I would love a couple of chickens as pets, especially ex battery girls to give them a nice life.
We don’t have a great deal of space but have enough room for a coop and some space for them to roam freely.
How much room do they really need?
I have much to learn and would really appreciate some advice.
Thanks in anticipation.
Hi
What a lovely idea. They also love your left over waste food. I love chickens because they save me binning food. They are the easiest of animals to keep. I often include chopped up garlic cloves in their food which acts as a natural wormer. Thats all thay did in olden days.
Chickens don't need much room and are quite happy in any space small or big. I am sure they are going to be very happy
Good luck
I have Queenie, Marlena, Margot, Cheryl and Daphne - all ex bats and the best feathered friends ever!!! They have free range of our garden (about an acre). Our neighbours have 2 ex bats, who live in a run which is about the size of my sitting room - 16'x18' - they are quite happy too.
Ours lay every day, but not necessarily in the same place! We frequently have to go on an Egg Hunt.
They sit on the garden bench beside me, whenever I stop for a cuppa, and are within inches of my hand when I am weeding. My only quibble with them is that they have dessimated my resident frog population - they must have French genes as they eat them down to the croak!
It's difficult for me to say how much room they need....ours have a large mesh fenced pen OH moves the fence now and again so they have fresh growth to nibble on....and a little shed, and when they have finished laying...we let them loose after lunch. They can free range, although they are little blighters for sneaking in the house if the doors left open. They can run like fury if they see us and think there might be some tid bits. They are very comical chasing each other if one has something the other wants. OH frequently buys them an extra treat of a cabbage which they devour as well as their cornmeal etc. Problem with meal is the rats enjoy it too,, in the storage shed!! Ours too have made the frogs extinct in our garden. OH also has to make sure his mesh fencing is tight on his allotment patch, or those girls are in there!! They produce the most glorious golden yolked eggs which are in high demand. When the hard freeze and snow was on during both past winters....had to keep going out a few times a day and topping up their water vats with boiling water,,, as they were freezing over etc. Oh and I always boil up the potato peelings for them.. they love 'em but don't like carrot peelings, if you are only going to have a couple of hens...probably the local pet shop may supply all your needs for feed. If you have any more, you might need to find an agricultural supplier (like an equine place or something) to get bigger bags. I think ours are all warrens....the plain brown ones, but they have glorious healthy red crops on their heads. They are scared of buzzards, and sqwark like mad if ones about, cannot think of anythings else. We had a pphase of shredding old paper, for their bedding, but it was getting soggy quickly, as they doo poo all over it...so reverted back to straw
I use wood shavings for bedding, over a few newpapers, and change them every saturday. They don't seem to poop in the nest boxes, just in the space under the perch.
~The red flesh on the top of the head is a comb isn't it?
Ours are also wary when buzzards are about, and practically catatonic when the local white-tailed sea eagles are overhead!!
Just a word of warning. If you are thinking of letting them use the whole of your garden, they will in no time destroy your garden. Best to contain them and move the space around from time to time.
Mine have about 4 sqm of garden at any one time. I still feel a bit cruel but it's a lot more than many others get. If you can move them frequently, say once a week, then you don't need to worry about worming. Mine at least have been fine. It's just when you leave them on the same ground too long that parasites build up.
jabba, i love the names of your ladies.. they sound terribly, terribly posh..
i've been meaning to get some ex battery hens for a while now.. i'm just waiting for the other half to make some sort of perch for them.. the place i live in is an old dairy farm so we have plenty of space for them to roam around.. we will be protecting the garden though and the veggie patch, by putting wire in places, but even then they are still free to roam the surrounding fields.. and they can live in the barn overnight, safe from the prowling foxes..
great tip about the garlic, that's very good to know..
Perches? Hundreds of quid on smart coops with perches set at different heights and they all choose to either try and share one nest box, or all snuggle down on floor next to the access hatch!!!! They don't seem to use the coop perch at all, but during the day prefer to sit in row on the lower branch of a dead ceanothus that we have outside the kitchen - I'll try and upload a photo - it's quite sweet!
Remember that battery hens do not know how to perch! They are used to sitting all day on a wire floor.
You can teach them to perch though quite easily. We use straw bales and a straw floor and then carefully place them on the bale and then watch them. Often they will jump off and be excited at the new toy lol, But make sure they have enough wing feathers to slow their descent. From the straw bale we just put a perch above it and they explored thenselves. Perching means they keep much cleaner and safer.
when i say perch, i actually mean something that the other half has 'knocked together' with a few bits of wood.. i wasn't planning on spending much money.. we have a room at the end of the barn, a nice little cobbled room.. i guess it was used for storage.. and that will be their home for the night.. just thought it might be nice to deck it out with straw and offer them the chance to perch if they wanted..
Make sure that the width of the wood is suitable so that they can perch without having to grip tightly. Also that the wood is smooth so no splinters, we use a mixture of thick branches or wood, once used metal scaffolding poles but soon learnt they freeze eek!
Sounds like your chucks will be very well cared for
Perches? Hundreds of quid on smart coops with perches set at different heights and they all choose to either try and share one nest box, or all snuggle down on floor next to the access hatch!!!! They don't seem to use the coop perch at all, but during the day prefer to sit in row on the lower branch of a dead ceanothus that we have outside the kitchen - I'll try and upload a photo - it's quite sweet!
Its like nesting boxes? Make a smashing row of luxury boxes all with nice soft beds and privacy shields and where do they all lay? Behind a bush lol!
you can't control animals.. least of all chickens..
thanks for the tip cascara, we'd make sure it was nice and wide and splinter free of course.. there'll be quality control going on, don't you worry.. i love the idea of putting natural wood in there.. sort of like an indoor adventure playground..
Ive been keeping chooks for a number of years now - including ex-battery hens.
At first, I let them roam the garden - until they totally decimated it! So, we compromised, and, as we both work full time, werent around in the week days and were also worried about foxes, we kept them in the run for the day, and let them out to play in the late afternoon.
If you think that EU regs state they can live in a space in a battery farm in a cage the size of an A4 piece of paper, then anything bigger than that, in fresh air, daylight, normal darkness, room to scratch, flap their wings....well, it must seem like chickeny-heaven.
Now, I keep my girls (3) in the run all the time. I move the run around, so they have added interest if they can find a different bit of grass to scratch/are near a plant to peck.
Its like nesting boxes? Make a smashing row of luxury boxes all with nice soft beds and privacy shields and where do they all lay? Behind a bush lol!
Behind a bush? Everyday is like Easter here - they rarely use the nest boxes. A couple of weeks ago we found Marlena sitting on a pile of 13 eggs - how they all were'nt smooshed is a mystery - she was quite put out that we moved them and has since moved on to another secret location!
Ahhh there is nothing worse than finding a huge piles of eggs like that, I am so soft I try and keep them all going, the most we have ever had hatch successfully is 16 though, but the mum was called Beastly, she was a big black hen with an attitude and huge wings, so she did really well and we had lots of baby Beastlys lol. All with an attitude.
The mum really matters a alot I think.
We have had some layers that we bought in at POL ( point oflay) and they were never as friendly as home grown ones, even the incubated ones were friendlier and it seems more intelligent?
How can you bear the noise of cocks? Incessant crowing - aaaargh!
I once (about a hundred years ago, before all the regulations) broke a bought egg into a frying pan and a fairly well developed chicken foetus was lying there - dead of course. I cried and cried and couldn't eat eggs for years and I can't bear fertilised ones with that dot of blood as it brings it all back. So as you can imagine, I am of the school that if you only want eggs (and don't want to breed) then only keep girls and leave the boys out of it!
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Keeping Chickens
we have a room at the end of the barn, a nice little cobbled room.. i guess it was used for storage.. and that will be their home for the night.. just thought it might be nice to deck it out with straw and offer them the chance to perch if they wanted..
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