I actually started writing this post with the statement, “I love my chickens.” Only, my dog was sitting at my feet, on my feet, to keep them warm on a cold morning. The chickens are outside clucking, pecking, makin’ eggs.
I love my dog. Chicken love is a different kind of love.
I’ve written a lot about the chickens on the blog, so I won’t expand on my chicken thoughts and antics here. But I will write a bit about keeping chickens in the city.
And I’ll start by saying it’s easy. It’s also, really, not a neighborhood nuisance to keep a coop, provided you have space.
I keep my chickens in a large secured coop with ample space, a hen house, and various roosts (sticks suspended above the ground for chickens to hang out). The hen house is an Eglu Cube of which I have torn off the front “fencing.” I visit the chickens twice a day, but because their housing is self-contained and I don’t have to secure up the hen house every night, I really only need to visit once. I collect eggs, toss some scratch around, fill up their food and refresh their water. Once a week or two, I replace the straw in the hen house, strew around fresh shavings so keep the ground clean.
You need more than one chicken because they are social animals. I would argue that you need more than two, because you never know when one might get hauled off by a hawk or dragged off by a possum. I’ve kept a flock of anywhere from three to seven chickens, concentrating on the age and laying habits of my birds to guide who stays, who goes and when we need more.
Chickens are mostly quiet. I had a chicken, Pot Pie, who crowed a lot and tended to “keep earlier hours” than I would have liked, which wasn’t awesome on an early summer morning. But, seriously, toss any neighbors who might have been awoken a few eggs and you’ll find they don’t really mind. Even crowing chickens crow less than barking dogs bark and car alarms blare.
Roosters are not quiet. But you don’t need (or, I would argue, want) a rooster to have chickens. I’ve had to explain this to many and it is awkward to explain it to men you don’t know well, but a hen house doesn’t need a rooster to produce eggs. That’s because eggs, the eggs you eat unless you are from certain Asian cultures, are not fertilized.
I think what trips people up is the fact that “something significant comes out of the chicken.” Just like — a baby! And you need a man to make a baby. You also need a rooster to make a chicken.
But, and I’ll share it here as quickly and bluntly as possible — just like women don’t need a man to have her period, a chicken doesn’t need a rooster to make an egg. It’s so much easier explaining the difference between straw and hay, which city people also don’t actually understand.
Onward.
Chickens need shade, so you need to make sure that part of your chickens homestead has relief from the sun. But, just like us, they love to soak in the warm rays on a cold day. They also need some protection from the rain. I keep part of the roosts covered so they can roost happily in any weather.
When it’s hot, you have to pile a fair amount of shavings on the ground to keep the area relatively fly-free. When it’s cold, you actually do your hens a favor by not heating the area in any way. They live outside and are built to withstand elements — you aren’t, so don’t go thinking that just because you are cold, they are cold.
I keep my compost pile in the coop, which means that we toss in all our odd bits from the kitchen, weeds from the garden and I also serve them leftovers from restaurants. They love leftovers from restaurants. The chickens spend all day turning the compost, keeping it going, so everything breaks down pretty quickly in there. To use the compost, you have to let it cure outside the coop for three or four months — we’ve taken to cure the compost by filling up four large plastic garbage cans that are drilled with a lot of holes. We’re also spreading fresh, uncured compost on the exposed beds over the winter, which should put them in good stead by spring.
Like I said, I’ve written about my chicken experiences and I might go further here in this section about the specifics. I do have an awesome rundown of how to harvest a chicken from a local chef that I might share, since I think that might be helpful (although at least where I live, it is illegal to kill animals, even chickens, for eating, so be mindful when you break that law).
But for now, there are lots of books on keeping chickens and lots of information on the internets and I suggest people start there. Do some initial research and then find an experienced chicken keeper to guide you, and plunge in.
The first morning you discover your girls have laid an egg, just for you, will be one of the best memories you’ll have, no matter how awesome your memories already are.
