Backyard Chickens

The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens in Town or Country

Gaia Rodale

© 2014

All Rights Reserved.   No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: The Author and Publisher have strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this book, notwithstanding the fact that they do not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Author and Publisher assume no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional. In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made or health benefits received.  This book is not intended for use as a source of medical, legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in medical, legal, business, accounting, and finance matters.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Why People Raise Chickens

Are Home Grown Eggs Better than Store Bought Eggs?

Starting Your Own Food Supply

Do You Have What it Takes to Raise Chickens?

Legal Considerations

Schedule Considerations

Chicken Poop Considerations

Neighborly Considerations

Long Term Considerations

Choosing Your Chickens

Should You Start with Eggs, Chicks, or Chickens?

How Many Chickens Do You Need?

Do I Need a Rooster?

Breed Basics

Where to Get Your Chickens

Housing Your Hens

Free Range or Confined?

Free-Range Benefits

Free-Range Dangers

How Much Space Do You Need

Choosing Your Coop

Setting Up the Space

Inside the Coop

Roosts

Nesting Boxes

Feeders and Waterers

Caring for Your Chickens

Feeding

Watering

Cleaning

Cold Climate Care

Conclusion

Check out some of Gaia’s other books!!

Introduction

I want to thank you and congratulate you for downloading, “Backyard Chickens: The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens in Town or Country”.

There was a time when having a handful of chickens pecking around in the yard wasn’t anything unusual and having freshly laid eggs for breakfast was an everyday occurrence.  But as society changed over the last century, so did our ideas about where chickens are supposed to live and how we are supposed to get our eggs and meat.  Namely, chickens live on farms and eggs and meat come from stores.   If there was any doubt about the society’s view of keeping chickens, you need only look to the laws and regulations that limit and prohibit this practice in many communities.

But for homesteading families, backyard chickens are one of the easiest and least expensive ways to start building their own self-sufficient, sustainable food supply.  This guide provides those families, families like yours, with the basic information needed to make the commitment to raising backyard chickens and then get your flock going.

This guide begins by asking the most important question that must be answered in relation to starting your own backyard flock – whether or not it is something you should do.  From there, it provides you with helpful criteria and resources to choose the right chickens for your needs and helps you figure out how many chickens should be in your starter flock.  It offers advice on choosing a coop and recommendations on how to set your coop up to provide your chickens with a safe, sanitary, comfortable home.  Finally, it offers basic information on how to care for your chickens, even in cold Northern climates.

With the information here, you will have what you need to choose a coop, buy your birds, and have fresh, delicious, sustainably raised eggs as the first step toward a sustainable, self-sufficient food supply.

Happy Homesteading!

Gaia Rodale

Why People Raise Chickens

Chickens are the most common animal raised by homesteaders.  Having immediate access to fresh, free-range eggs is just one of the many reasons that chickens are a natural fit for homesteading families. 

After eggs, space requirements have to top the list for most of us.  Chickens, even when raised free range, take less space to raise than other livestock.  This is often the most important consideration since many modern homesteaders lack large spaces and many live in urban environments where space is at a premium. 

Chickens are also popular with homesteaders because of cost.  They are less expensive to set-up and to maintain than other common homestead animals like cows, goats, or even pigs.  If they can be raised free-range, the eggs they provide can be enough to offset the cost of any supplementary feed.  The birds themselves are also much less expensive to purchase than larger animals.

These feathered friends also require less effort to care for than other livestock and people are more likely to be familiar with the work involved in raising chickens than with the work required to care for larger livestock. 

Chickens can provide an additional benefit to homesteaders if there is adequate and appropriate space to raise them free-range as they are nature’s answer to pesticide.  They eat common backyard and small farm pests like tics, grasshoppers, flies, fleas, lawn grubs, and most of the destructive insects in the garden, though you do have to be careful about the chickens themselves eating the bounty of the garden!

For homesteaders that are just starting out, raising backyard chickens is the best bet because it allows you to branch out into raising livestock, start your own sustainable food supply, and increase your level of self sufficiency without a large outlay of money.  Starting with chickens will also teach you the kind of skills you need to handle larger livestock if that is something you choose to pursue.

Are Home Grown Eggs Better than Store Bought Eggs?

One of the reasons often cited as a benefit of raising chickens in order to gather your own eggs is that homegrown eggs are better, healthier, tastier, etc. than the eggs you can buy in the store.   I get asked this a lot when I am talking to people about being a homesteader and raising chickens. 

The best answer I can give is that this is true….sometimes. 

Egg size, quality, flavor, yolk color, white consistency, and shell strength are all determined by the health, age, and diet of the individual hen that laid the egg.  This means that there is variation in egg quality no matter where the chickens were raised.

Now, if you think back to the last carton of eggs you bought in a grocery store, you might doubt that is true.  It is very likely that the 12 eggs in your carton were about the same size, generally the same color, and did not seem to have demonstrable differences in flavor or consistency.  This is because commercially raised chickens, especially those on the same farm, are fed the same amount of the same thing, are generally the same, age, and are having their health monitored by the same farmer.  When you consider it this way, it would be stranger if the eggs in your carton weren’t almost exactly the same. 

If you grab a carton of cage-free, free-range eggs in the grocery store, you are likely to see a wider variation in color and some small size variations.  This helps to further demonstrate this point.  When chickens are free-range, their diet has more variation since at least some of what they eat varies from chicken to chicken based on what they can find.  This is why you see more variation in commercially raised cage-free, free-range eggs than in other commercially raised eggs.

Now, if you collected a dozen free-range home grown eggs, you are likely to have a range of colors, different sizes, and when you cracked the eggs, more variety in yolk and white color and consistency.  This is because when you have a small flock, you are less likely to have the tight controls in place in terms of diet and age that are used in commercial farms to ensure they produce a consistent product.   

All that explains why there are variations but it doesn’t tell us if one is better than the other.  That’s because one kind of eggs isn’t demonstrably better than the other.  One egg can be demonstrably better than another, but if you compare store bought vs home grown you are likely to come to the same conclusion as everyone else who has conducted any kind of blind test.  There really isn’t a discernible difference. 

So why do people who raise chickens swear that the eggs they get from their backyard are better than the ones you can get in the store?   For the same reason that we believe the things our children do are better than the things other children do.  For the same reason we will always prefer the way our Mom makes our favorite dish to any other version of that dish, even if it was created by a culinary master. 

Ownership. 

We think our eggs are better because they are ours.  We raised the chickens, we collected the eggs, and the effort we expended improves our experience of the eggs.  In effect, it isn’t that we think our eggs are better than the ones we can buy in the store, they are actually better, to us.

Starting Your Own Food Supply

Hands down, this is the reason that many homesteaders choose to raise backyard chickens.  We keep chickens for the same reason we grow gardens, a sustainable, self-sufficient food supply.  When you can simply walk out the backdoor and come in a few minutes later with breakfast, you have the peace of mind that comes from being able to provide for your family.  Having some kind of control over your own food supply removes some of your reliance on external factors and actors which is the essence of self-sufficiency and speaks to the heart of homesteading.

When the food on your plate comes from the animals you are raising and the crops you are growing you know where that food came from and how it was grown.  You know the chickens that laid the eggs in your omelets weren’t pumped full of hormones and antibiotics or kept in inhumanely tiny cages.  You know everything that went into that chicken and therefore everything that went into creating that egg.  You never need worry that something harmful is hiding in the food you are feeding your family.

Do You Have What it Takes to Raise Chickens?

In my opinion, this is the very first question anyone considering starting their own flock should be asking.  The obvious answers, and unfortunately the places most people start, like breeds, coops, and care instructions will be covered later.  This section covers the things you need to consider as part of making the most important decision related to starting your own backyard chicken flock – whether or not you should.

Legal Considerations

One thing new homesteaders who are excited about the prospects of becoming more self-sufficient and self-reliant fail to consider is whether or not they can keep chickens where they live.  Despite the fact that we live in a “free country”, there are lots and lots of laws, rules, and regulations that restrict what we can do, including whether or not we can raise chickens in our backyard.

Before you do anything else, you need to check with the town or city where you live to make sure there aren’t any chicken-related restrictions you need to know about.  These kinds of city-wide ordinances and regulations can include restricting the keeping of all chickens, limiting the number of chickens you can keep, or dictate whether or not you can have a rooster.  If there are restrictions in place, you may be able to apply for an exemption or even try to change the ordinance, so don’t get discouraged if keeping chickens is prohibited where you live.  But you need to know whether or not you are in a chicken friendly environment before you put a penny into starting your flock. 

For some people, the news will not be good.  There will be some restriction or regulation that bans raising backyard chickens.  If you are one of those people, you may need to investigate alternative options for raising chickens like keeping them as pets inside the house.

If there are no rules or restrictions at the city or town level, that’s good news, but if you live in a neighborhood with a home owner’s association, you may not be out of the woods yet.  Check the bylaws or rules and regulations of the association to make sure there are no provisions related to keeping backyard chickens.  These kinds of restrictions can be similar to those imposed at the local-government level and may also include restrictions on free-ranging your flock and coop size or design.

Once you feel confident that you know the laws, rules, regulations, ordinances, and restrictions that apply to your location, there are a few other things to consider before you start building your coop and assembling your flock.

Schedule Considerations

You may have read that the effort required in raising chickens falls somewhere between the effort required to care for a dog and the effort required to care for a cat.  While that is generally true, there is one time when it is not – vacations.  If you are taking a family vacation and will be away for a week or two, you can board your cat or dog at a kennel.  But there aren’t really any kennels for chickens.  This means that your ability to be away from home for any length of time will become much more complicated than it is now.

There are definitely ways to manage your flock when you are away from home.  You may have helpful neighbors or family members who are willing to care for your chickens while you are away.  You may also be able to find a company or service provider who will come to your home and take care of your chickens while you are gone.  But, it is something you need to think through before you make the commitment.  This is one of the things people who jump in without thinking things through often fail to consider. 

Chicken Poop Considerations

Cleaning the coop is a job no one wants because chickens poop a lot and that poop is pretty smelly.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently.  This fact can be quite shocking for new chicken keepers who are thinking “litter box level” effort.  You and the other members of your family need to be in agreement as to who will be responsible for this.  If you have any concerns at all about whether or not you have the collective willingness to undertake this unpleasant task on a regular basis, see if you can help someone else who is raising backyard chickens clean out their coop so you have a good feeling for what you will be getting yourself into. 

Neighborly Considerations

No matter what kind of relationship you have with your neighbors, it is a good idea to check in with them and get a feel for their attitude about chickens before you make any big plans.  Even the nicest neighbor can turn against you if they feel like your new hobby is negatively affecting them and their enjoyment of their property. 

The amount of impact your chickens can have on your neighbors will depend on three factors.  First, whether you plan to raise your chickens free-range or not.  If your chickens won’t be free-range, the potential impact to your neighbors decreases.  However, if they will be free-range, you will need to assess whether or not they are likely to stray onto your neighbor’s property and whether or not that will be an issue. 

This brings up the second factor, the proximity of your home to your neighbor’s home.  If the neighbor’s property is far enough away, even free-range chickens aren’t likely to stray far enough to directly impact your neighbor’s property.  But, if they are close enough, you may have to take some preventative action to keep your chickens away from their flower beds.  This may mean putting up a fence or doing something else that can significantly increase your initial investment.  This is why it is so important to have these discussions ahead of time. 

The last thing you want is to put money into chickens, a coop, and feed and then find out that you have to spend a bunch of money to put in a fence to appease your neighbor. 

The third factor is noise.  If you are planning to have a rooster and you have neighbors within hearing distance, you definitely need to talk to your neighbor’s before you proceed.  There is a reason so many cities and towns ban roosters, they are noisy, especially early in the morning, and many people prefer not to wake up to nature’s alarm clock.

Talking things through with your neighbors first will help ensure you are not backpedaling and trying to fix things with them later.

Long Term Considerations

The last thing to consider is whether or not you are ready to commit to this for the long term.   This means thinking about how you are going to handle the difficult questions that will come up as the years go by.  

To start, as chickens age they will lay fewer and fewer eggs which means that at some point, you will be feeding chickens who are no longer feeding you.  At this point, you will need to decide if you are going to increase your flock in order to maintain the same egg production or “retire” your non-laying hen to the stock pot.  That might sound a little heartless but that is the point.  If you have never raised animals for food, you need to think carefully about whether or not you will be able to kill your chickens when the time comes.

And the time will come.   

Laying hens will generally lay for only the first 3 years but they can easily live for 8-10 years.  Unless you plan to double the number of hens in your flock after the first three years and then again at 6 years, you are going to have to thin the flock in order to add new egg layers.  If this makes you uncomfortable now, before you have spent any time raising your chickens, this path may not be for you.  If you are even the slightest bit hesitant, find someone who raises chickens and ask if you can help the next time one has to be put down.  I cannot stress how important it is for you to know you can do this before you take on this kind of commitment. 

Aging out of their egg producing days is not the only time when you may need to take the life of one of your chickens.  Another important consideration that you need to grapple with now is how you will handle a chicken that gets sick.  Hopefully, all your hard work will pay off and you will have a healthy, hearty flock but even if you do everything right, chickens will still get sick once in awhile.  Your immediate thought might be that you will just call the vet, but I encourage you to rethink that strategy.    Vet bills will add up quickly and from a pure cost benefit perspective, the right decision is to replace the sick hen with a healthy one.   But, you need to take the time to think these things through before you take on the responsibility of raising and killing your own backyard chickens.

Choosing Your Chickens

Once you have made the decision that having and caring for backyard chickens is right for you, you can start working to build your flock.

Should You Start with Eggs, Chicks, or Chickens?

You can build your flock in a couple different ways. 

First, you can buy chickens that are old enough to start laying eggs right now.  This means you will have eggs right away.   If you have never raised chickens before, this is probably the best option as it will give you some time to become accustomed to caring for your chickens before you take on the task of caring for hatchlings.

You can also buy newly hatched chicks and raise them yourselves.  However, this means you will be egg-less for about the first 6 months or so.  The majority of laying hens will start laying eggs around 6 months but that isn’t a hard and fast rule.  Like children learning to walk, your chickens will start laying eggs when they are ready. 

You can also buy fertilized eggs and hatch them yourself.  I am not going to cover that here because it requires additional equipment and is not something I would recommend for beginning homesteaders. 

My recommendation is to go with option number one and purchase started pullets, which are young hens that are ready or just about ready to being laying eggs.

How Many Chickens Do You Need?

The number of chickens you need depends entirely on how many eggs you want.  If you are only raising chickens to get the eggs you need for your own family, you need to consider how many eggs your family will go through in a week.  Two healthy, productive hens will produce about a dozen eggs a week.  That should give you a way to gauge how many chickens you need.  

At a minimum, you should have two chickens in your flock.  Chickens are very social creatures and they do best when they have at least one friend.   If you are going to have a small flock, especially if your flock will only consist of two chickens, choose chickens of the same breed.  There is truth to the saying that birds of a feather flock together and chickens that are of the same breed will make better friends. 

Do I Need a Rooster?

You will only need a rooster if you are planning on raising new chickens from the eggs your chickens lay.  Chickens will lay eggs without a rooster but those eggs can only be fertilized and become new chickens if there is a rooster to fertilize them. 

There are some other reasons that you might want a rooster, if raising one is allowed in your area.  Roosters are protective of their harem and are constantly on alert, watching for potential threats.  Their aggressive reaction to threats can help keep your hens safe from some predators or at least alert you to the presence of something dangerous.  Roosters can also be beneficial for free range flocks because they will help the hens find food. 

If you are planning to have a rooster as part of your flock, you will need to increase the minimum size of your flock.  One rooster needs about 8-10 hens for mating purposes.  If the flock is smaller than that, there is a risk that the rooster will damage the hens by overusing them. 

Breed Basics

Before you choose your chickens, you should put some time into researching which breed or breed will best suit your needs.  Not all breeds are created equal and different breeds are better for different purposes.  There are breeds that are good at producing eggs, breeds that are better for producing meat, and breeds that are good at producing both. 

The best hens for laying eggs come from breeds that are smaller in size, active, quick to mature, and good at foraging.   Some of the best breeds for egg production are Leghorn, Minorca, Andalusian, Spanish and Hamburg. 

The best hens for producing meat feature birds that are larger, not great at foraging, gentle but broody, and that move slowly.  The primary breeds used for producing meat are Brahmas, Cochins, and Langshans.

The best general purpose hens come from breeds where the chicken’s characteristics fall somewhere in the middle.  The birds are medium sized, more active than those in the meat breeds but less active than the egg laying breeds.  They are good mothers and while they don’t produce quite as many eggs as the egg producing breeds, they do produce enough for most homesteading purposes.  They are also good birds when it comes to feeding your family.  They don’t produce as much meat as the meat breeds, but it is enough to make it worth raising them for their meat.  Plymouth Rocks, Wyandottes, and Rhode Island Reds are all general purpose breeds.

Since most homesteaders raise chickens for eggs first and meat second, the best breeds for homesteading are usually the three general purpose breeds. 

There are, however, some other things to consider.  Some breeds need more free-range space while others do better in close quarters.  Some breeds are more tolerant to cold while others may require significantly more care and expense to keep in cold climates.   In order to pick the best breed or breeds for your purposes, it is important to do your research ahead of time.  There are so many great resources on how to select the best breeds for you already available so I have chosen not to dive deeply into this topic in this guide.  You can find the information you need on the characteristics, strengths, and suitability of different breeds and assistance in picking the best breeds for your purposes here:

Pickin the Right Frickin Chicken from Backyard Chickens (http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/pickin-the-right-frickin-chicken-guide-to-picking-backyard-chicken-breeds)

Raising Chickens 101: Choosing a Breed from the Farmer’s Almanac (http://www.almanac.com/blog/raising-chickens/raising-chickens-101-choosing-breed)

Pick a Chicken Breed Selector Tool from My Pet Chicken (http://www.mypetchicken.com/chicken-breeds/which-breed-is-right-for-me.aspx)

Where to Get Your Chickens

You have several options for sourcing your first flock of chickens that range from a local farmer to a mail-order breeder on the other side of the country.  While these are all legitimate places from which to source your chickens, as a beginner and a first time chicken owner, your best bet is to get your birds from a hatchery.  It may cost you a little more to buy your birds from one of these providers but you are more likely to get healthy birds that will meet your expectations while eliminating the unpleasant surprises that can come with free or low cost chickens.  

Ordering through a hatchery is also likely to get you some sort of guarantee on the health and sex of your chickens and a quick way to remedy any issues with your order that you are unlikely to experience with other providers.   Hatcheries generally have a wide variety of breeds available but many also have minimum order requirements so you may need to shop around to find the best hatchery to meet your needs.

Housing Your Hens

When it comes to provide a home for your new flock, there are some decisions to be made before you settle on a design, start buying supplies, or choose your coop.

Free Range or Confined?

Allowing your chickens to be free range (roam freely outside the pen) during the day can decrease your feeding costs and help cut down on the bugs and pests in your yard.  You need to make this decision before settling on your coop because free-range chickens don’t need as much space in the coop as chickens that remain confined all the time.  While you don’t need acres of land to free-range your flock, a standard size suburban backyard isn’t likely to provide enough nutrition for even a pair of chickens to warrant the damage those chickens will do trying to find things to eat.

However, even if you have the space, free ranging isn’t for everyone.  To help you decide whether free-ranging your flock is right for you, let’s go over the benefits and dangers of letting your chickens roam free-range. 

Free-Range Benefits

Decreased food costs

More nutritional eggs and meat

Natural pest control

Healthier for the chickens

Helps aerate and fertilize the soil, especially offseason in gardens

Free-Range Dangers

Weather

Laying eggs away from the nest

Damage to landscaping and gardens

Predators

If the benefits of free-ranging seem appealing enough to outweigh the dangers, there are some things you can do to mitigate or manage the risk.  Using a portable coop can provide shelter from predators and the elements for chickens when they are foraging.  Establishing your chicken’s habits early will help keep them laying in the nesting boxes in the coop but this doesn’t guarantee they won’t find some other place they like better while they are out and about.  Cordoning off flower beds or vegetable gardens to protect them from the chickens is the best way to prevent landscape damage.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to keep them completely safe from predators while they are out of the coop.   If you have a rooster he can provide some protection or at a minimum an early warning system.  The rooster will alert the hens of danger and seek to protect them by attacking or fighting whatever is threatening them.  If you hear the commotion in time you may be able to scare the predator off and get your flock back in the coop safely.  If you make the decision to free-range your flock, you need to be prepared to lose birds once in awhile. 

How Much Space Do You Need

The amount of space your chickens will need depends on three primary factors. 

How many chickens you plan on having

Whether they will be free-range or confined to the coop and run

What breed(s) of chickens are you going to raise

At this point, you should have a pretty good feel for the answer to all three of those questions.  The best place to start is to look at the number of chickens you are planning to have in your starter flock.   There are two common mistakes homesteaders make when they are first starting out with chickens.  They either take on more chickens than they can handle or they start small but fail to plan for a larger flock in the future.  Both of these mistakes can be costly to rectify.  

To make sure you are not making either of these mistakes, take some time to really consider the size of your starter flock before making any design decisions.  If you are a backyard chicken beginner and your initial plan is to start with a flock of more than 10 chickens, you may want to rethink that plan.  As long as you plan for it, you can always add more chickens later and while you are learning, you will be better off with fewer birds.  Now, settle on the size of your initial starter flock which should be somewhere between 2 and 10 birds.

If this is all the chickens you will ever consider keeping – because of space or regulations – you can skip this paragraph.  If not, you are going to need a ballpark idea of that maximum number of future chickens in order to buy or build a coop that will meet your needs for the long term.   If you are starting small, but your end goal is to have a much larger flock, you need to plan ahead and make sure the coop you choose can either handle a bigger flock or be easily modified to house more hens at some future point.  Otherwise, you may end up buying or building another coop much sooner than should have been necessary.

Now that we know how many chickens our coop will need to house, we can figure out the amount of space required. 

Let’s say you are planning an initial flock of 8 Rhode Island Red hens that will not be raised free-range.   This is a general purpose breed which means the birds are medium sized.  On average, most experts recommend allowing 4 square feet of space within the coop for each chicken.   So your flock would require 24 square feet of space for the 8 chickens.  This is the point where breed becomes important.  If you have chosen either of the other two breed categories your minimum space requirements may be different.  The bigger meat birds may require more space and the smaller egg layers, less.  Check for specific space requirements for your breed if you will be raising anything but a general purpose breed.   The minimum space required in the coop is the same regardless of whether they will be raised free-range or confined.

Since you won’t be raising them free range, you will also need 8-10 feet of space per chicken in the run.  This means, your chicken run will need to be 80-100 feet.  The same caveat about breed applies here.  If you will be able to free-range your chickens during the day or for at least amount of time every day, you won’t need as much space in the run.

Choosing Your Coop

You can find a wide variety of pre-made coops and coop designs online, so I am not going to go into detail about designs here.  Whatever design you choose, you need to make sure it provides everything your chicken needs.  Here are some of the most important things you want to make sure your coop provides or includes.

One of the most important purposes of your coop and run is to provide a safe place for your chickens to live.  Make sure your coop and run provide protection from all sides including over head and from underneath. 

Despite the name, chicken wire is not a good fit for chicken coops because the holes in the wire are too big to keep predators from injuring your birds.  The best wire mesh is ½ inch square hardware cloth.

Predators come in all shapes and sizes and some of them will have no problem burrowing under fencing to get at your birds or their food.  Keep the coop and run safe from these burrowers by burying wire mesh at least 12”under ground around the edges.

The coop needs to protect the chickens from more than just predators.   It also needs to keep them dry when it rains, protected from wind, and warm in the winter. 

Chickens need access to fresh air and the coop needs adequate airflow to keep your chickens healthy.

Make sure the run is covered with aviary netting or some other kind of protective netting to keep wild birds, predatory birds, and even predators out of the run.  Wild birds can carry disease.

Check to be sure the coop is human friendly too which means that it is very easy to clean.

The coop will be part of your landscape so make sure you like the way it looks. 

Setting Up the Space

In addition to providing a coop and a run that are safe and provide enough space, you need to do some other things to provide a comfortable, healthy space for your flock. 

Inside the Coop

To help keep the coop sanitary, pest free, and to make it easier to clean, cover the floor with 2-3 inches of pine shavings.  Spread a thin layer of diatomaceous earth over the shavings to help keep lice and mites away.  This layer will absorb the chicken droppings and can provide some insulation from the cold ground if your coop sits on bare earth and doesn’t have an actual floor.  You will need to replace these shavings every 1-2 months. 

Roosts

Your chickens need a place to roost or sleep inside the coop and the easiest way to do this is to provide a series of roosting poles.  Ideally, a roosting pole should be about 2 inches wide and have rounded edges kind of like a wooden curtain rod.  Each chicken will need about 10 inches of roosting space so 2 birds would need a roosting pole that was about 20 inches long.  If you need to install more than one pole in order to accommodate your flock, make sure the poles are at least 10 inches apart and install them in a graduated ladder formation with the lowest pole being the furthest from the wall and the next pole being in inches back and 10 inches up.  This ensures the chickens have an easy way to get to the highest/farthest back pole and that they aren’t roosting directly over each other.

Nesting Boxes

Hens like to have certain conditions when they lay an egg which is the purpose of nesting boxes.  You will need to provide one nesting box for every two to four chickens and they should be placed below the roosts but a couple inches off of the floor.  Nesting boxes that are not in the main traffic area of the coop and provide a dark space are the best for encouraging egg-laying.  

You can buy nesting boxes or make them yourself.  Basic nesting box requirements:

Enough room for your chicken to stand up comfortably which means a box that is 12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches is the smallest you would want to go. 

Nesting material like pine wood shavings or straw so that the chicken has a cozy, soft place to lay her egg.

A sloped roof to keep chickens from roosting atop their nesting boxes.

A lipped front edge to keep nesting material and eggs from falling out or being pushed out. 

Off the ground but easy for hens to get into which may mean running a roosting pole along the front of the box or boxes to make access easier.

Although not required per se, you may also want to install nesting box curtains over the front of the nesting boxes.  This can help create a darkened space to encourage laying and help prevent some serious problems like egg eating and the spread of broodiness by keeping eggs and broody hens out of the sight of the other chickens.  You can find good information on nesting box curtains here (http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/03/nest-box-curtains-more-than-fashion.html).  You can also find designs and plans for building your own nesting boxes here (http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/4-4/top_10_nest_box_ideas_around_the_farm/) and here (http://www.byexample.net/homestead/barn/chicken_nesting_boxes.html).

Feeders and Waterers

In order to feed your flock and provide them with the water they need, you will need a feeder and a waterer.  Both of these can be bought or made and there are a variety of designs available online.  One of my favorite DIY feeders can be found here (http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2011/05/my-pvc-chicken-feeder-diy-instructions.html) and an excellent resource on waterers can be found here (http://smallfarm.about.com/od/chickens/a/How-To-Water-Your-Chickens.htm). 

The most important requirements for both feeders and waterers is that they provide a way to feed and water your flock that keeps the feed dry and the water clean.

Caring for Your Chickens

There are three things your chickens must have to be healthy and thrive, safe shelter, healthy food, and enough water.  Now that we have shelter covered, let’s talk about food, water, and some other basic care your flock will require.

Feeding

The age of the chickens in your flock will determine what kind of feed they need and how much they need.  For beginners to raising chickens, using commercial feed specifically designed to meet the needs of your flock is the best option.  These feeds are formulated to meet the nutritional needs of the different age groups.  Hopefully, if you have taken my other recommendations, you will be starting out with a flock of similarly aged chickens which means you won’t have to worry about having different feed formulations, but it is important to know that there is different feed designed for different age groups. 

An average size general purpose hen will need about ¼ to 1/3 a pound of feed per day.  Chickens that are free-range may need less when they are able to forage.

Watering

An adequate supply of clean water is crucial to the health of your flock and essential if you want them to lay eggs.  If a hen goes without water for even 12 hours it can impact her ability to lay for weeks.  Each hen needs access to as much water as she can drink and that amount will fluctuate depending on several factors.  The most important factor is outside temperature.  When the temperature is cold, your flock can go through about 2/3 the amount of water they will need when the temperature is high.   Plan to provide about two times as much water as feed for each chicken.  So if a ¼ pound of feed equals a cup then you will need 2 cups of water for each chicken.  

Cleaning

The health of your chickens will also depend on the cleanliness of their environment.  This means you will need to take time and energy to clean out the chicken coop on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much agreement across backyard chicken experts on what “regular” actually means.  Some completely clean and sanitize their coops once or twice a year while others do that every couple weeks.  How often you will need to clean out your coop will generally depend on what method you use for litter and your tolerance for “clean”. 

Earlier I mentioned laying down pine shavings and diatomaceous earth in the bottom of the coop to soak up the chicken droppings.  This is one of the most commonly used litter methods.  Using this method, you will need to clean the shavings out and replace them every 1 to 2 months.  There are two other litter methods widely used by backyard chicken keepers. 

The first is called the deep litter method and involves adding new layers of shavings every week instead of removing the soiled shavings.  This creates a kind of composting pile on the floor of the chicken coop which breaks the shavings and the chicken droppings into compost over time.  Just like well managed compost, a well managed deep litter coop will not have an unpleasant smell.    To use the deep litter method:

Lay down an inch or two of pine shavings to start.

Every couple days, stir up the bedding and break up any clumps.

Each week add a new layer of shavings over the old. 

Stir, layer, repeat.

With this method you will only need to remove the litter once a year and most of what you remove will have broken down into high quality compost that can go right on the garden.  In order for this method to work, you need good bacteria and microbial life to build up so that they can break down the bad bacteria and microbes, so if you choose to use this method, it is important to refrain from adding diatomaceous earth or any other chemical insecticide to the shavings.  Those additives will kill both the bad and the good and defeat the purpose of using the deep litter method.  The composting process will keep lice and mites at bay.

At the end of the year, remove all the litter, clean the coop thoroughly, and then use some of the material you removed from the coop to form the first layer of the new litter.  This will help seed the litter with the good bacteria you need to start the process over.

The second method is the use of a poop or droppings board.  This board sits under the roosts and catches the majority of the chicken droppings since most of them occur while the chickens are roosting.  It is then scrapped clean on a daily basis which takes only a few minutes but reduces the frequency with which the bedding used on the floor needs to be changed.  An added benefit of using a droppings board is that it makes it easier to spot signs that a chicken may be sick or injured as droppings or other excretions that would normally disappear into the pile of bedding on the ground can easily be spotted on the board.

Cold Climate Care

If you live in a colder climate where the temperature in the winter dips low and stays there, you will need to do a few things to keep your chickens safe and healthy.  Chickens are hardy and can withstand fairly cold temperatures but they need protection from cold north winds.  This means you will need to ensure your coop provides that kind of protection without restricting air flow. 

The other critically important difference for cold climate chicken keeping is providing a heated water supply.  Even during the winter, your chickens need clean water every day and it is important to make sure that water doesn’t freeze and become inaccessible.  Using a heated waterer specifically designed for cold climates can address this problem. 

You may also want to choose a breed that is better suited to a colder climate as some breeds are more resistant to frostbite and better able to thrive in cold weather than others. 

When the temperature dips down, your chickens will need more food in order to produce the extra energy required to maintain their body temperature.  I don’t normally advise giving chickens treats, like Scratch, but adding some to their diet during the winter months can help boost their calorie intake to cover this increased need.  Just be careful not to overdo it since you don’t want obese chickens at winter’s end.

The shortened days of the winter months will also impact the amount of eggs your chickens produce.  You can use artificial lighting (like one 60 watt bulb) to augment the natural sunlight and encourage them to lay more often.  However, you can also just let them lay fewer eggs.  There is no danger or benefit to your birds either way.

Conclusion

I hope you found this guide to getting started with backyard chickens useful and informational and that it has inspired you to consider including chickens as part of a simple, sustainable, self-sufficient homesteading lifestyle.

The benefits of raising backyard chickens go well beyond providing fresh eggs and these benefits align with the foundational beliefs and goals of most homesteading families.  Although raising backyard chickens is not for everyone, once you can commit to including them in a homestead, you will have started your own sustainable food supply.

You now have the information you need to decide if raising backyard chickens is right for you and the details you need to start your own small flock.   By offering suggestions and recommendations pulled from experts and personal experience, you can now:

Determine if you have what it takes to raise chickens

Find out if you are allowed to have chickens

Decide how many chickens you need

Choose the best breed(s) for your needs

Decide if free-ranging your flock is for you

Choose a coop design             

Set up the coop for comfort and safety             

Feed and water your flock

Maintain a clean and sanitary coop

Care for your chickens in cold climates

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to raise chickens and gather your own eggs, you know have the basics to start your own flock.   From working through zoning or city ordinance issues to selecting the best breeds, you have the information you need to choose the right coop, get the best birds, and keep them healthy and happy so that your refrigerator is always full of freshly laid eggs.

Now that you have the basics, it’s time to choose your coop, buy your birds, and take the next step toward a more sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle.

Happy Homesteading!

Gaia Rodale

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