Chickens on the brain
I'll admit it: I'm a bit obsessed with our chickens.
I didn't expect to be so taken with them. I expected them to be dirty, smelly, stupid and slightly burdensome, but worth the eggs.
In reality, they are sweet, entertaining, and very easy to care for. The older ones are generally friendly, but the ones we got as babies are best. The babies are now 8 or 10 weeks old, and they come running when they see us. They let the children catch and hold them, and they hang around us even when they've eaten their fill. They like us, and we like them. We're friends.
I love having chickens, and the eggs will be the icing on the cake.
Questions:
- Do you feed/water your chickens in the coop or outside? Or both? We toss the scraps outside, of course, and keep the water outside, but the feeder is inside. I've taken to locking them out during the day so they'll forage more, but this might be a problem when they start laying. Maybe I'll leave the coop open for the morning and lock them out for the afternoon.
- If you don't have an always-full feeder, how do you know how much to feed your chickens?
- What time do you let them out in the morning? Do you wait until they've had time to lay, or do you trust them to come back and lay their eggs in the nests rather than finding their own hidey-holes outside?
- What do you feed your chickens? Scraps, obviously, but what else? Do you think laying mash is important, or do you just give yours hen scratch? I've heard that laying mash will make them lay more, but that if they lay more they might also stop laying sooner. A friend told me that her hens lay rather well for 5-7 years instead of the spectacularly for 2-3 years because she doesn't give them laying mash.
- Have you ever asked grocery stores for free scraps for your chickens? I used to do this for my rabbits when I was a kid, but now I get funny looks. Have things changed, or am I just asking the wrong people?
Do you have any other handy tips about chickens? What did you learn the hard way? What brilliant bit of info did a friend share with you?
Here's my tip: We get free hay for the floor of the chicken coop. The local feed store is happy to let us scoop the clean scraps from the floor of their hay barn into empty feed sacks or our own trash bags. We're saving them work, and they're saving us money.
Related posts:
- Chickens: what do you know?
- Chicken update
- Our $500 egg
- Nesting boxes for the chickie ladies
- Corners to cut
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Filed under: crunchy stuff, pets
We’ve only about a years experience with our free range hens and I can try to answer a couple of your questions.
Living up north, we have to supplement them mash or they’d starve part of the year. We use wood shavings on the floor and only throw scratch down to get them to stir the shavings up and work their droppings down. I’m intrigued by the idea of no mash and longer layers. I wonder if that would work up here.
We leave both food and water in the coop and if they want it, they go in for it. When they start laying, they’ll probably have a few “accidents” and not lay them in the coop, but they’ll get the hang of it if the coop is left open. (You’ll know when they’ve laid b/c they’ll make this sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNTwi53PVa0&feature=related
I’ve never had a problem with them wanting to stay in the coop. They usually scramble
to get out of the door first. I don’t know if I’d lock them out in the afternoon either. We had to lock it up yesterday and around 3pm, there was a girl really trying to get in, so we let her and she came out a few minutes later after she left us a present.
As for when we let them out, it’s usually between 6 and 7 right now, but you can’t let them out before it’s light outside because they can’t see in the dark. (I’ve actually seen a girl run full force right into the side of the coop after dark!)
I know what you mean about being obsessed. I love everything about having my own hens except droppings on my deck. Can’t beat a pet that adds to the family economy.
I hope that helps a little bit.
We’ve had chickens for the last couple years and I’ve loved it! We have found it is not cost effective. What do you feed them to make keeping chickens cost effective?
Noel,
I haven’t done the math, but we generate a lot of scraps so we really don’t have to buy much feed. They also find a lot of bugs, etc. since we have plenty of space for them to roam. That’s part of the reason I started locking them out of the coop – I was afraid they were getting too lazy with food freely available. After locking them out during the days for a week, they are much more active and we’ve started leaving the coop open again.
Ok, I’m a complete city girl to the core, but living in the country someday is my dream! I never thought of having chickens, or any other animal, except for kitties…
But the thought of having chickens intrigues me. When you talk about feeding them scraps, are you talking literally about your leftovers? Hamburger helper, leftover rice, that sort of thing? Or is it just leftover healthy stuff? Sorry for my ignorant questions, but I do find this interesting! 
Our girls have a run attached to their coop. When they get up in the morning they leave their coop and go into the run and then when we get up in the morning we let them out of their run into another sort-of fenced area that is larger, but keeps them out of our garden. They roam around there digging in the dirt looking for bugs and taking dust baths but we also keep our compost pile there so when we have some scraps we throw them in the compost pile. This gives them fresh greens/grains/leftovers and what they don’t eat turns to soil, which they’ve readily fertilized with their poop, too. When there aren’t any scraps on top of the pile they dig through the compost turning it for us and getting treats for themselves (bugs & worms). We add the hay from their coop to the pile as well as leaves and wood shavings to keep it balanced.
Their coop has a mix of wood shavings and hay/straw which we pick up for free on craigslist or gather ourselves. We buy the shavings.
We give our chickens laying feed which we supply free-choice in their coop. They eat what they want (this gives them the calcium and proteins they need for good eggs) and forage for the rest of their diet. We also buy them millet and wheat berries which we toss at them for a treat now and then. Sometimes we place a bowl of raw milk in their run which they take free-choice. It provides not only calcium for strong eggshells but probiotics to keep any infections/illnesses away and strengthen their immune systems. They love it, too! We have several waterers in their run, since they foul them often.
Our girls have odd times for laying. Sometimes there’ll be eggs in the morning, sometimes afternoon, sometimes evening and other times we find eggs we figure they must have laid at some point between bedtime and morning. They go into their coop when they are ready to lay but when they were just starting we placed two golf balls in the nest boxes so they would get the picture. Since they like to lay where there are other eggs already, the golf balls were nice incentive to lay in that particular box. We moved the golf balls from nest box to nest box to get them acquainted with the nest boxes that way. It worked! We’ve only had a few random eggs and I imagine sometimes that can’t be helped.
Anyway, we leave the door to their run open during the day and the coop has a little chicken door that is always open that way they have access to the nest boxes and food whenever they need them.
At night, we let them go inside their coop on their own and when they are all in we close the door to their run. Sometimes we need them inside the run before they’re ready to go to bed (if we’re leaving the house and can’t keep our eyes on them) so we throw some millet/wheat berries/oatmeal in the run and they all flock in. We like to know they will be safe from predators when we are not home since we have racoons/cats/eagles in the area and quite a few chickens have gone missing in our neighborhood.
We love our chickens and love watching them interact with each other and with us. They are so much fun! One of our hens just hatched a clutch of eggs and it’s been really nice seeing her teach the chicks how to find food and scratch around for the best things to eat. It’s so sweet!
Emily,
We feed ours nearly anything: scrapings from our dinner plates, leftovers that got away from us, watermelon rinds (their favorite!), fruit/veggie peels – the entire compost bucket is for them. We even dump the coffee grounds in there. I doubt that they eat those, but they do scratch them into the soil and “disappear” them for us.
Hi there….I’ve had a few, good layers, that could be timed with a clock managing to lay every 25 to 26 hours…So I’ve always left the coop open for easy access to nesting boxes during the day, as certain ladies will lay a little later everyday then as they approach their bed time will skip a day and lay the next morning. I’ve noticed that my ladies would much rather be exploring my garden than hang out in the coop; unless they have business to attend to. Also, I let the children feed the girls everything but potatoes…My Grandmother said the eyes of potatoes would poison them, I don’t know if thats accurate, But I love the old Gals so I haven’t taken the chance.
In winter (which you don’t have, I suppose), we keep them in mostly, with feed (lay ration, which is higher in calcium than other chicken feed, mixed with whatever grain is cheapest at the feed store) and water. Summertime, they quite fend for themselves. There’s always a hose or hydrant dripping somewhere if their water runs low, and if they run out of feed (we keep this inside or out, depending on weather), I’ll know it because they drive me crazy when I step out the door. As to laying times, it’s a myth that chickens lay early in the morning. They lay all times of day, and maybe night too.
We try to keep their feeder more-or-less full; mixing the lay ration with rolled grain can help cut costs, and since we give them back their eggshells, I’m not worried about the calcium.
They let themselves out, actually. The door to our coop has broken, and thankfully we’ve had no serious predators willing enough to go in there. I think they emerge with the sun (and the daggum roosters start crowing far earlier sometimes). As to their laying, their finding hidey-holes can be a problem. We just had a rogue hen hatch out ten chicks! I gave them away, which upset her greatly, but she got over it (I’m a couple weeks from having another baby myself, and I’m just not up to raising any other babies right now). If I feel I’m not getting enough eggs (and the kids are sick and tired of ‘egg-hunting’ when it’s not Easter?), I will (or did, before the door problem) lock them up for the better part of a day or two to reacquaint them with proper laying protocol.
Fake eggs (or golf balls like recommended above?) can help them get the message too.
I mentioned what we feed our chickens… Molasses rolled grain can add some minerals, and we usually provide them with the lay ration as well (mixed half/half). I don’t know that it’d be worth it to cut back so the chickens will lay longer – ultimately they’ll be laying slower, if their bodies don’t have access to necessary egg-making nutrients. I’ve also read that your ’standard’ breed today isn’t like the old pioneer chicken that could fend for itself and thrive. We do give them all our scraps and they have a healthy diet of bugs and greens this time of year, and that helps a lot. I’ve read of people growing sugar beets (HUGE things) to store and give their chickens over the winter (skewer it on a nail on the wall), as well as squash or other good-storing produce. When they were in an area that got regular sprinkling, I noticed something growing up tall among the weeds… wheat from the whole wheat we’d fed them! This was a handy way to ‘recycle’ some of their feed, for they ate of the abundance of what they’d missed the first time around.
We don’t ask for grocery store stuff, but my grandma pilfers (with permission!) large bags of nearly-moldy bread from the food bank she volunteers in – she dries it out and we bring it home when we visit. Also, family get-togethers and potlucks usually have me putting together a to-go box of scraps for the critters.
Thanks for the info! I had no idea chickens would eat anything but those little seeds I see people throw to them in the movies. *l*
Thanks for posting these questions…our chicks are due to arrive next week, so I’m gleaning all the extra info I can. These will be our first farm animals, and we can hardly wait! (My big girls are super excited, but I’m really interested in seeing what kind of reaction my littles have.)
Just on the last question- you know that huge produce market you go to? Any vendor there will be more than happy to load you up with sun-wilted produce if you ask politely about it in the early afternoon- or if you’re not squeamish, just hang out by the market’s dumpsters and mention to the folks hauling their turned produce over to throw it out. You’ll have plenty. Our farmers’ market vendors happily donate much of their leftovers on weekends to the market’s chicken vendor and local chicken owners; that’s how I know about it.
You could also mention to a local yard service that you’d like some grass clippings- though you might end up with lawn chemicals in that unless you know the lawns.
Send a kid in for the free scraps. The best age is about 5-8. Stores always gave us kids scraps, even when the same person didn’t want to give the scraps to our Mum. Just make sure that they specify it’s for the chickens! And veg stores and other ’specialty’ stores are better for free scraps than general supermarkets.
Chickens lay eggs every 25 hours, which means that every day they lay one hour later than the day before. When laying time is during the dark hours, they don’t lay. So you go 10-14 days without an egg until that hen’s laying time is during daylight again. For that reason, you really don’t want to lock them out of their nesting area during the day. It will be someone’s time to lay while the coop is shut, guaranteed.
One way around this non-laying period is to put a light in the coop at night. We did this when our girls were younger. DH put in a bulb with a photosensor on the outside of the coop, attached to the fixture (in some vague, electrically way) and when it got dark outside the light would come on (around dusk) and in the morning, when the sun came up, the light went out. This fools the birds into thinking there are 24 hours of daylight and they don’t stop laying.
Lightning hit our photosensor so it’s out of the picture now and our girls are getting older now anyway. The oldies are over 4 years and the others have been laying for 2 years this week. We’re getting set to raise a new batch from the hatchery but we like our birds so much that we’ll definitely be keeping some of them, just for their great personalities.
One thing we did to encourage forage was to feed them only by hand. We left the feeder empty and tossed out a coffee can of scratch and another of cracked corn a couple times a day. We gauged how often to do this by how many eggs they were laying. If we only threw out one can a day, production was WAY down. If we threw out 2 or 3 it was back to normal and if we tossed them any more it was the same and there were more scorpions in the house and ticks in the yard
It’s a balancing act.
Water – we have our water in our coop – one of those little automatic bowl waterers. We keep it suspended off the ground about chest height, and it lessens their ability to mess it up.
We usually use laying pellets and give it to them free choice in a covered feeder that holds two 50 lb. bags. When we didn’t have that, we learned through trial and error how much they needed.
When they weren’t getting attacked by the insane number of predators we have lately (the children JUST came in and informed me they trapped a raccoon – using the dead chicken he attacked yesterday…) we would let them out in the morning and leave the coop open – they would go back to the nests in the coop. But they had already been laying in the coop without ranging for quite a while, so they knew where home was. Rarely the children would find a stash in the woods.
Currently we feed free-choice layer pellets, and throw all our food scraps to them, and yes, that does mean leftover food, bread, veggie trimmings, coffee grounds, their own egg shells, meat scraps when we process meat. Whatever they don’t eat, they scratch into the ground. When we clean out the goat barn, we enjoy pitching in piles of hay, then watching them spread it out for us as they hunt for bugs. We also pick “chicken salad” for them when they aren’t ranging – we pick piles of weeds (all chicken-safe), grass, etc. It’s amazing to watch a chicken snap off a 3-inch piece of grass and gobble it down.
In the past, we actually supplied whole corn, whole oats, soybean meal, and oyster shell in separate containers free choice. We made sure there was plenty of grit in the coop – sand and small rough pebbles. Never had any digestive problems. I’ve read about people who sprout whole grain for chickens in large amounts – apparently this is very healthy, and supplies “greens” requirements when you can’t range your chickens.
Never asked grocery stores for scraps – I’m going to just to see what I find! For 6 months in 2003 we did a “Publix run” – we were allowed to pick up ALL the scraps from the bakery and produce from one particular Publix – we did this for our pigs and used some for the chickens. We’re glad we don’t do this anymore – it required a commitment for my husband to be there at 6:30 EVERY morning and the children and I would take 2-3 hours every day to unpackage everything, sort it, and get it ready for the animals. We gleaned a lot of stuff for ourselves as well, but been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.
And whenever the children find grubs in the yard, or a horse you don’t have any more spills feed and a HUGE colony of meal worms/whatever larva it was develops – we scoop that up and deliver a special treat to the hens.
Thanks, everyone. Very helpful! I’m gleaning lots of good ideas and useful info from you all. Keep it coming.
I especially appreciate Lindsey’s tips on how to tell if you’re feeding enough. It makes perfect sense now.
I wouldn’t lock them out when they start laying. Different hens lay at different times and also they exactly every 24 hours. So, a hen might lay at one time one day and then again at another time the next day.
The above is suppose to read “they don’t lay every 24 hours”.