Home to Roost Helping city folks raise chickens!

The following are common questions about raising chickens:

• “So how much money will having my own chickens save me?”
• “Will having my own hens benefit me financially?”
• “Is having chickens a cost-effective strategy?”

The answer varies widely, and Joshua Levin, who has chickens in New York City, does a good job examining the economics in his article “Backyard Chicken Economics: Are They Actually Cost Effective?”

Here is a brief summary:

Set-Up Costs: $121 (chicken wire, waterer, feeder, grit, hens)

Per-Month Variable Costs: $31.50 (organic feed) or $13.50 (non-organic feed)

Value Produced per Month: $27.66 (40 eggs = $20, fertilizer = $7.66)

In Levin’s estimation, the cost of feed determines whether or not your operation is profitable. If you use non-organic feed, you will break even in 6 months; organic feed, 14 months.

Levin’s Cost-Saving Strategies

• Build the coop yourself
• Procure free items – structure for coop, wire, other building materials
• Buy non-organic feed
• Supplement the hens’ diet with table scraps (do this with caution, as lots of roughage can lead to crop impaction and sour crop) and allow them to free range.
• Use newspaper as bedding rather than wood chips (but know that newspaper packs more easily, gets wet more easily, and has to be changed more often to prevent mold, which can cause aspergillosis – but it can be composted more readily)
• Add another hen, which does not considerably change the costs.
• Harvest your chicken manure.

Follow-Up Comment

A follow-up comment on Levin’s article, posted by Patricia Foreman, gave the following as positive reasons to raise hens that are not figured into Levin’s purely capitalistic perspective:

1. Contribute to the backyard agriculture movement by perpetuating knowledge of animal husbandry and local food production
2. Recycle waste to keep it from landfills by using chickens to recycle biomass
3. Reduce fossil fuel use and carbon footprint by reducing the amount of oil we use to feed ourselves in packaging, transportation, and production
4. Prepare for emergencies by having a food source on hand

It’s a great article; if you found my summary helpful, check out the article at GoodEater Collaborative.

Subclinical Illness

In my workshop on Sunday, I discussed subclinical illness, which is the natural tendency of certain animals, birds included, to hide signs of illness until their bodies can no longer handle the stress.

Juliet: Case in Point

Case in point for the day is my geriatric parakeet, Juliet.

Juliet is somewhere around 12 (old for a rescued, seed-fed ‘keet), has difficulty getting around due to a broken leg that didn’t properly heal, and plucks her feathers. She’s not much to look at, but she is spunky and by far my best flier. Despite her issues, I’d noticed a few out-of-the-ordinary things in her behavior:

1. Runny droppings
2. Odd swallowing behavior – she seemed to be having difficulty
3. Increased fluid intake

Otherwise, she seemed fine – flying, vocalizing, fighting with Regina Coeli, my other budgie, and just being a ‘keet. In addition, before I left today for the vet (Chicago Exotics Animal Hospital), her poops became a little more solid, and I didn’t notice the odd swallowing. So I was thinking that it was silly to take her to the vet.

However, after discussing the symptoms with Dr. Grabowski, we came up with causes that could possibly explain some of the symptoms:

1. Breeding behavior
2. Diet change
3. Environmental change
4. Major organ failure

My behavioral observations were confirmed by a throat swab, which revealed bacteria and yeast. So she and Regina are both on meds (antibiotics, antifungal, and probiotics).

Veterinary Roulette and the Avian Vet Solution

Many times, treating birds is like Russian roulette – you just take your best guess – or as Gail Damerow says in the Chicken Health Handbook: “Veterinarians arrive at a probable diagnosis (otherwise known as an educated guess) in part by considering the accumulation of symptoms” (1994, 151).

I’m content to know that my birds are under the care of the avian vets at Chicago Exotics – considering subclinical illness, an educated guess from an avian vet is the best you can get! To paraphrase Leonard McCoy in Star Trek IV, I feel safer about their guesses than most other people’s facts.

(And there, I’ve incorporated Star Trek into my blog!)

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Handle your chicks from the time they come home, and as adults they will be well adjusted to human touch.

So you just got those cute, fuzzy little chicks! You’ll also note that those tiny little feet get poop all over them! So you may not want to handle your chicks.

It’s very important to handle chicks from the time they are little. You should pick them up,  touch their wings, examine their beak and vent, and hold them in different positions. The reason is very practical–if your chicken needs to be caught or handled as an adult, it will already be habituated to human touch.

Remember, chickens are a prey species, so they are skittish by nature. Careful nurture can change that.

Sometimes an  injured or scared bird needs to be recaptured. Adding fear of human touch to that equation will create one freaked-out bird, and she may make things worse or injure herself by trying to escape from you!

It is also important that a bird be handled as a chick because she will respond better to human contact if you have to treat or medicate.

When handling your chicks, though, keep in mind that birds have no diaphragm. Humans have a muscle that helps the rib cage expand to breathe in. Birds do not. This means that if you compress a bird’s rib cage, it CANNOT expand its rib cage to pull in oxygenated air. If you (or your child!) hold a bird too tightly, you can suffocate it. As you handle your chicks, hold them firmly but loosely, with extra space in your hand to allow them to breathe.

Also, do not let chicks run around on the floor where people (or your children!) might be walking. They are very fast and can get underfoot quite quickly!

So remember these tips when you get your mini-flock:

• Handle chicks often, everyday if possible.
• Don’t squeeze!
• Keep them out from under foot.

You will have happy, healthy hens who aren’t afraid to be caught, picked up, examined, or petted!