Roosters are usually not permitted due to their crowing. Contact your local council for the most accurate and up-to-date local bylaws and regulations. For further information please consult the Property PIC information for poultry owners page on the Agriculture Victoria website. When purchasing chickens, it is best to purchase vaccinated birds from a reliable commercial source.
A good starter flock usually consists of 4 to 5 birds aged 16 to 24 weeks. This many birds will usually produce enough eggs for a household. Ensure your chicken house and chicken run are fox-proof. Fully enclose the chicken run with wire mesh buried into the soil at a depth of 50cm to prevent foxes from digging under the fence. Cover the floor of the chicken house and the nesting box with sawdust or straw to a depth of 8cm so that it mixes with the poultry droppings to form a litter.
This litter can be removed and composted. Ensure the chicken house is adequately ventilated and positioned to protect against prevailing winds and rain. Additional vegetation along the fencing can assist with wind protection. It is important to feed your chickens with appropriate food and clean water, refreshed regularly. Commercial layer pellets provide a balance source of the correct nutrients. Kitchen scraps can also be given to chickens to supplement their diet.
Avoid giving them chocolate, onions and garlic as these can sometimes cause health problems. Use a chicken feeder that is vermin-and-wild-bird-proof to prevent them from eating the chicken feed and contaminating it.
Store excess feed in a sealed, vermin-and-waterproof container. Like all animals, chickens can experience health problems.
Wood shavings, chopped straw and shredded paper can all be used as chicken bedding. It provides a soft surface and insulates the hen house well. Straw is what I always pictured in nesting boxes but now in my opinion is not as effective as wood shavings.
Shredded paper is the cheapest option if you own a shredder and have access to plenty of paper. But it does get soiled very quickly and you will need to change it more frequently. Hemp which has been cut up and dried is perfect for lining the nestbox. The bedding I use and recommend hands down is that made from Hemp which has been cut up and dried. It is super absorbent and makes poo picking very easy as it sticks to it and you can simply scoop it up.
Two brands to look out for are Aubiose and Hempcore. Before you rush out and get hens you need to decide where and how you are going to house them.
This will most likely be your biggest outlay of cash so you will want to get it right. With so many chicken coop suppliers both on and offline it can feel a bit overwhelming when you first start out.
Hopefully, after this section of the guide, you will know what to look for in a chicken coop and what to avoid. The basic function of a chicken coop is to provide your hens with a place to lay their eggs and a safe and secure place to roost at night. This is all they generally do in the coop — lay eggs and rest safely at night. Chickens are natural foragers, and from sun up to sun down, they will want to be out and about scratching around for food.
So they should also have access to well-drained areas for them to scratch about. You will need to make sure that you can provide this for them. Initially, we let ours free range around the garden for most of the day, but after a few months, they had managed to rid it entirely of weeds, which was great but also most of our pretty plants. Even our nice establish lawn started to look a little worse for wear.
Now you might well be having second thoughts with this revelation. How you do this is really up to you. We have chicken coops available that have extendable runs which in total only take up a few meters of space.
These would give you the flexibility of having an all in one designated area for your chickens where they have free access to an enclosed outside area to roam. That being said I would still recommend letting your hens out late in the afternoon for a change of scene. This allows them an hour or two to peck and scratch around your garden for tasty shoots, grubs or worms.
I recommend the late afternoon because as night approaches they are more open to the idea of going back in their coop, without you working up a sweat trying to persuade them! There are 7 important questions you should ask yourself when looking at any chicken coop:. The UK Poultry Club which has been around since also suggests at least 1 square foot per bird large fowl or 8" square for bantams. However, that is a MINIMUM, and what you will find from the many people already keeping hens is that the more room you can give your chickens, the healthier and happier they will be.
If you allow your hens to free-range during the day and you only lock them up in their house at night then you can quite easily get away with a smaller amount of housing space set out by DEFRA. But while hens will perch close together at night bear in mind that keeping too many hens in a coop could result in health problems as well as a lot more cleaning!
What you should know is that some suppliers inflate the number of hens their coops can hold. Work out the internal space yourself and make up your own mind based on common sense and the 1sq foot rule as the minimum. To get the area: multiply the length and width. If the measurements are in cm, do the same to calculate the square centimetres and then visit a site like this to work out the amount of square foot space your hens will have.
As a general rule of thumb the more space you give them the happier they will be. Cramped conditions leads to boredom, pecking and an increased likelihood of pests and diseases.
Most of our coops come with runs that can be extended to allow you to give your birds more space should you need it. If you are going to keep your chickens in a run for most of the time then as a rule of thumb you should allow around 1 square meter of run space for each bird. If you do plan on keeping your hens permanently in an enclosed run then you should expect the grass in that area to soon wear thin and turn in to a bit of a quagmire when it rains.
Because of this some people prefer to keep their coop and run on a hard standing. This has the advantage of there being a little less mud about when it rains; it can be sprayed down and cleaned regularly with a hose or high pressure cleaner and there is also less chance of a determined fox tunnelling in under the run.
It does however create a bit of an unnatural environment for them. So if you do go down this route then you will need to give your hens a really good layer of bark to allow them to act naturally and scratch about in. This would need to be regularly raked out and replenished. There is also the option of using rubber chippings which are more expensive initially but can be washed and disinfected and generally last longer.
Your hens will also need access to a dry area of soil for them to take regular dust baths. Hens will need and want to take a regular dust bath to rid their feathers of parasites and insects.
This can be done by filling a deep cat litter tray or a large pot with soil and sand. If allowed to free range they would typically find a secluded spot in the garden to dig their dust bath.
Free-range birds have plenty to keep them occupied but hens housed permanently in a run will need things to keep them entertained. They like to have different levels of height to clamber on to and perch on, some people hang CDs in the run which give them something to peck at. You can also push leafy greens through the chicken wire for them to eat.
Before you begin researching which coop would best suit your needs knowing whether you intend to keep them full time in a coop and run or whether you intend to allow your hens the freedom to free range will help narrow down the search.
A late afternoon to roam about searching for grubs. We still let them out in the late afternoon to roam about the rest of our garden. This way they help keep the weeds down, they get to explore a bit and have a change of scene and our garden just about survives.
Just as we enjoy chickens and eggs as a tasty meal, so, unfortunately, do predators such as foxes. Moving on As you collect eggs nearly every day, it makes sense to choose a chicken coop that offers an easy way to access those eggs, with the minimum disturbance to your hens. Also, your hen house will need regular cleaning to keep your chickens in good condition, so ease of cleaning should be a major consideration. Look for hen houses that have easy access to the nesting area as well as pull out trays and removable perches.
Regular cleaning will not only avoid the build-up of droppings but also reduces the opportunities for pests and diseases to take hold. A weekly clean should only take around 15 minutes in a well-made and maintained hen house. Inadequate ventilation can lead to respiratory problems in your hens, so it is important to keep fresh air circulating. You may have also heard that chickens do not tolerate draughts and that the ventilation must be such that there are no draughts. We have designed our coops so that the ventilation holes are near the top of the coop.
This way it allows for the toxic air to escape without your chickens being in a draughts. Your chicken coop must be secure against predators including foxes and to a lesser extent rats. A housing area that is raised off the ground offers better protection from predators trying to dig their way in. Also get into a habit of checking your coop and run when you collect your eggs, for any signs of damage or gnawing.
Both of these are signs of potential predators trying to get in. Your hen house should also be weatherproofed sufficiently for the UK weather, and if you invest in a wooden coop then you should consider treating it with animal-friendly preservatives , ideally once a year. At night, hens like to perch as high above the ground as they can, as this gives them a sense of safety from predators.
Perches made from plastic or metal piping are not suitable for chickens, as they cannot grip the perch properly. In fact, chickens prefer to perch on a flat surface with gently curving edges so their feet are protected as they grip onto it. So the perch should be about 3 to 4 cm wide, with curved edges. So often we see coops being sold online with perches that are not correctly made. When assessing a hen house take close look at the perches.
They should be wide, flat and rounded off along the top edges. A view of the fully removable perches inside our hen houses. Hens will always seek out dark, quiet and secluded places to lay their eggs.
By providing suitable nesting boxes within the coop, you can provide your hens with their ideal laying environment, and space where you know their eggs will be clean and protected - and easy to find! Hen houses that have the nesting box protruding at the side and access via a nesting box lid allow you to easily collect your eggs with minimal disturbance to the hen house as a whole.
Hens like a quiet cosy place to lay and they don't mind sharing. Up to three hens will share one nesting area happily, but if you have three hens; two boxes or areas to lay will give them more options. Nest boxes should be lined with soft dry bedding material and raised from the ground. So if you want clean eggs look for a coop that has the perches high up.
We have specifically designed all our wooden coops so that the perches are either in line or higher than the bottom of the nesting box so there is less chance of this happening. Your chicken coop sits in your garden days a year, so it should be something you are pleased to look at, not an eyesore. More importantly, you should ask yourself will it last. Obviously budget is a determining factor in your decision when purchasing a chicken coop. But personal experience has taught me that buying the cheapest of anything especially something that will be outside in the elements is more often than not false economy.
Instead, by investing a little bit more I have often found less frustrations and problems, better customer service and generally a much better product. Where there are chickens, there will most likely be foxes. Now that urban foxes are as numerous as their country cousins, they are a major consideration for the urban chicken owner. Your chicken coop must be both secure and robust enough to resist a determined attack by a fox armed with sharp teeth and claws.
Despite popular belief, foxes can attack during the day as well as at night, so if you live in an area where foxes are found, only let your chickens out loose in the garden if you are there with them, or you run the risk of losing one. The best protection against a fox attack is to return your hens at night to a secure, sturdy and robust hen house.
Foxes are also highly effective diggers, so they can easily tunnel under a coop wall and into the run. So it is a very wise idea to lock your hens up at night inside the actual housing area of the coop. Another way to prevent a fox from digging under the coop is to lay a line of pavers or bricks around the outside of the run. A fox will soon get tired of digging in from half a metre out and will probably move on to find an easier meal.
Some say that human smell around the chicken coop discourages foxes, and we have read that urinating along the perimeter of your chicken run will mark it as 'your' territory, and discourage foxes. After showing my family the freshly hatched chicks, I knew I had won. I mean, who can resist a fluffy little chick? So, we brought three home with all the required accoutrements and set up shop in the basement.
After naming them, we cared for them like they were the young dragons in Game of Thrones. About three weeks later, I convinced everyone that we should get a couple more — so we did. We were on the chicken bandwagon and there was no turning back.
I should have known better than to attempt to build a chicken coop without a plan. I had dreams of creating an affordable coop using scrap wood and old wine cases for siding that could be wheeled around the yard as needed.
The wheels sit on my porch, unable to bear the weight of the massive amounts of lumber and nails that went into this bad boy. Lesson learned. Saltbox Designs in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle creates beautiful chicken coops among other things at an affordable price. Go there and save yourself the time and frustration of realizing you are likely not adept at carpentry or building anything.
The aforementioned Portage Bay Grange has been a salvation for my backyard chicken endeavors. The owner, Kevin Scott-Vandenberge , and his crew have given helpful advice at all times and have invaluable knowledge.
Before you burn countless hours diagnosing chicken problems by browsing fowl message boards, find a local poultry purveyor and be done with it.
We have experienced this unfortunate occurrence not once, but three times. It happened in December when the chicks were about eight to ten weeks old. Our family was watching a horrible little dog named Ichigo while her parents were away in Japan. It was a Shiba Inu which is known for: ferreting out and killing small game, running away and being generally evil. Unfortunately we experienced all of these traits during her stay.
One fine day I left the area where the chicks were being kept and the little bugger got in there and killed three of them in a matter of minutes — proudly laying one at the feet of my three year old son. She also decided to escape and run away about five times over a three week span. This incident did beget the purchase of more, older pullets and the owner of the evil dog was gracious enough to compensate us for our financial loss but not our mental anguish.
Yes, we anguished the loss of our dearly departed backyard chickens. We knew that chicken sexing is only a 90 percent proposition when we got our flock. We were also over-confident and hopeful that we would not get a rooster in our bunch for it is both illegal to have them within the city limits in Seattle and annoying as hell.
They are my nemesis. For weeks we happily raised our flock until one day, my wife pointed out that she thought the Rhode Island Red named Scarlett was a rooster. I scoffed at the notion until a couple of days later when I heard the beginnings of a nascent cock-a-doodle-doo at about a. Over the next few days he perfected this party trick and was aptly re-named Scarleto. Getting fresh eggs from the flock takes patience. I did my research on this.
I even created a spreadsheet and highlighted the chicken breeds that should be laying early between 17 to 26 weeks.
I bought those breeds. One has yet to lay a single egg and is now at the ripe old age of I have started to plant the seeds of her becoming dinner but once again have been rebuffed by the family. Perhaps if I send them all away on a trip and enjoy her all for myself? But I digress. There seems to be no rhyme or reason when backyard chickens will decide to lay eggs.
They may lay every day for a month, then take a break for a few days, then lay every other day. Has your kid ever had a nagging set of symptoms that you simply could not diagnose?
Well, prepare to do the same with your chickens. You will spend hours reading, asking for and getting random advice from strangers on what to do with your chickens. You just might save the rest of your flock with this quick cure-all remedy. I mean — they smell. They poop everywhere and it accumulates like all get out. Yes, you can throw down more straw and even some diatomaceous earth D. Oh, and then there are the flies that come to the party. My backyard now consists of two fly traps that smell like dead fish , square feet of straw about three or four inches deep, and twice a week sprinklings of D.
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