Well, we made it through the winter.  Winter for me here in Iowa was more mild than last year, snow wise, but much colder.  The chickens handled it surprisingly well.  I put a CFL bulb in their coop (which they did not like) for warmth (I guess it’s supposed to be a heat bulb.  Duh)  Anyway, after a few nights of them sleeping on top of the coop away from the light in super cold weather I decided they must be hardy enough and not need the extra warmth, so I removed the light.  I did however wrap their coop in the fall with bags of leaves, including the roof.  This seemed to work well enough that they weren’t in trouble through the winter.

No problems there.  Dragging out to deal with frozen water twice a day was a bit of a pain.  Especially when it was dark on both trips.  We managed.

But, now that spring is here the chickens are really earning their keep.  They’ve been pacing the walls of the dog kennel wanting to get outside to explore and eat, not unlike me in my house, although I don’t have to go outside to eat.  When I’ve let them out they have done a fantastic job of digging up the garden and working in the leaf shreds and compost I’ve put on top of the beds for them to look through.  I had heard about how good they did this, but even I’m surprised at how well they do this.  It’s kind of shocking even.  Better than advertised as far as I’m concerned.

We’ve had a mishap or two with plants and the cold frame, but there is enough other stuff for them to get into that they don’t come back after being shooed away.  They are even starting to learn that when I come after a while it means they need to get back in the kennel for the night.  They don’t seem to mind pushing back from the buffet and going home to rest for a while.

Keep an eye out for more chicken info in the coming months.  Drop a note to us on the Barnyard about your animals.

I’ve had chickens on my little urban homestead going on about 7 months now. When I contemplate what I’ve learned it’s really quite amazing.

I learned that chickens can escape from a crudely built chicken run easily, even in spaces you think are too small for them. They especially can figure out how to get through holes in the roof. I use a dog run now and it seems to be really effective as well as very spacious.

I learned that it takes a while for chickens to get accustomed to you, but once they figure out that when you come out goodies arrive, they will swarm you.

I learned that waiting for straw to go on sale after Halloween isn’t worth the trouble of not having straw for the chicken area. Just buy it when you see it at the stores. (Don’t forget you can also use dried leaves, but they do get shredded pretty quickly)

I learned that you don’t need to feed them layer feed. They don’t even really like it. They prefer scratch grain mixed with oyster shells just fine.

I learned that being in a cold area means you have to change the water container twice a day because it freezes, but that still doesn’t make the heated water dishes worth it (to me).

I learned that chickens (mine at least) don’t like the light on in the coop, and even when you turn it on when it is super cold, they like it so little that they will actually sleep on top of the coop in the cold to avoid the light.

I learned that chickens won’t use the nesting box you have planned for them so either. Just deal with it or, make every nesting box they do use unusable until they eventually use the one you want them to.

Do any of you chicken farmers have any other thoughts to add?

Join the discussion in The Barnyard

While I won’t portend to be quite as well spoken as Wendy from the previous article, I will attempt in this edition to display my chicken coop and enclosure as well as discuss some aspects of it for your information.

The picture above is the original area of my yard that the chicken coop and run was in. This area is consistently moist and a relatively poor area of my yard to grow anything, which is why the chickens went there. It was also infested with Creeping Charlie. The chickens have eaten all the Creeping Charlie, as well as all the other material in their run down to the ground. I keep a layer of bedding down at all times. This might be leaves or grass clippings, for the most part. I also throw most of my kitchen scraps and garden debris for them to work over. About every 6 weeks I rake out the run and the coop and compost the litter.  I recently moved the chickens, so this area has been heavily mulched to prepare it for planting next spring.

I recently obtained a dog kennel from someone in the neighborhood, which I was happy to use to hold the chickens, although it wouldn’t fit into my old area.  I moved it over one of my raised garden beds.  With some careful modifications I should be able to slide this over the top of three of my garden beds, which gives those beds a turn hosting the chickens every three years or so.  As I grow my garden to the west of this location there will be more beds to spread the chickens over, as well as the possibility that I can build the beds to fit with the kennel better to use the space better.  I like this system much better than my old, pathetic system because it actually keeps the chickens contained!  With my old, built by me and my pathetic building skills, I would come out to put them away and they would be sitting on the ground outside the door waiting for me to put them back in.

Like all gardeners/homesteaders most of what I do is constantly evolving, and the chickens are no different. Right now I have two chickens in there, but I’m angling to add a few more next year, perhaps banties.  You can probably tell from this enclosure that my building skills are dreadfully sub par, and while I would like to let them free range I don’t think my neighbors would care for that too much.

About the coop, the coop was essentially built with scraps that I bought from the discount bin at the home improvement center, stuff I had lying around and 2 2×4s that I bought. Originally I was going to build a peaked roof, but that proved too difficult so I did a flat roof. This seems to work fine. I had two planters on the top of it that had lettuce in them, but I kept forgetting to water them so we’ll have to try again next year.

You can see the roost inside, which is a cut down closet pole and I use shredded paper from my office as the bedding material. The nesting box is an old Clementine box that I saved for this purpose. I have two openings, one is the “main” door that I put in for the chickens to come and go, which is on the right hand side. The other is intended for my use to access the inside to add food, water and maybe someday get some eggs. In reality, the chickens love to roost on the trap door and survey their domain and use this door frequently to enter and exit as it’s a quick hop up or down for them.  They also seem to love to sit on the roof and hang out.  Eventually I’m planning to put another roost on the roof for them to hold on to.

One thing I do like about having the run so close to the garden is that this fall I was able to dump the litter straight on the garden from the coop when I put the garden beds to sleep for the year. Chicken manure shouldn’t be added to crops directly, but since my beds were finished growing and I had all winter to let the compost mellow I dumped the litter right on. Besides, with all the bedding already in the run and coop and all the leaves and grass clippings I’ll add on the top between now and snowfall the manure ratio will be very watered down.

So far, my total investment for the eggs I’ve gotten (zero) has been quite high, but even if these chickens don’t produce any eggs in the near future it’s been a great experience and I know that I’ll raise chickens in my backyard for a long, long time.  Who knows, maybe this spring we’ll get some broilers in addition to those extra layers.

This is a guest post by Wendy from Home Is… From reading her blog I knew she had chickens, and since she lives in Maine her knowledge of building a coop that will hold up to cold weather could be quite useful.  I hope you enjoy her story of how she got chickens and how they keep them at her house.

Before I ever made my foray into chicken-ownership, I spent some time researching what I was getting into. Barbara Kilarski’s book, Keep Chickens, was a wonderful resource for everything from choosing a breed to providing information about how big their enclosure needed to be. While my hope was that they would be able to also spend some time free-ranging around the yard, my plan was to build the coop big enough that they could spend all of their time in there, if they had to.

We only have a quarter acre of land, and while my neighbors on either side, who have a half acre and an acre respectively, like my chickens, I didn’t wish to push my luck by letting my chickens loose to roam in their yards. They probably wouldn’t care … much, but as Frost’s neighbor observed in the Mending Wall, “good fences make good neighbors”, and as there is a fence there, it’s probably best that I keep “mine” on this side of it.

In addition, with only a quarter acre, space is a premium, and none can be wasted or under-utilized. Every side of my house has some edible plant or planting bed, especially the south-facing backyard. Chickens can really wreak havoc in a newly planted garden bed. They like to scratch things, and soft, newly planted soil with tasty little seedlings is too much to pass up. Don’t ask me how I know.

Not to mention that during the winter, with several feet of snow on the ground, I knew the chickens wouldn’t be doing much “free ranging”, and so they’d likely spend at least four months cooped up.

The first requirement, therefore, was that it be large enough to allow the chickens room to spread their wings, as it were.

Ms. Kilarski’s book gave me the basic dimensions we needed to ensure that the chickens had enough room, but I spent some time online looking at different designs. We had just come out of a pretty harsh winter. Our driveway isn’t big enough to plow, and so it must be shoveled. In addition to the driveway, which is roughly the size of two large parking spaces, we shovel a path from the road back to the oil and propane tanks, and ever since we moved here, we’ve always had rabbits, and so we’ve always had to shovel a path back to the rabbit cages. Plus, at some point during the winter, the snow just gets too deep for our dogs to squat anymore, and we will usually help them out by shoveling a little place for them to take care of their business. Snow. It’s a real thing here. I knew that my chicken run would have to be covered, because there was no way I was going to be shoveling it out.

Thus, the second requirement was that it have a roof of some sort – something to keep out the snow and to protect the chickens from the rain.

(more…)

Hello! Welcome to the first of many installments in my adventure of chicken raising. I recently just introduced 2 chickens to my urban palace and I thought it would be interesting to follow along with my trials and tribulations. Hopefully if I make mistakes it will help you avoid them if you decide to embark on this sort of thing on your own.

I was helped along in my chicken adventures by talking with many other chicken owners about what they’ve done, as well as the great website City Chicken. I read two great books which I would recommend, Chicken Tractor by Andy Lee and Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens. I thought both of these books were great, and while I didn’t think one book covered all the information I wanted, together they did cover a lot of what I was concerned about.

Let me say, I wasn’t born on a farm or really around animals. We had a cat and a dog at various times when I was growing up, but we didn’t have a steady menagerie of animals at my house. What I’ve learned has been from reading books and talking to others. I guess I tell you this to encourage you. Just because you don’t have the background in raising animals doesn’t mean you can’t do it. I’m just at the beginning of my adventure, as I write this, and I’m still nervous and scared as heck. Especially when they sort of dart around. It freaks me out, but I know there is plenty of information and help online and with people I know. I hope Hen and Harvest can be a resource for you if you are starting out on an eggcellent adventure!

* Future installments of this series will discuss coops. Can you scavenge materials? Are they hard to build? Are you happy that there aren’t code enforcers for chicken houses? I think perhaps a discussion about a few coops I know of would be helpful as well.
* Feeding chickens. Tips, tricks and things you can do to make them cheaper and easier to raise.
* Keeping chickens warm in the winter. (Or cool in the summer)
* Are chickens legal in your area? How to find out.

Stay turned for more information in the future.