CompostaBlog

Keeping your own stock of free range egg laying hens is an enjoyable and rewarding pastime as more and more city folk are discovering with the increasing popularity of ‘urban farming’. Hens can be kept in even the smallest of spaces as long as they have suitable shelter, a ready supply of food and small patch of ground to scratch around in.
Hens can easily be bought as chicks from local farmers and smallholders. They will produce one egg per day per hen so even a couple of good layers will produce more than enough eggs for a family. They are easy to keep and feed and as long as you don’t add a cockerel to the flock you wont get any complaints from the neighbors either! In no time at all the hens will become very tame and make entertaining pets as well as being a useful source of fresh eggs.

Hens should be given a roosting shelter in the form of a well constructed chicken coop. This will need to keep them warm and dry and protect them from predators at night and also provide some roosting boxes in which to lay their eggs. When constructing the chicken coop, make sure that it is easy for you to gain access to for cleaning and collecting the eggs. The coop can be attached to or placed inside a small pen in an unused corner of the garden. Give your hens as much space as you can spare them. The more space, the happier and healthier your hens will be.
Your new hens should be fed with proprietary ‘layers pellets’. These will ensure that they get all the nutrients they need to thrive and produce a regular supply of quality eggs. You can also supplement their diet with food waste from the kitchen but remember that what your feeding your hens is ultimately what you are feeding yourself as you will be eating the eggs!
Make sure also that they have a supply of fresh water available at all times.On a warm day a hen can dehydrate very quickly and this can often prove fatal. Make sure that the container you provide the water in can’t be easily knocked over as they often perch on the side of the vessel to take a drink. A good idea is to purchase a specially designed water hopper as these cant easily be knocked over or otherwise emptied inadvertently.
Ninety nine percent of the time you will have no problems keeping chickens but there are some practical matters you will need to keep in mind.
For example if you are occasionally going to give your hens the run of the garden you need to make sure there are no hidden hazards such as holes in fences, gaps under gates or deep ponds which could cause a problem. Bear in mind also that the family dog or cat (or the neighbors for that matter) may have an entirely different agenda!
Make regular checks on the condition of the pen and coop for signs of predators such as foxes. It doesn’t take much more than a space the size of a hand for a fox to squeeze through and remember he has all night to do it. There is nothing more disheartening than seeing a mass of feathers and little else remaining when you go to collect your eggs in the morning.
If you decide to complement your ‘urban farmyard’ by growing your own organic vegetables then it might be best to keep your hens away from the vegetable patch as chickens like nothing more than a fresh leaf of lettuce straight from the plant.
Remember also that if you plan to spend some time on holiday you will need someone to take care of them.

Overall, keeping your own chickens is a fun and rewarding pastime with the added bonus of having a constant supply of free range eggs! It’s easy and fun to get started and a great project to get the kids involved in.

The author has been succesfully keeping farm and exotic fowl for almost twenty years and is also an enthusiastic keeper and breeder of aviary finches. For more information on keeping chickens and building your own chicken coop just follow these links http://tinyurl.com/raisingchickens and http://tinyurl.com/buildachickencoop. Related reading on growing your own organic food can be found here http://tinyurl.com/growingorganicfood

Roof Going UP!

From the chicken run side closest to the house you can see how much progress we’re making! I will be able to go in the gate and be out of the rain and they will have some shelter from the rain and still be able to be outside… so long as the rain is not blowing sideways. LOL

We’ve stacked so many things off and on through the time we’ve been working on it that the wire is starting to sag in the middle, Errrr. But I think I can run some wire through it and it will be alright. Remind me, if I EVER build another chicken coop to NOT use ‘chicken wire’ it is a pain in the BUTT. Baby chicks get right through it, animals can push right through it.. it’s sort of good for nothing.

Ryan thinking out the chicken coop roof.

I rather liked this photo of shadow, thinking, trying to get things right. NOT being a carpenter I can only appreciate knowing how to build something like this easily and without SO MUCH EFFORT. Ryan had one semester of carpentry in high school VoTech and he’s done a fabulous job. I will be proud to say he built it for me for a very long time…

This weekend, at the beginning, when we thought we were going to be finishing up (ha ha!) he said… “I wish this could last a lot longer…” Awww… I’m such a lucky mom! But I quickly informed him that I had PLENTY of indoor projects to keep us busy over the winter!

Squeezing the most out of the sunlight left!

We got a bit of a late start. Work comes second and the family is first. The babies just had a tough day today… we did have a bit more help than usual though! Remember the girls, my daughter and her friends that talked me into this chaos? While my daughter is in Oregon away at school, one showed up to help!! Yeah! She played with the babies, fetched and towed water, tools, held things, lifted stuff, I had surgery this week on my leg and she was truly appreciated, as I was not much help on some things.

We got one door up, the $1 door from the garage sale. And the lights up for the babies to spend their first night in their new home.

Half chicken coop half garden shed

Mind you, the chicken wire is not up linking the run to the coop and (clearly) the roof is still not on, so there is still a bit of work to do but just getting the walls up, and one door on to get the chicks in a more stable cover (they are still only BABIES after all!) makes us feel like we made real progress today! We slapped on a piece of plywood for a makeshift roof until next week. Not expecting any rain, it feels safe enough!

Sooo… NOW you can see my cool idea to make one half of the building a chicken coop and the OTHER half, a garden shed. I can keep feed and bedding for the chickens, all my shovels, and hand tools hanging on a peg board. I am REALLY getting excited. No more trucking things back and forth from the garage. THIS is starting to look really GOOD! Our little urban homestead is just coming along nicely.

Seating Space Available

Phase One Complete

This is where I sit and take a break in between digging post holes and stapling wire. This was so much fun doing with the girls. Well, at least two of them showed up for the hard work.

Building a chicken coop has proven to be a bit trickier than I had hoped it would be. I suppose I could have skimped on lumber or not sunk the posts so deep and used less cement, blah, blah, but this will last for a very long time. If I ever sell this house, I hope they like chickens.

Where I wanted it build, toward the backof the yard from the house, there is a tree that offers a bit of shade from the harsh afternoon sun. This photo is facing south and slightly west, as you can see, later in the afternoon. So we had to build the chicken coop around the tree a bit. I don’t know why I always seem to have to do things the hard way. But it will look so nice when it is finished. The garden and garden gate are off to the right. I wanted it close so I can put the straw and pine shavings (or whatever I decide to use for litter on the chicken coop floor) into the compost easily. Also, this location is away from anything. There are no houses close, only a large emtpy lot behind, as you can see. My hope is that no one will complain for any reason. I hope to set a good example of how to use chickens in an urban homestead with very little fuss or complaint.