Behind every animal is a human who loves them.
Learn about the many different relationships between animals and humans and find out things you never knew.
Keeping Your Own Chickens: A Beginners Guide
Keeping your own chickens can be fun, enjoyable and not to mention rewarding, especially if you’ve rehomed an ex-battery farm hen. There are a few things that you need to take into consideration though when thinking about getting your own chickens. We’ve put together a beginner’s guide to keeping chickens thanks to home chicken owner Katrine Monge.
The essentials:
Firstly you’ll need to think about whether you have the time or expenses to look after chickens properly. You’ll also need to check that there are no local bye-laws against keeping animals, as even pet chickens are classed as live stock.
Next you’ll need to decide how to keep your chickens as they can destroy a patch of grass with ease. You can avoid this occurring by having a moveable chicken coop and run. Another alternative is to let your chickens roam free range around your garden. However if you choose this option, they will need protection from predators such as foxes. Electric poultry netting would be ideal for securing your chickens and keeping them out of harm’s way.
Make sure you buy all the right kit for your chickens as well. For example a feeder, drinker and of course a shovel, bucket and stiff brush for cleaning the coop. You’ll also need to provide a dust bath for your hens as this helps protect them from mites and lice.
In the UK it is now illegal to feed chickens anything that has been prepared in the kitchen, so you’ll need to get proper chicken feed which can be bought from shops such as Pets at Home. You could also give them greens such as cabbage and spinach to provide extra nutrition. Fruit can also be given sometimes to your hens as a special treat!
Looking after your chickens:
Katrine said: “Every morning you’ll need to let your chickens out of their coop. Make sure they have food and clean water and check that all your hens are in good health.”
She also explained that: “Laying hens need around 500ml of water per day. In the evening, collect the eggs, clear away the remaining food and shut your chickens away in their coop. They don’t need to eat or drink whilst roosting.”
By Imogen Bavinton
Katrines' Chickens Enjoying an afternoon run around in their pen.
Katrine giving her chickens a morning feed.
Chickens always go to roost at dusk which could be mid-afternoon in winter or late at night in summer.
Katrine says: “It’s worth installing an electrical door to protect your chickens from predators at night. This way you know they shut in safe and nothing can get in the hurt them at night.”
It’s also important to clean out your coop thoroughly once a week by removing bedding, scraping our droppings and putting fresh bedding down again.
Katrine explained: “When cleaning the house you need to check for evidence of red mite as these are harmful to chickens. Just look out for heaps of grey dust around the ends of your perches and small red mites hidden beneath them.”
“Having chickens is such a positive experience, they’re such funny animals and the delicious eggs are an added bonus. I’d definitely encourage anybody to go for it!”
This may seem like a lot of information to take on board at first but once you get your hens’ you’ll find they’re actually really easy animals to look after!
To find out more about buying or adopting your own chickens chickens check out this blog post!
