Keeping chickens is simple.

Raising chickens is easy.

Very basic information for
new and prospective small scale chicken stewards.

Chickens may be the most common urban livestock kept for the purposes of self reliance.  By and large chickens are hardy and undemanding animals that give back many times what their keepers put into them in time or money.  They do, however, have some basic needs which must be met.  I’ll go into them in more detail in the future but let’s start with sorting out the initial important decisions for new and prospective chicken keepers.

While keeping chickens is overall a simple task, sorting the available information to find what is applicable to your particular situation and goals can be a formidable undertaking.  This article breaks down the least you need to know into easily approachable sections of information to focus on and make decisions about so you can create a tailor-made plan for your chicken keeping endeavors.

• Assessing your goal and your options

The first thing to address is legality; if you are an urbanite and often even for suburbanites, checking local laws and statutes to determine the legality of poultry is a necessary first step.  If you find restrictive rules and are determined to proceed, you may look into obtaining a variance or the like.  Once that is sorted, you need to assess your property and make decisions about housing modalities that will fit into existing usage.  The third assessment would to determine your goal; fresh eggs, meat for the table, artful bucolic ambiance or possibly breed conservation?  This also has strong influence upon housing and space considerations.

• Housing and yard

Armed with the necessary information that standard sized chickens require a minimum of two square feet of indoor space and four square feet of outdoor space per bird, and bantams require one square foot of indoor space and two square of outdoor space per bird, this would be the point where you determine what housing modality will work best in your situation.  There are about four approaches here, only two of which are recommended.  A chicken tractor houses the birds and is moved over an area at least five times the square footage of the structure, providing fresh ground to the birds every day or two as needed, depending upon how many birds are in the tractor.  Alternatively, birds may be housed in a permanent structure with rotational yards; small access ports allow the birds into only one yard at a time, allowing the second (or more) yards to recover and regrow.  Both the above referenced modalities have the added advantage of breaking possible parasite infestation cycles.  A third approach would be a permanent structure with one yard, and while this is a common approach it is not recommended.  Parasite infestation builds and the yard eventually becomes a bare pit completely lacking vegetation for the birds and becomes a sea of mud and feces in wet weather—unhealthful and unpleasant for all concerned.  The fourth approach would be to simply release the birds into your yard and let them range, including seeking out their own preferred roosting and nesting spots.  This is rarely a good idea, and increases the likelihood of predation, disease, injury and undetected nests which can result in rotting eggs or possibly undesired chicks.

• Choice of breed

The first influence on choice of breed would be whether your goal is fresh eggs, meat or art.  “Eggy” breeds are usually lighter weight, bare legged, and flightier than dual purpose or meat breeds.  Since chickens lay best in their first two laying seasons and production falls off sharply thereafter, a plan for fairly consistent egg production would be as follows; starting with perhaps eight hens of laying age (approximately six months old), plan to add four juvenile hens to the flock at the end of the first year.  At the end of the second year, remove the four least productive hens of the original eight, and add four more juvenile hens.  However, if your goal is meat the rotation is much accelerated as meat birds are usually butchered out at eight to twelve weeks of age.  If your goal is fascinating and beautiful poultry and you choose some exotic or exhibition breed, you may not need to look at the rotation at all—but do remember that the average life span of a chicken is twelve to fifteen years, given proper feeding and care.

• Feeding

Chickens are omnivores; that is, they eat just about anything they can fit in their beaks—plants and animals (”animals” is recommended to be in the form of bugs and worms).  The simplest choice for feeding is to choose to be dependent upon commercial feed, which is all well and good as long as you have regular, uninterrupted access to a provider of such.  Just buy the bag, and keep the feeder full.  Another approach is to educate your self about poultry nutritional requirements and embark upon mixing your own feed.  This would be a more self reliant approach, particularly if you source local providers such as grain farmers and worm farmers, green grocers (for their distressed fruit and vegetables headed for the trash bin), and your own kitchen for scraps to be recycled into eggs.

Making the above most basic determinations will provide a “road map” for your small scale poultry endeavors.  Even if you already have chickens, look these points over and draw up a plan on paper to refer to.  Always remember—a short pencil is better than a long memory!

Very useful links:

Which chicken breed selector tool

ICYouSee Handy Dandy Chicken Chart

The Chicken Encyclopedia of Breeds on Feathersite

Chicken Feed ~ Feed Recipes, Rations and Formulas, Modern and Traditional

The City Chicken