect snails off my neigbours walls. This caught the attention of a family down the road...and they are now thinking of getting chickens too! They eat the shells too which is necesary for their digestion.




The girls also love digging in the compost heap for any creepy crawlies...especially earthworms! That's a bit of a catch-22 as I want the worms in my garden and they want them in their tummies! They suck them up like spaghetti!!

And we also give them left over oat porridge if we make it for breakfast and then I scramble 2 eggs a week for them and they gobble that up with relish. I also crush their eggs shells every now and again and give it to them with their grain.



This picture above shows two eggs from different chickens. As we got to know our chickens we were able to identify whose egg was whose. The larger one had a double yolk which is a faily common occurence.


Water

We bought them a water feeder which we refresh daily. It is a large plastic dome that trickles into a plate to automatically replace what is drunk. Water in important for chickens as they actually do get thirsty.

I think this is about all I can think of....oh, safety!

We have dogs which haven't been trained to share their space so we always lock them inside with us while the girls roam. A friend has managed to train her dog to cohabit well, we just haven't done it yet.

Cats can also get into unsecure coops, so do make sure they are safe.

Another bother we had were the rats (eek!) but we have managed to successfully get rid of all of them.

Hope this encourages those "sitting on the fence" to take the leap and get some of your own chickens.