In my addled mind, chickens occupy two distinct roles, the ones I buy pre-packaged at the grocer for eating and the ones I feed every morning for loving and eggs. And never the twain shall meet although I do get the question all the time:
“Do you eat your chickens?”
“I dunno, do you eat your golden retriever?”
See? Twain don’t meet.
Recently, the backyard chicken frenzy has become just that. It’s as if all of a sudden suburbanites everywhere woke up, realized that city zoning allows for sometimes up to 10 hens (but no roosters), looked at the price of eggs, especially organic free-range eggs, and declared, “My Lord Honey, I’m gonna get me some of them there chickens.” Or something along those lines.
As I am a bit of a chicken-raising veteran myself, what follows is a tutorial on the ins and outs and pros and cons of raising your own hens. Let’s proceed.
What You’ll Need (Before)
• Shelter
• Nesting Boxes
• Yard Space
• Decent neighbors
Shelter for your hens can be anything from a casual lean-to to a miniature McMansion. Chickens are not fond of weather extremes, typically do not like to get wet (Madder than a…), and will go on strike if faced with either for any length of time. Since my husband began his illustrious career as a carpenter, something that has saved us immeasurably over the years, we got a little ambitious with our hen house, spent more on materials than any real farmer would have, and built what could, if we ever sell this place, and after a few gallons of bleach applied, easily convert to a child’s playhouse. You do not need to do this. You do need to provide 2-3 sq ft of space per hen in an area sheltered from wind and rain that has a door and small ramp for the chickens to enter and exit. You will also need to be able to access this area for egg gathering, coop cleaning, and chicken tending. You can do this by designing your hen house tall enough to stand in, which is what we did, or by engineering it to have a hinged roof or side. Hen house plans abound on the internet and, for the less tool-inclined, many prefab ones are available at feed stores or through mail order.
Decent neighbors can be hard to come by. Fortunately, most of ours are very nice, understanding, and are easily bribed with farm fresh eggs. Yet, we have The One; every neighborhood has The One. Before you set up your coop, it’s a good idea to tell your neighbors what you’re doing, see if they have any huge objections, and then ignore them if you are following your proper zoning laws (I know mine by heart). As long as you don’t have roosters and keep your coop clean, I honestly don’t know why anyone would object to your adventures in pretend farming. The benefits of farm fresh organic free range eggs are immense. For very little work, you are gifted with the best tasting eggs on God’s green (brown) earth. You know where they’ve been from the moment they entered the world as well as knowing the health and antibiotic-free state of the hens from which they come. It’s a win-win and I for one am pleased that the echos or boomers or whoever they are have caught on to the wonders of raising hens.
Later, I will talk about selecting the right chickens for your needs as well as how to care for them once they are at your home. If you are jonesing to learn more right this minute, backyardchickens.com is a great overall source for all things chicken as well as a great place to ask questions and check in from time to time.
Until tomorrow…
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MissOjib
Ann Nichols
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Comments
I love that little purr that a chicken makes, when they're drowsing.
And I love the farm-fresh, wholly wonderful eggs. Mmm!
Connie, thanks for the great welcome. It is nice to be back.
Thank you everyone!
Great info though!
Don't forget to tell everyone about the rat snake/chicken snakes.
{[R]}
As for smell - peat moss did the job for us in the coop!
Amateurs that we were, however, we made a huge mistake in not stipulating a hen to rooster ratio when we ordered (What were we thinking????).
We ended up with about half of each gender. The cocks' crowing isn't a problem where we live and, in fact, I kind of like the sound. It's the aggressiveness that I can't stand. So cuddly and cute when small, the guys grew up to be sadistic feathered rapists. They try to hump (as well as mutilate, strangle, step on, peck to death and otherwise terrorize) any female they see with those scary and emotionless side-glance-only eyes of theirs, including me. There was a particularly stressful encounter with a relentlessly violent Legg-Horn we call Spike, who cornered me in the coop one morning, that still gives me nightmares.
The hens, however, are (mostly) as friendly and gentle as you suggest. We now keep the more aggressive cocks in a separate compartment. Some we have to completely isolate, since they go after each other with as much gusto as they do the females. (Now I understand how the cock-fight phenomenon got started). One Baard Rock is bullied so much we keep him in the barn with the cows and our several dozen cats. He lords over the felines with an impressively manly pride, but they don't bother each other at all.
The moral of the story is: restrict your poultry adventures to female-only ones, at least initially, unless you have a whole lot of space, no neighbors, ankles made of cement, or a streak of masochism.
I guess we're as strange as your family :) We've had several come in to hang out with us when we're home sick, and we currently have 2 banty hens and a Wood duck in our upstairs bathroom to get them through the winter (one of the bantams is 7 years old).
Our poultry share a big barn with the horses and we have to hunt for eggs - nest boxes would be a nice touch!
I agree with ttfn, and cats?
Feed them to standard black poodles,
and splash in puddles with bbn? Sneak?
Sneak smoke in the chicken coop? Roost?
Root all roosters out of the coop? Eat eggs!
I just ate animal chicken cookies? I just lied!
If you know any cruel red rooster? Choke it!
tease
Dye red rooster's feathers yellow? Fry hens!
No. But, riisters have sharp spur. Manicure!
Trim rooster nails and comb hair. Dye hairs!
Dye Ya's beautiful dark hair silver. huh silly!
Ya stay young if Ya raise chickens. I took fifty old tough chickens to a Mennonite chicken farmer. The farmers have pluck machines that look like a funnel-wringer-washer. The gadget plucks and the farmer "dresses" the chicken ans bags them for the freezer. I can't figure why they say I'll chop the old tough birds up and "dress" it for a fee.
Dress?
Goofy?
I'll usually take a tough-flock of old birds up into the mountains. Then I can't feel horrible about what a red/grey fox says/do. Seriously.
Chicken that are grass fed and not fed marigold petals and hormones?
You may never ear a tender Purdue hormone chicken again - Ever.
Food Inc.
That 'expose' ref Smithfield pork etc.,
and chicken/turkey is a documentary.
Every person who eats should beware.
`
Rooster combs remind me of Pilgrim?
He should turn a crown in for a date?
He can go attend high school. Prom?
Pilgrim Prom King? Wear a mohawk?
Congratulation on a KFC BBQ wings.
tease.
fun?
Tough chicken are great soup meat.
Thanks, and more power to you.
I think I like your backyard chicken farm :) cluck cluck
R
cominghome, Peat moss, interesting idea for smells. It's so dry here in the Sonoran Desert that the smell typically doesn't get bad but I definitely keep that in mind.
msreaon, I can't imagine ordering a straight run of 40 chicks. I'm not surprised you had/have a problem with roosters. Typically, people that order straight runs (all sexes) eat the males and keep the females for their eggs. When we order chicks, we order females and, as someone else said, we inevitably end up with a few roosters anyway. We had to put down one very aggressive rooster who attacked us anytime we ventured into the coop. The pain of a rooster's spur sinking into one's shin is nothing I want to experience again.
Art James, as I live and breathe, charmed to have you stop by.
Hi Bob! Bonjour Monsieur!
Stan, that is quite a compliment, though I believe undeserved. Thank you very much.
Gabby, give it a try. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm excited to hear about your adventures in backyard chicken raising.
Hi Ann! Sounds like a great plan.
Hello and thanks to everyone I missed. I'm thrilled so many people are interested in raising chickens.
Thanks again!
My husband says no.
This is based on my many years of dead formerly living things. Houseplants, aquarium fish, hamsters. Dogs stay alive because they come and dance in front of me when it's time to be fed.
Do chickens dance for their food?
Deborah, they like reality shows but they make them cranky. Go for Discovery.
And that was okay until the neighbor's four year old thought it would be funny to stop Hank from getting to the hen house. Hank flew right at the boy, scared the bejesus out of him and left him crying and continued on his way but there was an uproar and and we had to find another home for Hank. Not that many people want roosters. It was a challenge but eventually he found he found a new home.
We miss him still.
Seriously, this was an excellently written instructional post that anyone could use to do it themselves. It is not outside my realm of possibility at all. Thanks for the excellent tutorial, infused with your personal style and humor. Very readable and understandable. You should be getting paid for this kind of work ;-)
pretend_farmer writes:
"In my addled mind, chickens occupy two distinct roles, the ones I buy pre-packaged at the grocer for eating and the ones I feed every morning for loving and eggs. ..I dunno, do you eat your golden retriever?”
I don't quite follow your logic. It's akin to saying it's acceptable to eat golden retrievers prepackaged at the grocer, but not acceptable to eat golden retrievers kept as companion animals.
Humans are a vegetarian species.
The frugivores (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and other primates) have intestinal tracts twelve times the length of the body, clawless hands and alkaline urine and saliva. Their diet is mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented with carrion, insects, etc.
Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth. Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth. However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk deer.
It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called "canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals. A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of magnesia content. Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia. It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their prey, and reach the nutritious marrow.
Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book, The Naked Ape: "It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding patterns."
In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read: "...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful vegetarians, rather like chimps or gorillas. The popular image of the murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves."
Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth--showing that they were destined to deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the vegetable kingdom...
"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and by condiments.
"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse.
"I remember taking some medical students into a slaughterhouse. They were about as hardened people as you could meet. After seeing the animals slaughtered that day in the slaughterhouse, not one of them could eat the meat that evening."
Author R.H. Weldon writes in No Animal Food:
"The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man can take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with a carnivorous instinct, but the very thought of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger, he will eat fruit to gratify taste."
As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that: "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." More recently, William S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens concluded: "Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease."
Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that killing animals for food is natural:
"This is quite an admirable argument. It explains practically everything; why we do not eat each other, except under conditions of unusual stress; why we may kill certain other animals (they are, in the order of nature, food for us); even why we should be kind to pets and try to help miscellaneous wildlife (they are not naturally our food). There are some problems with the idea that an order of nature determines which species are food for us, but an examination of human history indicates the broad outlines of just such an order, though inhibitions against eating certain species may vary from culture to culture.
"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it justifies hunting. The distinction between hunting and animal husbandry probably seems rather fine to the man in the street, or even to your typical rule-utilitarian moral philosopher. The distinction, however, is obvious to an ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature, then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature.
"When one species of animal preys on another in nature, it only preys on a very small proportion of the total species population. Obviously, the predator species relies on its prey for its continued survival. Therefore, to wipe the prey species out through overhunting would be fatal. In practice, members of such predator species rely on such strategies as territoriality to restrict overhunting and to insure the continued existence of its food supply.
"Moreover, only the weakest members of the prey species are the predator's victims: the feeble, the sick, the lame, or the young accidentally separated from the fold. The life of the typical zebra is usually placid, even in lion country; this kind of violence is the exception in nature, not the rule.
"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist. The philosopher is free to argue that there is no moral difference between hunting and slaughter, but he cannot invoke nature as a defense of this idea.
"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task by the larger community for their killing of animals? Hunters usually react to such criticism by replying that if hunting is wrong, then meat-hunting must be wrong as well. The hunter is certainly right on one point--the larger community is hypocritical to object to hunting when it consumes the flesh of domesticated animals. If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be meat from a hunted animal."
Linnaeus, who introduced binomial nomenclature (naming plants and animals according to their physical structure) wrote: "Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of other animals shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food."
The myth that humans are naturally a predator species remains popular. "The beast of prey is the highest form of active life," wrote Nazi philosopher Oswald Spengler in 1931. "It represents a mode of living which requires the extreme degree of the necessity of fighting, conquering, annihilating, and self-assertion. The human race ranks highly because it belongs to the class of beasts of prey. Therefore we find in man the tactics of life proper to a bold, cunning beast of prey. He lives engaged in aggression, killing, and annihilation. He wants to be master in as much as he exists."
The fact that predators exist in the wild does not imply man must automatically imitate them. Cannibalism and rape also occur in nature. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book In the South Seas, noted that there was no difference between the "civilized" Europeans and the "savages" of the Cannibal Islands.
"We consume the carcasses of creatures with like appetites, passions, and organs as our own. We feed on babes, though not our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear."
Studies indicate flesh-eaters have less endurance than do vegetarians, while vegetarians have two to three times greater stamina and recover five times as quickly from exhaustion. Most kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease, osteoporosis, kidney disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, hemorrhoids, diverticulosis, arthritis, gallstones and gallbladder disease are all preventable and/or treatable or a vegetarian diet.
In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:
"Killing an animal is in itself a troubling act. It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat we would all be vegetarians. There may be exceptions to that general rule, but it is true that most people prefer not to inquire into the killing of the animals they eat.
"Very few people ever visit a slaughterhouse; and films of slaughterhouse operations are rarely shown on television...Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.
"If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?"
Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."
Dr. Milton Mills' "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating,"
www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm
and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,
www.pcrm.org ,
argue persuasively that the optimal diet for humanity is a vegan diet. However, even if humans really are omnivores and not frugivores, the diet of natural omnivores is mostly (80 percent) plant food.
I've been listening at the door for falling chickens for two weeks!
I guess that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "the chickens have come home to roost ".