In the process of buying a new house. The house we have had an offer accepted on has a chicken run and I have started to think this would make quite a nice Hobby. Maybe 3 or 4 hens. Their neighbour looks after theirs when they’re on holiday in exchange for eggs, so it seems like an ideal set up.

Anyone else keep hens? how do you find it… Seems to be relatively low maintenance. Did you buy the hens as chicks?

Lots of fun I expect Christmas morning, new years day etc etc. Plus there’s the rats to look forward too.

We have 4 hens, all bought at point of lay. Once they have sorted out the pecking order you should get an egg a day per chicken. Very low matiance, they eat kitchen scraps and layers pellets. We clean them out every couple of weeks, but they have been known to go longer.

Do it, but please get ex-battery hens, they are still laying, just not enough to be ‘economic’.

The British Hen Welfare Trust will give you free birds.

We have 5, and get 3/4 eggs a day. They’re great fun too.

APF

We’ve got two Orpingtons (had three until one got a prolapsed oviduct while trying to squeeze out her first egg 🙁 … don’t google that if you are about to eat, by the way 😯 ) and they are very low maintenance. They have a wee coop like this:

I’ve put that next to a 3m by 4m run with a small connecting tunnel, and then we let them free range in the garden all day. They head back to the coop on their own at night, and we just shut the door for their protection.

Maintenance-wise, we put wood shavings on the floor of the coop, once a week (or fortnight) I scoop out the shavings from under the perches and chuck in on the compost. Could get away with doing this less often, many just chuck down fresh shavings and it composts, you just need to clean it out properly every few months.

That’s about it. We top up their feeder when it gets low (layer pellets) but they mainly eat what they find out in the garden, so don’t get through many pellets. We replace the water weekly, or more often if it looks less than clean, but there’s a stream through the garden so they mostly drink from there.

Only one of ours is laying as they got to the right age just as winter was kicking in. We’re expecting the other to start in the spring. We get about five eggs a week from the one that’s laying, which we expect to increase slightly in spring too.

One of or chooks seems to be not laying, crown has gone pink, not bright red and he legs/feet are way more yellow than the other hens. She also looks like she’s losing colour from her feathers too. I’m guessing she’s ill, but anyone had this before and is she soon to be toddling off to the great coop in the sky?

Surprised no-one has mentioned how delicious genuine free range eggs are. Ours are several shades of yellow darker and many times tastier than anything from the shops.

Our 4 took a long time to settle in but we are now getting 2 eggs most days. They are also a bit fussy with what scraps they eat preferring bread/rice/porridge over fruit and veges. We don’t leave too much un-eaten food out because, as mentioned above, that attracts rats. Which in this part of the world attracts snakes.

Also be aware that if you let them roam the garden they will dig up all your flower beds and crap everywhere.

We bought two hybrids at 16 weeks old – they started to lay at about 24 weeks old. We also bought two Pekin bantams who were laying but gave up for about three months! We do now get between one and four eggs a day – it can be a struggle to eat them all!
They are also very entertaining to watch. One of ours will now jump on my knee if I’m sitting in the garden – only cos she wants food, not cos she likes me!

Also be aware that if you let them roam the garden they will dig up all your flower beds and crap everywhere.

This. With ours, not so much the flower beds (we don’t have much in the way of flowers but have a few big veggie beds, none have been damaged) but ye gods they each produce about half their own body weight in poo every day! Generally not an issue except when they do it on the deck or verandah, we have to hose it down once a week.

One of ours will now jump on my knee if I’m sitting in the garden – only cos she wants food, not cos she likes me

Back in the summer when we ate outside and bbq’d most days, ours would always jump onto the table and try to eat off the plates. Considering that most of the time they wouldn’t let us within a metre or so of them, we’d struggle to push them away from food. Garlic bread especially, it was like crack for chickens! One one occasion my wife had one approaching from each side on the table and one jumped on her shoulder from behind, all trying to get the garlic bread from her hand. She had to chiuck it on the floor to get them off her 😀