I know there are some chicken geeks on here, I have been considering having a couple,(chickens not geeks)

how much hassle are they to keep? i have a long thin garden and have an area that i can allocate to the coop.
are they happy on gravel or do they need grass to peck on

i guess they need to be shut away / let out each day as we do have foxes in the area

Any recommendations on types of coops/equipment needed

and is there a STW equivalent in the chicken world?

Ta Oracle

I read the title and had this strange image of a giant chicken keeping a nun in a cage

I thought it was a bmx trick

WCA
Your fantasy is your own demon to deal with 🙂

What kind of trick would be called that!

They’re very little hassle. For just a couple (some are sold in trios) you could get away with an ark, we’ve had up to a dozen so have a coop inside a fenced off compound. They’ll scratch around in gravel but ours are let out into the garden every afternoon where they make dust baths and dig up any seedlings. They’ll put themselves away at the end of the day, you just have to be around to close up the fox-proof ark / coop at dusk. And let them out first thing in the morning. Holidays need a bit of planning unless you have relatives or neighbours who can come over.
No idea if there’s a hen STW but you can find plans for an ark or coop easily online. Shopping for chickens is a bit like choosing a new mtb – you have old-fashioned, interesting, somewhat niche breeds and bog-standard, do-it-all types…

We have 4 hens and they’re brilliant! They are very funny, they will follow you round the garden and peck at the back door to be let in when they see you (tip, do not let them in as they poo on the floor!).

We initially had a wooden coop which we made but had so many problems with red mite that we switched to an eglu. Eglus are expensive but they’re amazing. You can jet wash them out and they dry very quickly due to being plastic not wood, you don’t have to re-proof them every year and best of all the doors don’t swell when it’s damp like wooden doors so you can open them all year round with ease (this doesn’t sound like much but after struggling with our wooden one for 2 years, it makes all the difference when getting eggs out for breakfast).

They do prefer to be in grass but I’d be surprised if you have any grass left after more than a couple of months as they destroy it. Ours are kept in a run with a deep layer of hemp chippings/strips to dig in and are let out to play in the garden when we’re in (protect any thing you do not want them to eat, they eat every thing they can reach).

They will take themselves to bed every day but you will need to make sure their run/coop is secure if you’re not there to shut the door or foxes will get in.

Omlet is the website and forum you’re after for chicken keeping tips, ideas, health information, breed information etc. It is the eglu site but there is lots of generic information on there and the forum has both eglu and wooden house users so it’s perfect whatever you decide to keep them in.

Do not keep foxes and chickens in the same pen…they do not get on.

We have 4, 1x pure breed, and 3 that were battery rescue hens. We have an Eglu that is contained within a larger ‘run’.
We let them out to wander round the garden – ours peck at the back door too, they have learned that we throw fruit scraps out for them – they go mad for grapes.
They follow me round when fettling the bike and I had 2 of them looking into a bucket of water with me while I was repairing some inner tubes last week.

get a rooster – your neighbours will love you for it!

We’ve got half a dozen hens and they’re really quite hassle free. You need to accept that they will basically decimate any ground that you let them loose on – we used to let ours roam the whole bottom garden and after a couple of months there wasn’t a blade of grass down there, we have since penned them into a smaller area (with an electric fence for fox proofing) to allow the grass to regrow (which it is doing with vigour due to the fertilizer-effect of the poo). They to a fantastic job of scarifying the lawn and removing things like dandelions, but same as if you spend all day going over your lawn with a scarifier you wouldn’t have much lawn left if you did it all day, so I would recommend you have a confined, secure area that they spend most time in, and let them out for a couple of hours if you want them to give the rest of the garden a good going over – they LOVE slugs, which is great if you’re growing veg, but the also like veg seedings/plants so it’s a bit of a double edged sword.

Red-mite is usually only a problem associated with any house that uses roofing felt for the roof. A completely wooden or plastic house or one with an Onduline roof does not have this problem. We have a completely wooden house and have never had a problem with red-mite.

They basically only need food and water. We use layers pellets most of the time and usually chuck a few handfuls of corn out in the morning and evening. When it’s cold, they get hot layers mash in the evening which keeps them warm and happy through even the coldest nights (like this winter when it was minus 10 degrees). You can feed them just scraps and kitchen waste, they will basically eat anything edible, but the quality and number of eggs they produce will be proportional to the quality (and quantity) of food they have access to. Our current 6 are laying 5 or 6 eggs a day, which is pretty good, but they are only about a year old and I expect this to drop off when they go into moult. When they moult, the lose some feathers, sometimes it’s loads, sometimes it’s only a few – when they do this, they basically stop laying as they keep their energy and nutrient stores for making new feathers, rather than making eggs. This is why farmed or battery chickens that you can buy look so ropey, it’s not because they’ve necessarily been maltreated, it’s that once they go into moult and stop laying the farm wants rid of them as they’re not producing, only consuming.

You’ll need a supply of straw (NOT hay, due to dust) for the nest-box area and wood shavings for the rest of the coop. They’ll need mucking out about once a week, I mix the shavings, straw and poo into my compost heap.

That’s about it. If you’re on the iDave diet, the supply of eggs is a godsend!

Kiss your lawn goodbye.

Sorry, just finished Googling Nuns with Chickens and got a bit distracted.

What was the question again?

^^^That’s all good advice^^^

Give them spaghetti. Hilarious.

Thanks Guys
Will look into it a bit more before taking the plinge

In the winter ours roam free and they do make a dent in the garden’s appearance. But come April they get coop’d up at the bottom of the garden and everything grows as Spring gets into its stride. In fact the scarifying and fertilising of the lawn makes it grow beautifully.

My kids love the chickens. At times the chickens do that expression that family dogs do when a toddler is pulling their ears.

Old leftover pasta, rice, chilli and eggs they love.

Fresh eggs can’t be beaten!

Google backyardchickens for some diy coop designs

Quick question to add to this.

Are they noisy at all. Obviously would only have hens but would the neighbours hear them?

Yes, they are noisy! Particularly when they have just laid an egg.

i don’t know if its been mentioned but if your expecting loads of eggs everyday don’t get ex battery hens there’s an ex i the name for a reason and when they do stop laying don’t take them to a vet to get them put down like my brothers friend did

I really want to get chickens, I reckon the kids will love them but I am a little worried about annoying the neighbours with the noise.

there not that loud unless you get a cockerel Ive got 8 all of which start going at different times of the morning

Noise ,to be honest you will only hear them if you are in the garden or have the windows open. Some breeds are louder than others , as said already they only tend to make noise after they have layed an egg.
An old shed makes a great coop.

Has anyone found having chickens has attracted rats to the garden?

Little known fact I discovered this week. It is illegal to feed your chickens kitchen scraps!

Defra help?

chickens are great. Ex bat hens still lay. just not the yield that farmers expect. They are as dumb as f*@k but very funny and friendly. They will mess the garden right up as they love to scratch and basically dig anything they can find. get em!

I gave up on ex-bats as you don’t know what you’re going to get – a few laid pretty well but some didn’t at all and some only a few a week. Financially far more sensible to get POL – my local supply sells the ISA Browns for £10 which are the best ones to get. I have four of these at the moment but have enough space for 2 dozen or so.

As for noise mine are at the end of my garden which is about 25 metres from my house and I hear them every morning when it gets light. Fortuately my neighbours have never complained even though their houses are closer to the pen. If I increased the numbers significantly I’m sure they’d lose patience.

Housing – I built my own pen and house out of scrap wood, the main cost was the weld mesh fencing which was about £60 I think, also used chicken wire for a mesh roof to help keep the foxes out – they don’t just come at night. I wouldn’t want to pay for an Eglu as the expense is too high too justify IMO. I have had red mite but spraying Poultry Shield sorted that out easily – I also use Diatom but not sure if that’s really that useful. Vanodine V18 is great if you want to leave water for weeks at a time – I have a 30l drinker so great for when going on holiday.