Keeping hens?

Thinking of getting a few chooks. Any practical advice would be appreciated. We have a bit of room, about 3m square at the end of a longish garden. There are foxes in the area too. Would like to aim get about a dozen eggs a day.

Especially through the winter hens don’t reliably lay an egg a day, so you need more than a dozen hens to lay a dozen eggs.

The farm I farm sit sometimes has up to about twenty hens of varying ages and some days you might get four eggs. Also there is chicken poop everywhere and that’s with having an entire farmyard to run around. I don’t think you have enough room.

A dozen eggs a day?!

That’s 15-18 hens! If you mean a dozen a week, that’s about 4.

My sister keeps chickens; they’ve got 4 hens & a cockerel, they get about a dozen eggs a week although at this time of year that drops off a fair bit.

No idea how much they cost or anything but I know a lot of work went into buying the eggs, incubating and hatching them and building up the flock plus building the chicken run which has to be very heavily protected – they lost their first flock to foxes in spite of the protection so the current run is like a wood and chicken wire version of Fort Knox. Also it’s considerably more than 3m sq. More like 40.

My sister’s two girls do a lot of the feeding and general looking after – they hand raised the chicks so the hens are fairly chilled around them although the cockerel is a vicious bastard.

Edit. They also need to be registered.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/register-as-a-keeper-of-less-than-50-poultry-or-other-captive-birds

The coop needs plenty of ventilation and protection from the wind but not insulating.
Red mite are the bane of chicken keeping, if your chooks do get them they’re a pain to sort.
They are awesome pets and each has their own character, they’ll amaze you with what they’ll eat – adult slow works, frogs etc.
They will decimate all small animals and bugs from your garden, they need plenty of roaming space and will always return to their coop of an evening.
The one night you forget to close the door Mr Fox will pop in.
Keep their water clean and food off the ground.
You’ll get a free rat for each chicken you get.
They like to sunbathe.
Your neighbours won’t thank you if you get a cockerel.

Just one free rat? That’s just the one you see…

We currently have 9 hens and a cockerel. We have had up to 15.  In winter they moult and go off lay so we are only getting 1 or 2 eggs a day. In summer this would be 7 or 8 a day. Ours are older, a mix of ex commercial layers and pure breeds. Young hens lay more and in their first laying season will lay through the winter.

We enjoy keeping hens for lots of reasons, eggs are a nice bonus and are much nicer than shop eggs,. But If that’s all we wanted them for, we wouldn’t bother and would buy eggs.

You need a very secure run to keep foxes out. Rats can be a problem unless you are very careful at avoiding food spills and use a steel treadle feeder. They are quite a lot of work requiring daily cleaning out, regular deep cleans etc. Over the years we have had to deal with red mite, bumblefoot, sour crop, egg peritonitis, infectious bronchitis, scaley leg mite and more.

Most vets know nothing about poultry, defaulting to antibiotics or euthanasia for as the answer to everything when it often isn’t. You soon get pretty expert at poultry health yourself. You also sadly need to learn how to euthanise  them to prevent suffering at end of life.

Not trying to put you off, they are fascinating, funny creatures who are far more intelligent than their rep suggests. Each are individual characters and some are very tame and friendly. But If you just want eggs and aren’t interested in the rest, think hard about it would be my advice  🙂

I would agree about the one rat per chicken, that’s how it starts …… then you’re feeding the rats more than the chickens !

In a small run you may have problems with feather pecking, they can be brutal !

Chickens are great! We have three ex commercial hens in an Eglu plus an extension. So we’re kind of a retirement home for them but they do carry on laying as they get older, just less often.

I disagree with posts above saying rats, and lots of them are an inevitable part of chicken keeping. Rats will be attracted by chicken feed.  If you deny them access to it they won’t be a problem. We use a galvanised steel, treadle operated feeder. Rats can’t get in it and are too light to operate the mech. They are a little expensive and you have to train the chooks to use it. After that though, they are trouble free and just work. In combination with that, clean up scraps from any extra treats you give them. Collect eggs promptly. Clean up any feed spills. Do all that and you can largely avoid any rat issues.

I had a field and about 30 chickens years back, in coops in the open air so they could roam over 3 acres. They were ace – but all the above applies about laying rates and chicken poo (there would always be a contingent who would investigate the kitchen yard for dropped treasure, leaving poo in return).

One year seemed to consist entirely of an ongoing battle with a flock of crows which seemed to think that it was them that I was feeding them on a daily basis and that the eggs were a nice extra treat. I had to change everything round to get rid of them.

3m sq is way too small in my mind.  We had 5 or 6 in an area of about 10 x 10m!

Don’t forget you obvs need space for the feeder, watered and the hen house.

They are wonderful things to have and the eggs are lovely but, as blokeuptheroad said, they take some looking after, can cost a fair chunk to set up (electric fence, automatic pop hole opener?) and go through a remarkable amount of food!

Ultimately the foxes will get them and that’s incredibly sad.

Oh, and they will destroy that little patch if space pretty quickly. Obvs you could let them roam around the garden but then you’ll quickly discover how hard they are to catch when you want to put them away!

3m sq is way too small in my mind.

Agree. If that is all the room you have got then don’t get chickens. Chickens love roaming around in a garden (especially with trees, large shrubs etc,.) and we only have 4 at the moment but they have the run of the 1/2 acre garden.
If you are selfishly getting them for eggs alone just buy eggs.

One thing to be aware of is that most vets haven’t got a clue about birds so need to find one that does if you need any help or better still learn how to do it yourself (pulling eggs from egg bound chickens, dealing with scaly leg, cutting feathers around eyes for certain breeds, clipping when first getting them and so on)

They are fun though!