Chickens

Lakenvelder Rooster

If you’re new to small farming, but you want to go a little country, your best bet is to start with chickens. You can get mature, egg laying hens through the classifieds, or ask at your local feed or farm supply store where you can get some. The most common varieties are ISA Browns or Rhode Island Reds, and I’ve heard Brown Leghorn is popular, but we’ve never had any.

Rhode Island Red

These ladies are my favourite between the two. They are more resistant to bad weather than the ISA Browns, and since they lay almost every day, they are a favourite all over America and Canada. They lay smaller eggs than the ISA Browns.

ISA Browns



These girls also lay nice brown eggs, and as a commercial laying breed, they will lay more eggs per year than the Rhode Islands. They are however prone to becoming egg-bound as they can sometimes lay absolutely gigantic eggs!

If you’re going for eggs only, these two breeds will be an excellent start.

Feeding

Chickens are easy keepers. You need 4 things: Layer ration, Scratch, Oyster Shell, and Granite Grit. If you can give them a small pasture to graze in, they will eat less processed feed, and that is better for everyone! Make sure you check the ingredients on the layer ration you buy from your local feed store. You want an unmedicated, hormone free feed. Red Barn is a good option. Hen Scratch is a mixture of different grains, corn, and seeds which you scatter on the ground, and they then scratch at it with their feet to dislodge it from the dirt or grass so they can eat it. Oyster shell is for calcium, which your birds will need to keep producing eggs with nice sturdy shells without depleting their natural stores of calcium in their bones (which can happen). Granite grit acts like a flour mill in a chicken’s stomach, helping them to digest the grains and seeds that they eat. Free range chickens need less granite, as they’re probably picking up plenty of grit out in the dirt where they play, but it doesn’t hurt to add a little to their feed anyway. You can also mix the oyster shell into the Layer ration, or free feed it. We just found it easier to mix the shell and grit into the feed, as they kept knocking over the container we were putting it in.

Occasionally, you will also want to throw your chickens some table scraps. Bits of meat and fat are okay, just no bone. Fruit and vegetables will always go over well, fresh or cooked, as well as rice, mouldy (just not too mouldy) bread, cheese, crackers, etc. In gardening season we like to throw our weeds into their coop, and they go nuts over them!

Water

Chickens demand the best, cleanest water you can give them. In the summer, this is easy. Just dump out what’s left over from the day before, rinse out the container and refill it. We use shallow rubber pans because they are easy to clean and they don’t break in the cold. In the winter, if you aren’t using a heated water source, you’ll have to check on their dish a few times a day, breaking up the ice and refilling if necessary. The most fabulous invention at times like that is a heated self-waterer. They are usually small for chickens, so they don’t get too dirty, and you can be sure that your birds always have access to fresh water. 5-gallon jugs with gravity fed trays are fine as long as you elevate them on a surface no larger than its own base. The reason? If the chickens can stand on the surface that the waterer sits on, they will get dirty shavings/bedding and dropping in the tray, and that makes your water stinky and cleanup a real chore!

Coop

The coop doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. Nesting boxes should be around 1 foot square, you’ll need about a foot of roosting space for each bird, and about 2 square feet of floor/feeding space for each bird. It’s handy to have a sliding door that you can open and close from outside the pen, so you don’t have to disturb the birds when you close up at night after they’ve gone to sleep (which will be at around sunset). You will also want a window for sunlight, and a rooster in the coop, or at least nearby. If you live too near your neighbours, a rooster isn’t necessary. He’s mainly there to protect the hens from danger and provide some moral support!

I’ll go into greater detail about coop plans at another time, because I want to talk more about some different breeds that I think are fantastic!

Silver Laced Cochin Hen



Silver Laced Cochin Rooster



Buff Cochins