My neighbors on 2 sides keep chickens and it's pretty normal for them to be running around in our yard, across the street, etc. A couple months back I noticed a flurry of excitement out in my neighbor's front lawn and watched a large fox dash across their yard and then mine carrying a chicken in its mouth. Later in the day I watched my neighbor rake up the feathers which were spread all across their front lawn.

We have been the beneficiary in the form of free dozens of eggs. I try to reciprocate by baking cookies with them. Ticks are a real problem in my area (I had lyme disease this past summer, the wife the summer before, etc etc- everyone gets it here at some point-) so any kind of tick-eating animal that wants to run around in my yard is a-ok.

Rhode Island Reds are popular here in CT. There are enough predators in the woods here (coywolves, foxes, fishers, etc) that you need a seriously secure coop to keep the attrition rate low. From what my neighbors tell me, once you get that set up, they are an extremely low maintenance pet. Going away for a week requires a pet sitter who can do the equivalent of feeding your cats and maybe letting them out to pee if you keep your cats "in the rough" (which is also popular in these parts, in spite of the coyotes. The prevailing local sentiment seems to be that an outdoor cat is a happy cat, and a happy life that ends in the jaws of a coyote is better than a fat sedentary life on a sofa.)

I wish I could offer more specifics but I have yet to get my own chickens. I'm planning on it though.

Joel Salatin. "Pastured Poultry Profit$". 'Nuff said.
http://www.polyfacefarms.com

Chickens?

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens is a good book to start with.We keep twelve hens and two roosters. Our chickens are dual purpose but their primary duty is as layers.
My first recommendation is to get your facilities in order. My first task was to build a hen house (I see the coop as a hen house and a small fenced outdoor yard combined). I looked at a lot of designs for for a hen house and priced materials, etc. I finaly decided to get an 8' X 8' vinyl garden shed at the big box store because it was cheaper and quicker. Also, the vinyl is easy to hose clean and is resistant to pests, etc. I also got two 2' X 3' vinyl windows from the clearance rack (25 bucks each). The walls of the building are easy to cut with a jig saw. I cut holes, glued the windows in with caulk and framed the windows inside and out with 1X4 wood (screw right through the vinyl. I stapled chicken wire to the outside frames for security. For a chicken door I used an old 9" X 16" doggie door.

For nesting boxes I use 5 gal buckets. Take a snap-on lid for a 5 gal bucket and saw it into thirds. Use the outer thirds, snaped to the buckets, as a front to the nesting box (you get two fronts per lid) I attached a piece of wood to the cut edges of the lids to make our girls a more comfy perch. Attach the nesting boxes to a board using fender washers and screws through the bottom of the buckets. Attach the board to the inside of the building with screws or bolts about 30" off of the floor. We use three buckets for twelve chickens. I attached old curtain rods just below window height for a roost (one per side). The chickens like to sit and look out of the windows on rainy days.
With carefull shopping, our hen house cost us about $650 and should last for years. My estimate for a custom built was over $800.

Backyard Poultry is a good periodical for small scale poultry enthusiasts:

www.backyardpoultrymag.com

Great topic! So can anyone hazard an educated estimate--how many hours a week of caretaking does it take to keep two to three chickens in an urban backyard? (Yes, it's legal in my city.)

My grandmother, who was a farm girl from Oklahoma, was delighted when some chickens got loose from wherever in her small city in the Central valley of California. They quickly became feral and gave animal control no end of problems. (Evidently the roosters annoyed people, leading to demands they be captured.) They were glamorous birds with long, handsome tail feathers. When they took refuge in her yard, she wouldn't let animal control come in and get them. Various generations of these chickens lasted three or four years until animal control finally got the last rooster and his harem. Lots of fun while it lasted.

Chicken tractors!
http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html

-- How much regular attention do chickens need?

We check ours daily to ensure fresh water and collect eggs. We move our chicken tractor about every two days.

--If a person goes away on a week's vacation, what does one do? Find a neighbor who also raises chickens, and trade services?

Yes, or any neighbor who you can give basic instructions to will do.

-- What are good books about raising chickens? Good web sites?

http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2007-10-01/Tests-Reveal-Healthi...

Pasture Poultry Profits - Joel Salatin

-- What kinds of chickens do you prefer to raise?

Broad question. For purely egg laying, Leghorns are extremely efficient converting feed to eggs. Most of ours are dual purpose (meat, eggs) though, so we like those who can handle the cold without heating units (New Hampshire, Barred Rock) and others to see what they are like (Buff Orpington, Wyandote).

-- What is a good number to start with?

I would ask: How many eggs do you want on average? Are you raising for meat? What breeds? Do you have/plan for winter shelter?

-- What tips do you have for beginners starting out?

Read about the experiences of other, from first timers to old hands. And watch The Meatrix...

If you are raising chickens for sustainable use (decliners, survival types, local agriculture, and want to have breeding stock, heritage breeds like Rhode Island Reds, Dominicker and most of the older New England breeds have a better chance to breed true over several generations. Avoid hybrids if you are raising your own chickens for the long haul. Many dual-purpose old timey breeds are available that are "tried and true". Their feed conversion isn't tops but they are usually good foragers and generally low maintenance. There're reasons subsistance farmers kept some of these breeds for generations.

http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/standard_breed_chicks.html

Some low energy chicken tips I have seen in action:

1. Chicks in a cardboard box behind the wood stove instead of a dedicated enclosure with a light bulb. A mid-size child was delegated to fuss with the chicks. Any warm spot works. One 12 year old girl had the box of chicks in her room.

2. Chickens in a chicken tractor on the lawn or garden. They eat more bugs and greens and less grain.

3. Chickens fed garden debris, such as the outer leaves of cabbages.

4. Raising some small grains for the chickens, even in a garden. The grain doesn't have to be threshed and they love to play with the stalks.

5. Chickens running loose. They have to be secured at night, but otherwise they just run around. They learn to come to the sound of the grain pail for their evening feeding.

6. As noted above, the smarter layers and dual purpose birds are better at taking care of themselves. Some modern meat bird crosses have lost all smarts.

I've been raising chickens for two years. Started with 25 chicks - straight run - meaning hens and roosters. Ended up with about 10 roosters and 15 hens. Slaughtered the roosters - all but one which we kept until the fox got him. Slaughtering roosters is no fun at all - hard on the hands and the mind (real hard if you make the mistake of giving them a name). In the spring, a fox kitted in the woods near our chickens, which were running unfenced at the time and we went from 10 chickens to four in a week. We hatched another 6 including two roosters - which are now waiting for me to slaughter. Lost one to a hawk that also got tangled in our electric netting last week, so we now have 7 hens - four are molting and not laying eggs though they are still eating good amounts of feed. The other three are too young to lay eggs, so we've been running a deficit the past two months. When our hens are laying, I sell eggs at work for $3/dozen which covers our feed.

Some answers to your questions...

Where do chickens grow wild?

They are jungle fowl. Probably originated in SE Asia and/or India. The breed we know as 'chickens' are pretty far removed from those birds and even far removed from the fowl that scratched out a living on farms before the era of factory farming. The chickens that produce the eggs and make up the meat you get at the grocery store are mutants barely able to survive outside of the artificial world of large scale factory farming.

Fortunately you can get various 'heritage' breeds that do quite well with minimal care - provide them shelter and water and supplemental feed and they'll lay enough eggs for home and even breed the next generation. If you learn how to cook old chickens (look for French recipies like 'Coq Au Vin' and other traditional recipies), you'll get meat from the hens that have stopped laying (about 2 years) and the roosters. Tip - do not give them a name if you have to slaughter them yourself - it is pretty rough cutting the throat of a pet.

I have not researched energy balance for chickens raised at home versus commercial chickens, but my guess is that the home raised chickens use more energy, rather than less. Does anyone have figures on this?

Did you mean it the other way around? Commercial chickens are fed copious amounts of grain and raised in heated and artificially lit houses. The meat chickens grow fast and are slaughtered young. The egg chickens lay like mad for a year or less and are then sent off to the dog food plant.

Home raised chickens can get by with table scraps, the bugs and plants they get from your yard and moderate amounts of supplemental feed. You won't get the same lay rate as commercial chickens and what you raise for meat will take a lot longer to grow to slaughter weight. But, the energy inputs are fairly light.

How much regular attention do chickens need? If a person goes away on a week's vacation, what does one do?

Mine are contained within a 160sq ft electric fence that we move every couple of weeks (depends on the number of chickens). We have a 5 gallon waterer and a 5 gallon feeder; filled to the top, both will last a week for 10 or fewer chickens. The electric fence keeps out the foxes; tarps stretched between fence posts help protect against hawks, but aren't perfect.

What kinds of chickens do you prefer to raise? What is a good number to start with?

I would go with heritage breeds - which ones will be best for you depend on where you are - do you have cold winters or no winters at all... We live in PA and raise Orpingtons, Australorps, and Barred Rocks and they all do well. We're switching over to Dominiques, an old, somewhat rare breed.

What tips do you have for beginners starting out?

Keep the initial investment small. Start with 5-10 chickens and see how it goes for you. Don't plan to make money unless you have lots of land and access to cheap feed sources - if you are lucky, you can sell enough eggs to pay for your feed.

Chickens are fun. My 4 year old daughter loves them and they are teaching her about life in ways no normal pet can.

Sign up for the following email lists and listen and learn over the winter, then start up in the spring.

PasturePoultry@yahoogroups.com
yardpoultry@yahoogroups.com

--Glenn

I got my first baby chicks this May, and it has been a huge learning experience. I never had a pet or livestock animal of any kind before. I never had any great longing for a pet, either, but I’ve really grown fond of these silly birds!

I started chicken-keeping for several reasons: I wanted to get a protein source in the garden (eggs), fertilizer for the vegetable and fruit garden, and help with insect control. A major problem I’ve found, that was well-articulated by our university poultry extension specialist, is that most research has been geared toward the large-scale producer. So, although you can get helpful tips at places like Backyard Chickens and in articles in the popular media, you also get a lot of hearsay, urban myths, and downright misinformation. Books tend to be more reliable, but also tend to take for granted practices from commercial operations that many of us question – debeaking, dubbing, long incubation of chicks under hot lights, etc. So, in some ways, the backyard chicken movement is blazing a new trail.

Re energy balance – this is a huge issue for me. We are trying to “power down” generally, so adding new energy requirements is something we try to avoid. Our goal is to avoid heating the coop this winter. This is a challenge, but, I’m told, can be done. As with everything in our contemporary society, it depends how lazy you choose to be. For example, many people on Backyard Chickens are enthusiastic about heated dog bowls. It’s not that hard to take out fresh water twice a day. That’s what we do; have two waterers, bring in the frozen one, and swap it out with the other one. I usually go out that often every day anyway to tend to them.

Another problem I see is backyard chicken keepers treating the birds as pets, buying all kinds of toys, treats, etc, and overheating the coop. We do buy commercial feed, but allow them out in the yard in a tractor, and more often now they're bigger,in temporary netting, to eat grass, weeds, and bugs (they LOVE Japanese beetles and will clean out an anthill in no time.) I also dig dandelions for them, give them kitchen scraps and excess greens from the garden (they like parsley, for example), and get discarded produce from Whole Foods for more free greens. My goal is to eventually learn to mix my own feed as well.

They really don’t require much work at all. I never spend more than an hour a day on their care; much less many days. I do enjoy watching their antics, so I might be around them longer than that. Vacations are a problem – one reason I never wanted pets. But I guess I’ll do what farmers do; trade chores. There are a couple of other chicken-keepers in the neighborhood; I’ll try to trade off with them.

I have four chickens - the max allowed in our city – two Barred Rocks and two Rhode Island Reds. I chose heavy breeds to better weather our Wisconsin winters and these particular breeds for looks. When I get new chicks, I’ll stick with Barred Rocks or maybe try a few Partridge Rocks. The BRs are friendlier to humans and less aggressive towards other chickens than the RIRs (based on n=4! So take that with a grain of salt.)

This post is getting VERY long, so if you’re interested in reading more about my first year of keeping chickens, check out my blog My coop page at Backyard Chickens is here.

lilith
aka Wisconsin Garden Chick

I have 24 pullets (young females) and five roosters- three more of which need to be eaten, for the poor pullets sake! I've tried many breeds over the years but the Barred Plymouth Rocks are my favorites; they're smart and I just like their color. I prefer a heavy over a light breed. They will eat a bit more but the light breeds can 'fly' to the top of a six foot fence and over.
The easiest way to save on food costs is to let them forage as much as possible. My chickens always seem to want to be where I am and they will end up on the porch if they can. I don't like the poop there so my dog is trained to keep them on the other side of the yard. The eggs and occasional tasty meat is nice but I would keep them for their use as composters anyway. I would find it hard to garden without them. Any bit of food waste, peelings- anything you can compost, goes in the yard. Throw a little scratch (coarsely ground grains) on it and they will keep scratching it up. Bags of leaves, weeds, etc. disappear quickly. I don't mind if a few tomatoes get soft as anything leftover from the garden is added to the pen and turns into eggs and compost.
I easily sell the extra eggs and break even on any feed I purchase. Twenty-eight full grown eat about 60 lbs each month. A bit less in the summer. I clean the yard out twice a year; dig out a few inches, manure etc and replace with fresh dirt. Their house was built out of scrap wood and windows from a neighbor's remodel, I only purchased tar paper and rolled roofing for the roof. I believe that chickens do best with a deep litter inside the house and only clean it out about three times a year. I use dry grass clippings, leaves and purchased pine shavings. Throw a little grain on the floor once a week and they keep the manure turned in. I lock mine up at night as we have a LOT of coyotes. If they can get up on a roof, they'd probably be fine.
Some people don't think that they do well together, but I've always raised turkeys with my chickens. They are more sensitive when little but once they're two months old, they are hardy. I butcher them before winter. Hens will lay well for only about two years. After that egg production diminishes every year and I find that they just seem to start running down. Warning...they'll be very tough if you want to put them in the stewpot!
In terms of time- very little. Five minutes a day. I usually spend more time with them, just because I like them! They can be fine for a few days by themselves with extra food and water but their eggs may get broken as the nests fill up. I keep roosters so that they can raise chicks for me. Every couple of years I'll bring in some new chicks to diversify the gene pool. My all time favorite livestock choice for the small landholder.

Some coincidence: my daughter's watching the Myth Busters episode were they build the "Chicken Cannon". Chickens just don't get much respect.

I have 26 hens in two chicken tractors, and 10 in my greenhouse to add a little heat and as an experimental addition to
"four seasons gardening". The 26 are free range, except for chicks they eat very little of the commercial bagged food
i buy at the mill. They can range 1000 feet from their coop/tractor here on my little farm in south central pennsylvania. I keep a 15 watt
bulb going in each coop to encourage egg laying. During the winter we stop moving the chicken tractors and build a little fenced in
compound for them, with some motion detector lights etc.. We do rhode island reds mostly. and i take about 10 minutes a day tops dealing with them. I too find them very entertaining at time. At night all i have to do is close their door, as they will automatically
return to their roosts. They eat bugs, and since we've had tick problems in the past, this alone is probably worth the expense, but we like the eggs a lot. I'm thinking about just buying cracked corn which is cheaper given how much they forage, i also have big bags
of oyster shells, it's hard for me to believe in the spring/summer/fall that they would need much more than that. I am working my way towards about 100 of them, as I have an outlet for the eggs, and I really would like to cover the entire farm with their bug
killing capabilities. I also love their manure on my loan, and any concentrations i get in their coops goes right into my veggie gardens.

In Africa they seem to just run around and forage in the most godforsaken land/pastures, but they are still domesticated and give up their eggs for the use of the African families; however, they appear much skinnier than my reds.

Look for co-ops in your area. We have a co-op that orders excellent feed in 55 gal plastic drums. I think its 150# for 21 dollars (for laying mix) if you turn in your empty drum. They get scatch and broiler mix too.

Some friends of mine have a chicken coop in their backyard that they keep very clean and sanitary, with three chickens in a fairly large pen. Now they have to go to court against the city of Cambridge, MA because Cambridge doesn't want them doing it.

So, I'd add an additional step of checking with a lawyer to make sure it is permitted in your area.

I've been reading TOD almost daily for a couple of years and this is my first time to post. We have a flock of about 60 birds now and enjoy them every day. Our flock is Buff Orpingtons and Aracaunas so we get brown and blue eggs which our customers enjoy. We live in Central Illinois and it will be about 9 degrees tonight. I anticipate some discolored combs and wattles in the morning but it doesn't seem to bother them. Our coop isn't heated but the NW walls are insulated, we have an electric water heater which is a big help on these cold nights. Chickens need good amounts of clean water during cold weather. I change daily. Our birds free range and the results are seen in their deep yellow yolks from omega 3 in pasture. I raised some open pollinated corn this year and feed in the late afternoon so they go to roost w/ full crops w/ good heat producing corn for the night. Egg production really drops off during winter, but from keeping chickens you will learn why we have Easter Eggs, because they go nuts laying in the spring. I would encourage you to provide your birds with a good secure coop and fenced area to keep them safe from dogs etc. in town. Keep them clean for your neighbor's sake. Just this past week friends from town brought their 6 birds out as they were busted in town by an angry neighbor. We feed Purina Lay-ena and some scratch daily and our birds are very healthy. Don't scrimp on quality feed. Do take the time to read a book or two it will be very rewarding and will answer all kinds of questions. Finally regarding cold temps., remember they live in down jackets. Good luck and enjoy. They are amazing little creatures.

Let the Hen's appetite control their feeding.
Keep grits, greens and grains separate, they will eat what they need/want when they want.

Have had chickens for 20 years. They are easy if you have a secure nesting box area and a fenced acre or two for them to roam. I like Aricanas (or Americanas, as they have been genetically engineered). I feed scratch and lay pellets. We have a rooster now (bought chicks from feed store and one was a rooster). You don't want more than one rooster...and even one can be a problem. This rooster is OK, but I have sent all the others to "the river" (nearby water feature). Laying life is around 5 years or so...then they get old and don't lay as much. Usually they become sickly and then just die or disappear (as did our last sickly hen). Bury them in the garden. Predators to watch for are: fox, raccoons, hawks, and roaming dogs if you don't have a secure fenced area. They poop all over the place, but they really seem to prefer the front porch. Right now we have 9 laying hens and one rooster. More than enough eggs for us.

We've had chickens on a small farm in eastern Kansas for about three years now. When I have a question I go to Harvey and Ellen Ussery's website, http://www.themodernhomestead.us/ . Harvey and Ellen have done an amazing job of becoming relatively self-sufficient on about 2 1/2 acres in Virginia, and the site touches on much more than just chickens, but the care and feeding of fowl seems to be Harvey's passion. As an example, he details his experiments with feeding the flock with 'protein from thin air'--rotting roadkill in a hanging plastic bucket with holes in the bottom for the maggots to drop through that the birdies just love.

They also have sections on food independence, many aspects of gardening, cowshares, tools, forest gardening, and more.

Chickens are not the best option, they need wheat and corn that are energy and fertilizer intensive crops. Grow rabbits instead, the meat of rabbit is very low in fat, and rabbit eat grass the cheapest plant to grow, that is perennial and doesn't create soil erosion, if you plant clove you don't even need nitrogen. Last but not least rabbits can digest grass without emitting CH4 unlike cows and lamb. You can also feed your rabbits with your rest.

I know in the anglo saxon culture you don't eat rabbits, but it is a mistake in spain and france they do and it is really good, in civet, or "a la moutarde"

the only animal that can compare with rabbit in term of eco-friendly is wallabis

"raising chickens at home" raises questions: who raises the small grain for their feed, who dries it and stores it, who roasts the soybeans, who hulls the oats, who grinds the feed? You? Is that corn in the feed there? Is that King Korn, or organic? Did you raise that too?

Since I'm more interested in how we start small farming ventures that actually sustain people on a liveable income than I am in personal household survival matters, these kinds of questions are of interest.

Here in central Wisc., it's hard to find small-scale grain equipment for instance. Custom farm services don't want to come out and combine your 1.5 acres of oats or buckwheat or whatever. Nobody has small-scale threshers around that are other than lawn ornaments, cute antiques that haven't worked in 30 years. You can't find a small-scale oat and buckwheat huller anywhere. Searching on the internet turns up some nice companies in India, but then, the shipping costs would be burdensome.

So, you have to buy the commercial feed. If you're trying to go into the small-scale poultry biz, well, I just don't see why you'd do it unless you can command an enormous price for the meat or the eggs. If you're commanding enormous prices, you're not making much of a dent in the issue of feeding the low-income working class population in your region. If you're not making much of a dent in feeding low-income people, I lose interest in the mission right away.

Just a couple comments there.

Bobby G
Central Wisc.
http://www.biodiversecity.com

For a while, we converted one of our backyard raised vegetable garden beds to a caged chicken pen/coop. I loved having the three beautiful bantams nearby while I gardened. It was definitely a money losing venture, however! I see quite a few chickens in backyards here in Boulder and some, I've noticed, run loose unfenced in yards on busy streets (and seem to do ok).

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art had an Urban Chicken Coop Exhibit in conjunction with the Farmer's Market this past season. (It's located adjacent to the Farmer's market). I took photos and did a write-up of it here.

I prefer to keep the big breeds like New Hampshires for the good sized eggs. Those smaller breeds that look cute with furry feet are no good because the eggs are so small they are gone in one bite.

I found that mixing different sized breeds causes problems with the smaller ones getting overly pecked.

The chickens are really comin' home to roost these days.

I've just seen clips from a very interesting documentary by two brothers called Austin and Brian Chu. They pooled their meagre resources, bought a van, took a camera, and began an epic journy around the United States, apparently visiting every state, in order to see how the economic recession was effecting ordinary communities and how they were dealing with it. The documentary is called 'The Recess Ends' and they have website, Therecessends.com which is worth looking at.

The brothers felt that the mainstream, corporate, media, were not telling the truth about what was happening out in the real world, or giving space for the voices of ordinary Americans, as their world, and dreams, dissolved around them.

The images from Detroit are deeply disturbing. The waste, the destruction, the sadness. These are pictures that show a civilization that's crumbling and dying, and should be of great interest to TOD readers, as they are the shape of things to come, as they show the creaping impoverishment of the American working and middle-class, the beginning of the end of the American Dream, what the American Nightmare will look like.

City workers are scratching out guidelines to allow residents to raise chickens, rules modeled after ordinances adopted in communities across the country..

One of nearby communities had quite a debate this summer about raising chickens in the back yard in town. http://www.record-eagle.com/local/local_story_156225644.html

Chickens like company, they are sociable. They tend to fall out in the groups we force them into, but they like other creatures. My mum always has some and they live with a house of cats and dogs happily. When it was cold they used to come in the house and squat on an old German Shepherd to watch TV. Shame they poop everywhere..

A practical ( and fun) post on chicken raising. I'd like to link this post to my blog in a few weeks when we will be talking about "recovering ourselves" and the basics of rural life that our generation has permitted itself the luxury to forget. So many centuries of knowing how to milk a cow, raise chickens or make a loaf of bread and we've completely abandoned those skills as if we're beyond the age of ever needing them again. Thanks Gail.

As a farmer with chickens in Hawaii, i've been studying the issue of how to raise chickens sustainably, locally, with low-carbon-footprint. All my notes and research are online:
http://ahualoa.net/chickens/

The focus is on Hawaii, but it's similar in the sub-tropics world-wide. Nearly every tropical developing-nation village has flocks of semi-feral chickens scavenging, which are useful, but that's a small number of skinny birds that produces very little eggs or meat. Meanwhile BAU chickens in the North which consume vast amounts of grain are highly productive, but almost completely unsustainable. The challenge is to find a middle ground, with good production and low inputs, and my experience shows that this is a matter of crafting a solution very specific to your location, your local resources.

Maybe it is time that we acknowledge that we need to learn skills from the folks we thought we had to teach skills to. I am referring to peasant farmers. Most of the folks in the US from south of the border have experience in handling chickens and processing them for food. Just by watching when we sold some chickens to Mexican workers here I learned a better way to tie there feet if you are transporting them without a cage. If I knew more Spanish I could learn more. Peasant farmers the world over would be amazed that we are so challenged to raise poultry. They have been doing it for centuries. We have forgotten how in a century or less. Often when I talk about slaughtering chickens to folks around here they will relate tales of their grandmother who would grab a chicken, give it a quick swing and off comes the head. I don't dare try that but it would be quicker if I was sure I could do it right the first time.

We are trying to figure out how to go backwards and hoping that back is just a baby step so we can keep some of the trappings of the industrial age (such as heated water bowls). Yet all over the world, amazing as it may seem, folks with little education but survival smarts are raising poultry and donkeys and surviving and reproducing. We have to shed ourselves of our book learned superiority and humbly learn from the peasants of the world.

Gail and other posters,

A great topic close to my heart.

My family and I have had chickens on our small farm for many years. Though we buy some commercial chicken feed, we have made quite a few discoveries on the path to "sustainable chickens".

We live in a very wooded area, with the full spectrum of predators. (No bears, however.) We've found that the best protection for our poultry is the presence of well-trained herding dogs. While I don't know of any dogs bred for herding chickens, we have chosen various standard livestock breeds and then acclimated them to living with and protecting--not eating--our chickens. Some puppies that we've tried, though, cannot seem to overcome wanting to play with the younger chickens--which almost always results in a broken chicken neck. These puppies have to be sent out to live with neighbors who don't raise chickens.

Unless you want to be buying new chickens every few years, it's helpful to raise breeds with good mothering instincts. We bought breeds where the hens were supposed to have good mothering instincts, Dorkings and Orpington's, but they didn't seem to read the same magazine articles that we did. So we hatched out eggs by incubator. (Incubators, of course, are dependent on the electric grid.)

We found over time, however, that many of the hens from our Dorking / Orpington crosses made great mothers. I suspect that this may be true of many other crosses of the older breeds.

There was mention in some of the posts of chickens, rabbits, and fat. If you are trying to raise your own food, both chicken eggs and meat are good sources of fat, as are ducks and geese.

With our dogs, we don't need to do much to protect our birds from predators, except for mothers with babies. Left to their own instincts, once the baby chicks are a few days old the mothers just wander around the farm, and bed down for the night in any comfortable looking spot. On more than one occasion, we found several baby chicks huddled together in the morning, with no mother in sight.

We suspect that a predator, perhaps an owl, or a raccoon, carried the large, tasty entree, mother, off into the night, leaving the relatively meatless babies to fend for themselves. So now we lock up mothers and new babies until they are about a month old.

While our chickens don't need much protection beyond the dogs, the gardens certainly do. Any unfenced garden bed is quickly picked clean by the birds, or dug up into a dirt bath for sun-bathing. So we use a great deal of chicken wire to keep the birds out of the garden. On the plus side, the birds eat many of the bugs that might feed on our garden plants, and leave a sizeable deposit of good organic fertilizer in the garden pathways. In the fall we rake the composted manure onto the garden beds.

I would love to know how farmers (and village dwellers) in the old days kept the chickens out of the garden without chicken wire. I know that they had walls and hedges. These barriers, along with clipped wings, might have been sufficent to protect their gardens. A few dogs WITH chicken eating tendencies kept within the garden walls would probably do the trick as well.

I want to mention two very helpful websites, as well.

The first, http://poultrybookstore.blogspot.com/ , is an excellent source for information about the different chicken breeds, and of many other topics of interest to chicken owners. The author, Christine Heinrichs, has written a book about chickens, and has obviously devoted a great deal of time and energy to her blog.

The other website, noted by another poster, is http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Home.html . This website, authored by Harvey and Ellen Ussery, is one of the best sources of information about sustainable food raising that I've seen anywhere. The authors write for Mother Earth News and other homestead oriented magazines.

It is well worth your time to look at their article http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Growing-Poultry-Feeds-1.html , titled "Feeding the Flock from the Homestead's Own Resources." There is information here for both the back yard flock owner, as well as for those that live on a small farm.

For example, they write about feeding chickens sprouted grains, beans, or peas, which in the sprouted form may have more nutrition than the purchased feed. Mustard greens, dandelions, dock weed, and nettles are all great sources of food for poultry, and all easily grown in both country and city gardens. (Though in some towns the neighbors might frown on your growing dandelions and nettles.)

They describe other garden crops that chickens love as well--potatoes (sweet and white), beets, and squash. All these crops might substitute for grains if the latter were not available.

For those with room for trees and shrubs, chickens love fruit and nuts, though they might need help cracking the shells. Fruit such as mulberries and persimmons, that may not be well used by humans, is happily devoured by the poultry.

My email address is in my profile if you want to contact me after this Campfire post becomes inactive.

--Fingers in the Soil

Tks Gail, Yr post brings back memories of childhood downunda. Chore was morning feed of Mother's hens by hand cast. Practiced what I called "socialist distribution of corn". Over many years noticed that this enabled lower caste ladies to get a little more food, but perhaps at the cost of 1-2 more tail feathers .

A great item with lots of interesting points. As a lifelong, intermittent chook owner (for you yanks who use the word "chicken" for all ages, to other English speakers chickens are just those little bitty fluffy things that hide under a chook or hen.), I would like to add a few things that seem to have been missed so far.

Smell from droppings. Spraying the deep litter, droppings boards, perches, etc with EM (Effective Micro-organisms) will greatly reduce or eliminate offensive odours and increase the value of the resultant compost. Is also better that disinfectant for spraying the henhouse when changing the flock.

Grit. All birds need a good supply of varying sized stones in their gizzard. A lack of grit can result in poor nutrition and higher feed requirements, as much of the ingested food passes thru without proper digestion. Oyster grit alone is not enough, as whilst it does supply needed calcium for eggshells, it is too soft for effective grinding of grains, insect carapace, mouse bones, etc

Dust baths. These have been mentioned but are not easy in places with frequent rainfall. I have found that an old glass door propped up on bricks or logs is great. Just dig a bit of land by inverting the soil or sod, and place the glass over it. In a few days the ground beneath will be dry and perfect as a dust bath. Move frequently to avoid mite buildup in the dust.

Chicken sexing. Some crossbred chickens can be sexed as day old chicks. Most of these are crosses with the Barred Rock breed. If you only want layer hens and no meat birds, using a barred rock rooster over other breeds of hen can allow you to kill off the cockerells as day old chicks, rather that feeding them for six months. (Google autosexing)

Worm farms. These are great for providing a natural, high protein food for chooks. Whilst chooks will eat a fair bit of kitchen scraps, a worm farm will process almost everything if it is properly presented. An old undersink waste disposal unit is great for preparing all kitchen waste for adding to a worm farm. Don't let it go down the sewer, feed it to the worms; feed the worms to the chooks; feed the chooks and eggs to your family.

Another great system is to cage rabbits on half inch mesh above a worm farm, feed grass and other greenstuff to the rabbits, the droppings fall into the wormfarm which then provides worms for the chooks.

Uncontrolled chooks can destroy a vegetable garden if allowed free access. I have found that they seem to prefer silver beet (AKA swiss chard) to any other fresh green "Human" vegetable. This beet is easy to grow, hardy, tasty and nutritious for humans. Planting a good row or two of it between the chooks and the main vegetable garden can reduce the damage to the lettuces, cabbages, etc.

Protection from raptors. By choice, free range chooks will not spend long periods out in open paddocks. They prefer to be close to trees where they are safer from hawks, falcons, etc. A relatively cheap form of protection is to zig-zag monofilament nylon fishing line between chicken wire fences. A bunch of old CD's strung on the line also helps to warn the raptors of the danger. (NB Not suitable for guys over 6 feet tall)

In a free range situation, chooks can survive on forage foods, but will always do better if fed a range of grains and seeds to supplement the natural diet.

Updating the flock. Unless you have a permanently self-replacing flock with hens, roosters, chicks, all on the go, it is best to replace all birds at the same time. (The old Trade Union principle "One out, All out"). Kill all the old boilers, and bring in a fresh bunch of pullets. Otherwise you will have some major battles as they try to sort out a new pecking order.

A final point: many folk have mentioned that old chooks are tough. This is only true if you treat them like supermarket produce. An old chook, slowly roasted in a covered dish in a moderate oven can be just as tender and far more tasty than any commercial product. Those dark meat legs are delicious.

I'd suggest Rule #11- If the laws regarding chickens in your town don't make sense, get together with others and change them.

We did this in our town. We took a slow and patient approach, and in the last month got some folks on the team that had (newly minted) planning degrees and someone who had served on a greenways commission.

We spoke softly (lobbied with rational planning language) and carried a big stick (we had 60 well-behaved people, twice, at two hearings-- who council sensed could act as precinct walkers in the upcoming election.

This coalition also acted as practice for other peak oil legislative changes we need to make.

At the last minute, the animal staff suggested that all coops be inspected, at taxpayer expense (tens of thousands of dollars) before approval. We quietly but firmly let it be known that that would not be acceptable; and got it changed to complaint-driven. We didn't get everything we wanted, but we got most; and set a precedent for returning in a year or two if need be.

This is happening in many cities. Next step: Tour de Coop!

I've had chickens for about five years now. My biggest surprise: that brooding (sitting on the nest to hatch eggs) has been bred out of the modern US chicken. If you want to make your flock "sustainable," buy at a Silkie (small, furry-feathered chicken) which normally will brood - and she will brood the eggs of any hens.

Chickens are trouble-free. I read all the books but my chickens pretty much just take care of themselves. I have large dogs so when I had the young chicks I made sure the dogs knew they were MINE and once the chicks are feathered out (about 3 -4 months), the dogs and cats left them alone (and chicks need to be kept warm until they are feathered - they can go down to 45degrees at the end of 3 weeks but before that need 80 - 90 degrees.) The big dogs do keep the coyotes away and I always (most of the time) shut and lock the door on the coop (outhouse) at dusk.

My chickens have the run of the place and when my son decided to go into larger flocks and took my coop, I re-housed my 3 layers in an old outhouse (seat covered, of course) and they are doing fine there.

It takes a marketing machine and a profit motive to make raising a few laying hens look complex.

"As I look through some of the sites, it strikes me that the directions provided are pretty much for how to raise chickens in a BAU world."

I hope you don't mind but there is quite a bit of chicken info from the PO perspective here:
http://peakoil.com/planning/production-poultry-was-backyard-chickens-t72...

best supplemental feed for chickens ....sprouted seeds(grains)

Instead of cracked corn .. sprout it.

Milo , barley , wheat, sunflower , etc

Very good campfire post.

Oxidated Gem, Where in Alabama do you live? I used to live in Huntsville, my brother still does, I should be heading that way in a week or so for Christmas.

Here in Central Arkansas, Little Rock just recently allowed chickens to be kept in backyards, I don't know the particulars but it was a step in the right direction.

I live in the smaller city of North Little Rock, about 65,000 people more or less, and we could have chickens if we wanted too. In fact the next door neighbor got a hen and a rooster this past spring. Rooster woke us up one to many times, we are all getting to be late sleepers. Roosters are not allowed in the city limits, hens are if kept penned.

A few decades ago there was a law against rabbits being kept, I don't know if that has changed or not.

Both my parents kept chickens when they were growing up. My dad would use a 22 rifle to kill the chickens his mother wanted for supper(head shot). But he is an expert marksman with a rifle or pistol. I've heard lots of tales of chicken woes and stuff.

If you have only a yard to grow the food in, plan well and a few chickens should be able to be fed off the food available without buying to much feed from outside. I'd think that the more chickens become common some areas will have more resources for the home chicken keepers. Ask around locally and see who grows grains and such and see if some deals can be struck up.

Tree seeds like acorns, broken open and mashed a bit seems to be another source of food.

Lots of good sites to add to your reading lists, thanks ALL.

I won't be able to fit chickens into my yard, unless I can figure out a zero cost budget. Maybe later when riding the bus to the store gets to be a problem, I'll have to figure out how to keep a few hens for the eggs.

Charles.

I dont know how it is further south but in Sweden where the winter nights are long you need artificial lights to get the hens to lay eggs in the winter.

One of telltale signs for a rare original rural electrical installation is the wire from the indoor light switch in the home to the chicken coop. Timers were to expensive during the first half of the 20:th century. But I have not seen one for quite a while although the porcelean insulators use to be left in place on the walls, three or five on the living house and two on the chicken coop.

I'd like to make a plea for Muscovy Ducks.

They're descended from a South American wild duck, so not derived from Mallards, as so many Western domestic ducks are. This gives them some advantages, specifically a different quality of meat, which is less greasy than ducks and geese as we know them, something between veal and venison in flavour. The drakes in particular get big and heavy, with plenty of meat.

These are hardy birds -- in the British and similar climates -- and need little weather protection. And of course you can expect them to be more waterproof than chickens. If you have waterways and standing water right by your place, as I have, Muscovys will use them as a resource, and bring home the results of their foraging outside the boundaries of your own ground, in the same way that bee colonies and pigeon-lofts do.

My birds are kept with minimal protection either from weather or predators, and are allowed constant free-range. Their only -- partial -- defence apart from their own watchfulness and ability to get up high in the air within a second or so, are my dogs. (The dogs -- especially my LGD Turkish Shepherd Dog --would do a lot more, but have to be kept within a boundary fence, whereas the ducks can roam at will)

I'm working a broad plan which allows the birds all the freedom they want, with their flight feathers never clipped, and allows the foxes to take any who aren't sharp enough to evade them. Already, in the second generation since set up, the fools and the sharpies have been well sorted. Naturally, only the sharpies will be around to breed next Spring -- to pass on their sharpness to next year's ducklings.

I also give only token amounts of food, just to keep the birds around and make them dead easy to round up and pen whenever I want to, just by going to the feed bins and calling: "Come on, little ducks!" This works like neverfail clockwork. They come running and flying from wherever they are, even if they're out of line of sight. It does seem to me that Muscovys are quite intelligent birds, and soon learn the ropes of your place. They also seem to be great stay-at-homes, without the need of fencing. The saying is that they fly around, but they don't fly away.

This management plan, such as it is, means that I spend next to nothing on concentrate feeds (probably about 120 kilos for the whole flock for a year) and that they get an excellently healthy free-range diet for free. I have a good deal of neglected land all around my place, nominally owned by a cement and quarry transnational. Much of it is not in any kind of commercial or agricultural use at all.

I also have a lot of comfrey plants (Bocking 14 variety for preference) from which to make high-grade poultry food from the wilted foliage. Some of these plants are on my own place, but a lot I just planted out on footpath verges, canal towpaths, and on the sides of a cycle-path nearby, where they grow like wild 'weeds' and are universally ignored. There are also quite a lot of self-sown, genuinely wild comfrey plants in these places too, so I have access to tons of dried feed material annually, just for the gathering. Comfrey will take six, eight, even ten cuts a year easily. Expert farmers in its Victorian heyday as a fodder plant were reportedly getting 120 tons per acre (sic!) a year of green foliage. Contains excellent natural balances of nutrients and minerals for both plants and livestock.

In practise I've never had to use this for bird food yet, since the flock at its present size has a super-abundance of wild forage free for the taking. So far the comfrey just goes into making mulch and comfrey-tea for feeding my raised vegetable beds. But wilted comfrey, and the meal which you get by roughly grinding it up a little when dry, is famously good animal fodder.

I reckon there are at least five benefits to my permaculture system coming from the ducks. (Thats just to mention the ones I've realised so far; I'm sure there are more that I haven't noticed yet; that's usually the way with a permaculture web) I get eggs, meat, down/feathers, high grade fertiliser from the droppings harvested in the communal night-coop, and population-control of slugs, snails, rat and mice infants, and other potentially troublesome neighbours.

Initially, I let the birds roost where they liked at night. Another of their South American oddities is that they are tree perchers, and have strong claws on their webbed feet for this purpose. (Also useful for gralloching foxes! Mature drakes have been seen to do this, successfully driving off their attackers) But it was soon clear that I was losing out on the night droppings from food brought in from their daily out-foraging, and it was just getting spread around everywhere. So now I lure them in with a bit of supper, and close them in till morning. They perch on broad, flat timber perches, above a heavy wire-mesh floor, with collection floor below.

These ducks are excellent mothers, and will raise broods and bring them home without help, if you just want to leave them to it. But to gather at least some of the eggs, just provide them with nest boxes at home, and they'll use them willingly. You can get two broods a year easily, as well as eggs, in Spring and in early Autumn. To cut duckling mortality drastically, without too much extra work, just keep mother and chicks on grass for the first couple of weeks after hatching, in an open floored ark with half-inch mesh covering on the topsides, and slide them to a new patch of grass each day. This will need water and food feeders, and the ducklings appreciate a splash in a very shallow pan of water most days. Do watch newly-hatched ducklings, though, for waterlogging and chilling, as they seem not to be quite so waterproof as Mallard-derived chicks. This soon comes, though.

There is a rare disease that seems to be associated with chicken feathers and dust--Boeck's sarcoid. When my mother was diagnosed, we were told that sarcoidosis tends to affect 20-30 yr. olds, females, and Afri-Amer. workers in commercial-size chicken houses. We never had more than 30 hens at one time. The disease was first diagnosed as T.B.

With respect to as to what to do with roosters. You can eat them as well. So, I don't see what the problem is with getting too many roosters. Also, even if the many municipalities reject the raising of chickens within their boundaries, the eventual rise in food prices will prompt the local citizenry to approach the leadership and demand the right to raise chickens. Also, rabbits are good for meat, and produce a very good fertilizer as well. They don't take any more space than a regular size chicken coop does. However, you may have to cull the rabbits more often to reduce the population. Rabbit pelts also make good insulated materiel for clothing, gloves, hats, Etc. Fish can be raised in used bathtubs that are buried in the ground and have aerators in them to keep the oxygen levels up. Beekeeping can be done on a small scale as well. One or two hives will provide pollination services for the backyard garden and provide honey and wax. The beeswax can be use to make candles and used in woodworking. Beeswax can also be used to waterproof the rabbit pelts for footwear. The backyard can be used to supply a good amount of things that families can use, along with raising chickens.

Last year I joined an Egg cooperative. There were 7 families that raise about 35 chicken. We were fortunate to have a local farm that gave us some space (The families live in a housing development). Each family had a day they feed and watered the chickens and then occasionally, all the familys would show up for a cleaning party to muck out the coop.

We had a variety of breeds and it was obvious that some breeds produced better than others. It seemed that the breeds that were bred for egg laying produced according to expectations.

As far as production; Winter you normally would get 12 to 15 eggs a day. Spring and Fall I got a high of over 30 eggs one of my days, but the average was about 2 dozen. In the summer when it got hot, the production dropped off again (It drops especially during molting.)

The other side benefit was all the high nitrogen fertilizer you can use.

Lessons learned:

The bigger the area you can give them the better. They eat anything green and given more space you get less 'picked on' chickens.

You could let them out during the day to forage after they were accustom to their coop. They would return in the evening to roost (or you come to feed them).

As mentioned, Roosters can be mean. They will attack children.

They have to be cared for, so it can put a crimp on vacation plans unless you get a chicken sitter.

It's an urban legend that home grown eggs taste better than store bought eggs. Growing chickens is costly, so unless you already pay through the nose for 'cage free' and 'organically grown' eggs, I will actually cost you more than the store.