Home to Roost Helping city folks raise chickens!

Photo courtesy of Sandy Alguire

The urban agriculture movement includes everything from gardens to goats, with chickens in between. If you’re thinking about getting chickens, you’ll want to keep in mind of a few things in advance.

1) Chicks require special care. Baby chicks need appropriate warmth, shelter and diet if they are not with a hen who can protect them and show them the ropes.

2) You’ll get fewer eggs as your hens get older.  A hen’s ability to lay peaks at the end of her second year. After age two, she’ll lay fewer eggs per week. Chickens can live to be as many as 10 years old, so consider this in your plans. Are these birds pets who will give you eggs steadily for a few years? Or are they egg-laying machines that will be turned into soup when their laying slows down?

3) Chickens are different from cats and dogs. Birds and mammals are different in the ways they approach the world. For example:

• Chickens are prey animals; dogs and cats are predators.
• Their body systems function differently (for example, chickens have very sensitive respiratory systems and hollow bones).
• They respond to stress in different ways.
• Chickens need to go to an avian veterinarian, rather than a dog and cat vet.

4) The pecking order is an important reality. Chickens naturally rank themselves in a hierarchy to determine who is the alpha hen. If you introduce new birds to an existing flock, you may not only introduce disease, but you may also disrupt the pecking order, which can result in death for the newcomer.

5) A quality, secure coop is important. Chickens are susceptible to predators such as raccoons, hawks and coyotes. Do your research to determine how best to protect them. You should have a safe, sturdy coop ready well before your chicks are ready to move into it. You should lock your birds in the coop at dusk and let them out first thing in the morning.

6) Chickens are a daily commitment. Again, chickens are different from dogs and cats; you cannot provide extra food and water for your birds and go out of town for several days. Plan to feed, water, and gather eggs both morning and evening and find a chicken sitter if you go on vacation.

7) Diet is important. There are several different formulations of feed, each for different stages in a chicken’s life: chick starter, chick grower, and laying formula. Chickens can eat kitchen scraps, but a properly formulated feed should be the primary source of nutrition. I recommend providing supplemental calcium for laying hens and it’s important to note that treats like scratch and meal worms can cause birds to become fat, leading to laying problems and other health issues.

8) You are the first line of defense for your birds’ health. Birds hide signs of illness so it will be very important to know what is normal for your chickens: weight; food/water intake; respiration; social, sleep, and grooming habits; etc.

9) Chicken owners are chicken ambassadors. If you get chickens, you join the ranks of a group of people who are trying something new. With that privilege comes responsibility: to represent yourself and your fellow chicken keepers well to your community. Therefore, it’s important to educate yourself about chickens by taking a class (Home to Roost Urban Chicken Consulting offers several per year, as well as in-home consultations), reading quality materials (see the Resources tab on the blog Home to Roost Urban Chicken Consulting blog), and visiting the coops of successful chicken keepers. You can also join online forums, such as the Chicago Chicken Enthusiasts Google Group.

A few thoughts on roosters from my ag colleague, Deborah Niemann, of Antiquity Oaks Farm Blog. Deborah is also a published author. You can read more about her and her books on her website. 

We were vegetarians for 14 years when we got chickens, and we never had any intention to start eating chicken or any other meat for that matter. I bought three roosters with my 24 hens so that they could set and hatch chicks and continue the cycle of life, and I didn’t mind the idea of having more than the recommended number of roosters because they are so pretty, and I thought (naively) that beauty should be valued as much as eggs.

After two years, we had 40 hens and 24 roosters. Well, as beautiful as the roosters were, the hens looked horrible. Almost all of them had bald backs, no feathers, and raw skin from being mated constantly. Roosters have a non-stop drive to reproduce, so they are chasing hens and jumping on their backs all day long. When you have one rooster for every ten hens, it’s not a big deal. When you have more than one rooster for every two hens, the poor girls are literally “run ragged.”

One day I walked into the barn and discovered that one of the roosters was completely blind and had one eye that had been completely pecked out. I knew the roosters had been fighting, and I’d break it up when I saw it, but I couldn’t be around 24 roosters 24/7. My husband and I argued about putting him down or having him live out his life in a cage, and by the time I’d convinced my husband to chop off his head, he had died. A week later, we went through the same thing again, and by the third time this happened in two weeks, we realized that the roosters were very unhappy with all the competition and were seeking some type of equilibrium. We could either let them continue killing each other, or we could reduce the playing field ourselves. After much debate, we decided that a quick ax to the neck would be far more humane than letting them kill each other slowly. When they fight, they peck at each others’ heads until one is blind and/or brain damaged. This does not lead to a quick death.

We have 32 acres, and although we have fencing to keep out coyotes, the chickens can go through or fly over it if they want, and some of them do. We once had a couple of “brother” roosters who would range out about ten acres, and one day we found one of them staring into space in the corner of the chicken house. We had seen them fighting the day before. So, although hens don’t fight if they have plenty of space, having enough space is not the issue for roosters who are testosterone-driven.

Allowing roosters to live out their natural life is a really nice idea, and one which I thought I could achieve — before I actually tried. I suppose you could keep them caged by themselves, but I don’t see that as a terribly fulfilling life. If you want eggs, roosters will die somewhere, sometime. Either you buy sexed pullets, and the left-over cockerels die at the hatchery, or you buy straight-run, and the roosters live a few months before becoming dinner or perhaps a little longer before they kill each other. No, not every rooster will die in those fights, but I can tell you that even the winners look like they’ve suffered a lot of pain.