Chickens - starting out
Neither myself or my wife are experts in keeping chickens and this is the first time we have been able to keep them as we used to live in a small village and our property had too small a garden to keep chickens (or so we thought at the time).
We had wanted to live in the countryside for many years, yet neither of us really want to keep livestock for meat - my wife is a non meat eating person (loosely a vegetarian) and is also into animal welfare in a big way so keeping chickens for eggs seemed a good way to go - and it turned out better than we had ever expected.
Our first Eggs
For days, well weeks we went out to check if there was any eggs from our new hen enterprise and after about 3 weeks "settling in" our chickens started to lay. At first it was one egg a day, then 2 eggs and this eventually ended up with 7-8 eggs a day - not bad for the middle of winter.
A picture of our "girls" around the feeder we use for their layers pellets.
Chicken Feed
Feeding chickens is easy - well that may be true yet we went around a number of agricultural suppliers and ended up finding that most of the Layers Pellets were not (or could not guarantee) being GM Free, so we bought our mixed grain and corn from the farm suppliers and the Layers Pellets from Pets at Home.
Keeping Chickens
We currently have 8 chickens which we bought as point of lay pullets in October 2008. Point of lay pullets are about 16 to 18 weeks old and usually start to lay eggs a few weeks later. At the time of writing (Feb. 2009) our chickens each lay an egg a day and provide us with 6-8 free range "organic style" eggs.
What on earth is "organic style" eggs? well it's what we call our eggs as they are fed GM Free layers pellets and mixed grain as well as plenty of scraps and bread saps. However they roam over soil that is not organic and probably could never be classified officially in this way. Plus we could never afford to get the croft officially certified by the Soil Association as organic.
Our newly arrived chickens settling into their brand new chicken house. For the first couple of days we kept the chickens inside and that is the reason for the water and food feeder being inside the chicken house. You need to keep the inside of the chicken house free of food as this can attract rodents including rats so this is a temporary measure until the chickens can be let outside to roam.
After a couple of days we let the chickens outside by opening the door (my wife is trying to get them to come out for the first time as seen in the picture above!) We were both surprised at how long it was before the chickens picked up the courage to go into the open air of their chicken run. Infact it was a couple of days before they were all confident enough to go out and explore their environment.
Chickens are Funny!
I have my eye on you is the title of this picture as I feel it shows that chickens do have an attitude and are fun to keep.
Chickens in the Snow
Chickens in the Snow - Chickens don't really enjoy the snow, they prefer it to be nice and dry. Our chickens eventually got used to the snow and prefer it to rain (I think).
More on Chickens
Chicken Video for a small video of our chickens. We have also added a chicken video to youtube and while the quality is not great in the compressed youtube video it does show the chickens enjoying themselves. You can also download the higher resolution Windows media file if you want.
Books on Keeping Chickens
We bought several books on how to keep chickens and also how to build a chicken house. Most of the books have been helpful and while websites on keeping chickens are also a good way to learn how to look after chickens it is simply easier to have a book that you can thumb through and book marked (or even underlined). I have also found a range magazines very helpful including Smallholder, Country Smallholding and Poultry Keeping. Some of these sites also have forums where you may find enthusiasts and experts on keeping poultry.
The following two books are great:
Keeping Pet Chickens by Johannes Paul, William Windham
Keeping Pet Chickens is the one book for all the family - it is full of useful information and well illustrated. You can buy this book from Amazon.
Starting with Chickens by Katie Thear is another very useful book and full of information. Both of these books will help get you started keeping chickens for the first time. Buy from Amazon.
Books on Chickens
Or go to our Amazon Store and search for books and more.