Puppy Care

Keeping chickens is quite straightforward and they are entertaining creatures. They are rewarding to keep as they’ll entertain you with their clucking around, re-arranging the flooring material in their run and taking dustbaths. In the middle of winter there is less light, so you will get few eggs, otherwise you should get eggs every day. During the main laying season you’ll get about an egg a day per chicken, so for two dozen eggs a week, say, 4 chickens would be about right.

Chickens prefer somewhere dry to sleep and nestboxes mean you will generally find the eggs, as they can lay in out of the way corners if you’re ot careful. Portable chicken arks and simple hen houses are easy to build from plans. Chickens will eat grubs and worms, clear tiny insects and bugs and will eat grass and weeds too, if you leave them to roam. Chickens that feed naturally produce eggs with lovely deep yellow yolks.

Laying hens needs layers pellets, plus a little grit for egg shell production and whatever treats you like to give them – such as a little corn. You can feed them on kitchen scraps too.

You’ll enjoy watching your chickens take a dust bath; first creating a shallow pit in dry soil or sand, then wriggling around and flapping their wings to stir up the dust and clean themselves. Sunbathing is a popular activity – they’ll lie on their sides in the warm with their wings out, soaking up the sun.

Three chickens may be a crowd, four can be better, so there’s less chance on two ganging up on the third as they establish a pecking order.

You will need some sort of housing – you could use a large rabbit hutch raised off the ground for example, if you only have one or two birds. Chicken arks – the moveable type of chicken coop – are easy to make. Try this excellent book which has chicken ark plans and instructions plus information on keeping chickens. There are two other sets of plans as well: an easy to build rectangular hen house and a large hen house with pitched roof and attached run.

You should find chickens will lay up to the age of 4 or 5, but they can live until they are 15. They are surprisingly intelligent so you can train them to come to you – and they will recognize a routine; for example they will be waiting by the chicken coop in the evening to be tucked up for the night.

For at least part of the day, keeping your chickens in a run will minimise any damage to your garden. The chicken ark which you can move every day or two, allows you to move the hens around your plot, giving them access to new ground, but keeping the chickens where you want them.

They will need to be let out of the roosting area early in the morning as soon as it is light as the more daylight they get the more eggs they will lay as they need natural daylight to produce eggs.

Mary Marshall