Raising Spring Chickens

Written by Nan, a member of Bee's Candida Support Group, that you are welcome to join!

May 27, 2007

Table of Contents

• Pens & Space Outdoors
• Foods They Eat
• Nests & Eggs
• Personality & Habits

Last spring I raised my own chickens so I could have fresh eggs. Raising them was fun and pretty easy so I wanted to tell you all a little bit about my experience. I encourage anyone who has the land to give it a try.

There is ample information on the internet about how to raise them and how to the build pens and cages. If your local feed store does not have chicks, check on ebay for fertilized eggs - besides chicken eggs I also found duck and quail.

Pens & Space Outdoors

Chicks can be kept in an aquarium or cardboard box with an ordinary light bulb above them to keep them warm - I bent a metal screen over mine to keep my cats out. I used a stick with thermometer attached to it to keep track of the temperature. A good temperature for chicks is warmer than room temperature, to 80° F.

Once they outgrow the aquarium or box, prepare a 6 x 6 x 6 foot pen to protect them when they are outside their hen house so they get acquainted with the outdoors. My niece put them outside as chicks when the weather was warm. She kept them in a 20 x 20 foot covered pen and fed them food scraps.

It is good to allow chickens into the yard during the day, but limit their use to a space away from your garden, because they can be destructive. They need to be put in their chicken house in the afternoon to protect them from predators. Predators include raccoons, possums, coyotes, foxes, dogs, hawks, and large cats. If you have predators it is best to keep the chickens in a covered pen, and let them out for a limited time during the day since most predators are nocturnal (come out at night), except for dogs, foxes, and hawks.

Foods They Eat

Once you have chosen a good place in the yard for them, sprinkle some of their food directly on the ground. This will encourage them to scratch. Scratching is essential for healthy chickens. Chickens will eat bugs, worms, insects, etc. and they will eat your weeds and trim down your grass. Caution: Move them to a new area after they have eaten up the weeds and trimmed down the grass because they will eat the grass roots. My local produce man did this by building a portable pen that he moved once a week.

Let the grass in your yard grow a little shaggy while they are still chicks so there is lots of grass for them to eat when you let them out.

When my chicks were little they ate fine ground grains with dandelion seeds moistened with milk, (later they liked it dry), and grass. They shocked me when they ate their wood shavings, so I put paper under them instead of bedding and gradually switched to hay as they got older.

As they got older they liked cracked grains and oatmeal. I got whole dried corn and ground it myself. Home grown and fresh is always better, of course. I was surprised how much they loved grains. Often they left the weeds and grass seeds to eat grains to the very last kernel.

However, chickens will eat practically anything, i.e. food scraps, bran, farina (cereal), dried bread, corn, powdered milk, egg shells, scrambled egg, hotdogs, bugs, fat, grass clippings, and weeds I'd pulled that day, etc. So it is up to you to decide what diet is best for your chickens, which should include a variety along with good fats and meat.

Other peculiar things I found they liked were old and sour foods, i.e. sprouted wheat, corn, and rejuvelac, things I forgot on the counter for a week. I tried fresh ones but they ate only the root and buried the hard kernels in the mud to eat a week later. It is better to let sprouted wheat, corn, etc., sour, and then feed it to them.

They loved any kind of bugs, except slugs, some kinds of beetles and an orange and black moth we have here. They always ate grubs and worms. I also bought some bird suet (fat) and put it in the yard for them but any kind of natural fat is ok to put into a pan for them.

Supplement their feed with grass, weeds, hay, vegetables, kitchen scraps, bugs, and meat. The feed store sells oyster shells to strengthen their egg shells but I just fed them crushed eggshells instead. They will eat as much eggshell as they need and leave the rest. A tablespoon or 2 a week was enough for my 6 chickens.

My chickens especially loved moths. They could sense a moth on the other side of a post and beg me to get it for them. They could catch the moth in flight. :) They also loved any bug infested produce I had to throw away from the garden, and they liked pill bugs, grubs, and worms. I was told they like slugs but never saw them eat any. The most unusual thing I fed my chickens was a seven foot high thistle I had removed from my yard. They ate everything but the stem.

Nests & Eggs

Chickens begin producing eggs between 6 to 9 months old without the help of a rooster. Normally chickens will produce an egg a day, sometimes more. Nests can easily be made from old crates cut down to 5 inches high and filled with fresh hay. Anchor the nests 4 feet or so off the ground, and place them against a wall in the chicken coop facing the rising sun.

Eggs will stay fresh stored at room temperature in a dry place and out of the sun. Collect them, rinse them off with cool water if they are dirty, dry them with a soft towel, and place them in saved egg cartons. I keep mine on a kitchen shelf. Rotate the fresher eggs to the bottom and use the older ones first.

Personality & Habits

Our chickens had personality and spunk. If a sudden rainstorm came up they would find shelter under the picnic table or huddle on the front porch. They would allow us to pick them up to put them back in their henhouse.

If they weren't happy with their day's food they would beg at the door or get underfoot when I did yard work. When the cats got too close they would chase them. The cats were pretty funny around the chickens. They came around looking for bits of meat whenever I fed the chickens. If the cats got too close to the chickens during feeding time, they would get a peck.

Things I learned about chickens:

1. They are trainable. They got in the habit of putting themselves to bed as the sun went down.
2. They sounded an alert when a runner or bicycle went by.
3. They chortled when they were laying.
4. Never pick them up by the tail because they really hate it. Just nestle your hands around their wings to pick them up.
5. They like to sunbathe until it gets hot and then they seek out the shade.

I got a bit of a shock when I found them in the cat litter. I had a little area in the yard for my cats that I had to remove because I found the chickens digging there.

Chickens make a big mess with their water so I rinsed their dish out twice a day. They had weird habits with water which were:

1. Fill it with grass.
2. Wash their muddy feet in it.
3. Drink the mud next to it instead.

Feed stores have covered dishes for chickens but it was always a mess. When they were older I used a bucket for their water. It seemed much cleaner, though there would still be 'stuff' in the bottom when I rinsed it out.

The other thing that made them really happy was getting fresh straw. Their reaction would be anything from eating it to bathing in it. They would roll over and over in it in the yard and throw it over their heads with their wings. Finally they would settle down, nesting in it, so I got into the habit of sprinkling a little fresh straw on their nests in the afternoon.

Chickens taste better when they are raised like this. Even the fat has a different texture, which is soft and buttery. After I cut up the first one I noticed my hands were very soft. :)

Happy clucking!

Nan