From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: Chickens
Organization: Quake Public Access
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 13:59:16 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.155032.26085@spectra.com> gurley@spectra.com (Jim Gurley) writes:

>We live in an area (S. Oregon) that has mild seasons.  It's regularly over
>100 deg in July/August (no rain) and gets below freezing about 75-100
>nights.  It rarely gets below 20 degrees, and almost always hits 40-50
>during the coldest days.  We have 20 acres of 'forest' with a few clearings
>including a 1/3 acre fenced garden/orchard.  There are no predators to
>speak of (not counting our dog, whom I assume we can train to leave them
>alone).

Chickens LOVE to eat vegetables and fruits (and they can and will fly up and
roost in your fruit trees and eat the fruit!).  You will need to do something
to keep them away from your orchard and your garden (partiularly the garden).

As for predators, you have to watch out for rats when the chicks are small.
Opossums and racoons also like to eat effs and perhaps chicks too.  The dog
might be a menace for chicks, but adult chickens can get along fairly
well as long as you train the dog to keep away from them and don't let him
discover that those squawking things are made of meat.

For keeping the chickens in their place, the best thing is an electric
fence about a foot high.  The chickens will learn not to try to leave
aster the first few days of being out.

>1) Can chickens 'survive' without daily care?  Can we leave for a few days
>without needing chicken sitters?

Not for long.  Basically, they need food and fresh water every day.  You might
be able to get away with missing a day if you really stoke up the food and
water, but remember, you have to collect eggs every day too.  It is best to
take care of them twice each day.  Yes, you'll need a friendly neighbor who
will take care of them when you are gone.  

>2) Do they need a 'pen' or can they range free?  (I guess we'd never find
>the eggs)

Actually, as long as you make nice nests they'll usually lay them where you
want them (though some hens are less careful than others).  You also need to 
keep them away from the garden and the road.  This "free range" stuff is
just animal rights blathering.  Get yourself an electric fence.  The 
alternative is chicken wire fence which always needs mending.  For chicken
wire to be really effective, you have to clip their wings too (to keep
them from flying over the fence).  Remember, when you clip wings, only
clip one side.  That keeps them off-balance.  Anyway, with electric fences
you don't have to worry about any of that.

>3) Whats the 'laying life' of a hen?  Are we going to be butchering them
>all the time?  (We don't eat much meat, but there's a wildlife center
>nearby whose raptors just love chicken)

Well, that depends.  As they get older, they lay fewer eggs.  When I used
to raise chickens we would usually raise a batch in the spring, butcher the
roosters in the summer, butcher some more of the hens in the fall, and keep the
rest of the hens for eggs until after the next batch started laying the
following year.  Old hen meat isn't bad, but it isn't as tasty as tender
young roosters, so we usually canned it for use in sandwiches etc.  Canning
sort of tenderizes it.  Just for your information, there's no need for 
roosters if you don't plan to hatch your own chicks, and you don't plan to
raise them for meat.  Being roosterless also cuts down on the noise factor.
Having hens brood their own chicks is a hassle, particularly since you'll have
all different ages of chickens that way and they'll pick on each other more than
if you buy 100 chicks all the same age.

You can also increase the number of chicks that survive by putting medicine
in their water (check at your localfeed store).  Remember, a certain percentage
of your chicks WILL die early in life, so buy a few extra.

>4) Can they tolerate occasional freezing weather, or do we need to build
>them a heated coop (anybody have any solar-coop plans?)?

Chicks need a very controlled and warm environment (commercial brooders work
great).  If thye don't have it (even for a short while) they'll get sick and 
die.  Once they are grown, they can take pretty cold weather without much
trouble.  They DO need shelter for sleeping though, and in the really cold 
months you'll probably want to close them in and give them a heat source of
some kind (since night time is the important time, solar heaters are not so 
useful). It is also important to make sure their feet stay dry to avoid
infections and such.  If they get too cold sometimes you will see frostbite
on their combs.

>5) Could we just keep them in the garden/orchard?  Do they eat vegetables
>(assuming they have the choice of other food)?

Chickens will devour your garden if you let them in.

They also love to eat garbage, so let 'em pick through your table scraps.   
They also eat grass, bugs, and unground grain (like corn or wheat).  Even
though they seen to enjoy whole grain corn better, they get more nutritive
value out of it when it's ground into feed.

>6) How many (or few) chickens could supply a modest supply for a two person
>family (dozen a week)?

A good hen will lay about one egg per day (though they'll often skip a day).
You should also know about "pullet eggs" which are little ones (from the
size of a marble to a pingpong ball).  They are normal and you can eat 
them, but they obviously don't count as "full eggs".

If you want a reliable dozen per week, I'd recommend three or four hens.
Then again, you ought to keep in mind that it's just as easy to take care of
ten chickens as three.  Why not get a few more and sell the eggs?  It's
hardly worth all the trouble for just a few dozen eggs.

>7) What other deep/dark secrets are there we should know?  We already know
>they are loud and create manure (for the garden).

One thing you might not know about is that hens use up lots of calcium in making
egg shells which needs to be replaced.  Your local feed store will have 
ground oyster shell which you can feed your hens to keep up their calcium 
levels.

Some hens are nasty about giving up eggs, so you might want to get some
leather gloves.

Chicks are VERY fragile little guys.  Make sure you have everything all set for
them when you get them.  You need to change their paper regularly (they need
to walk around on a dry surface, not manure), and they need a VERY closely
regulated temperature (if you don't get a commercial brooder, you will need
a box with a light bulb and a thermometer (though I can't remember the recommended
temperature (90 degrees?).  Anyway, you can just watch them and see if they 
huddle next to the bulb or roam far from it.  Even a little chill or draft
will kill them in the first few days.

Chicks are socially nasty to one another.  If one is a bit smaller or if it has
a colored spot on it's back, the others will peck it until they kill it.
This even goes for older chickens when they see another chicken with some
blood on it.  You need to isolate these victims if they are to live.  Actually,
chicks will peck at almost anything unusual they see.  Just put an ink dot on
the wall of their box and they'll go after it like there's no tomorrow.  For 
older chickens, this kind of cannibalism often indicates some kind of vitamin
deficiency which can be cured with feed additives.

Do you know about roosting?  Chickens need to have a place to roost at night.
that is somewhere off the ground where they can hold on and sleep.  When 
chickens are sleeping you can be handled quite easily (they take quite a 
while to "wake up") so you can treat diseases, capture them for butchering,
etc. at night very easily.  Catching them during the day is much harder.

You need to make some nice nests for them when they are ready to lay eggs.
Some clean straw and a dark quiet place are what will attract them.  A hen
will usually lay her eggs in the same place each day if you get her into the
habit.

Chickens have gizzards which they use to grind up their food.  They need 
small stones in their diet to do this.  Your feed store will have sacks of
this "grit".

You need to have feeders that keep the chickens from walking in and fouling
their feed (and water).  A bar that rotates above the feed will prevent this.
You can buy these where you buy the feed.

Are you familiar with how to butcher?  Pluck?  Singe?  Dress?  If not, get
someone experienced to help you the first time.  It'll save you a lot of
trouble.  (For example, before plucking, you need to dip the headness chickens 
in boiling water to loosen the feathers...did you know that?)

I have probably forgotten a few things, so maybe you ought to also get
someone on-site to help you are gte a book to help you out.

>8) Maybe most important, how do eggs measure up as an efficient
>energy/resource consumer (e.g. how much 'energy' of feed/water makes an
>equivalent measure of eggs?)?  For example, we wouldn't raise beef for that
>reason. [please no anti-environmental flames over this one!

Well, there's no way I can respond except by flaming you for looking at 
the process from a cock-eyed environmentalist perspective.  Who cares
about the "energy"?  What matters is the total picture: money, time,
materials, energy, and so forth.  Overall, I think you would be most
efficient to just buy your eggs at the grocery store if you are just 
planning to get a dozen a week.  To answer your question, I would guess
off-hand that it takes about 3 or 4 pounds of feed to make one pound of
eggs.  I really don't see what that has to do with a rational evaluation 
of your choice to grow the chickens or not.  What makes you think beef is
so bad?  Do you live in a place where there's no water?  What
is the value of the water as compared to the beef?  If you are a very
small-scale producer, I can guarantee that your overhead per unit of food
will be far higher than that of a factory farm, so if it's efficiency you
are after, just buy your food at the supermarket and be happy.  If you are
doing this for the fun of it, or because the food is better (and you can raise
tastier chickens than the supermarkets sell if you do it right) then
why worry about using a few extra gallons of water or a few extra sacks of
grain?  Get a sense of proportion and values eh?  Worrying about that
kind of stuff is like you mom telling you to clean up your plate because 
of the starving children in India.  I tried to be gentle, but that's the 
bottom line.  It doesn't make sense to look at things that eco-nut way.

Good luck!

--Brian