Can you have chickens?
Last year, thousands of Canadians turned their attention inward, considering their own ability to sustain themselves through gardening. Keeping chickens cannot be far behind.
There was a bit of a movement to get cities across Canada to allow chickens in back yards about 10 years ago. A couple ended up doing so. Today you can keep chickens (with various rules) in Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, and parts of Montreal and Toronto. You can have them in Kingston and Kitchener, Ontario; Cornerbrook, Newfoundland; Whitehorse, Yukon; and Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
Arguments against backyard chickens are many. One is noise, though that is easily dispatched by allowing only hens and not roosters. Hens are, simply put, not noisy. I’m not aware of an urban municipality that allows roosters.
Another argument is the smell of chickens and the vermin that are attracted to it. The smell, it is true, can only be dealt with by keeping a chicken coop clean. The critters are attracted to chicken feed, so it can’t be left out overnight; you can either feed them only as much as they want or need, or you can use a metal feeder designed for chickens. (The hopper opens when a chicken stands next to it and closes when the chicken leaves. Apparently, rats can’t get into it.)
An additional apprehension comes from folks concerned about animal welfare. There are worries that city slickers will get a few hens then tire of looking after them. And it will happen; just as there are lousy dog and cat owners, there will be lousy chicken owners. There are lousy parents, for goodness sake! You can’t punish everybody for the mistakes of a few scofflaws.
If you’re in a place—urban, suburban or rural—that allows keeping chickens, here’s a few things to inspire you to take the plunge.
Get the girls
Do you need a rooster? Probably not. Hens will lay eggs whether there’s a rooster involved or not.
If you’d like to increase your flock without buying them, you’ll need a rooster, but be forewarned: they are aggressive. It’s that aggressive tendency that makes them of some value, though. They do protect the henhouse from invaders.
If you are in a city, you won’t be able to keep any roosters because they crow. If you’re in the country, prepare for some cock-a-doodling early in the morning.
These are social animals, so get at least three hens.
Get a hen house
You’ll need a house for your chickens. The coop needs a few things: ventilation, areas for nesting and areas for perching, and access to the outdoors.
Ventilation is very important and you may need more than you think.
Chickens produce a lot of ammonia and moisture. Factor in more ventilation than you think you’ll need, and keep the draft off your chickens. Heat is less of a problem. Cold-hardy chickens can survive down to -40 Celsius.
Nesting boxes aren’t strictly necessary; in fact, you’ll have to train your chickens to use them. But you can give shy chickens a private place to lay eggs and give yourself a place to collect the eggs. Be warned, though, that even well-trained chickens will lay in odd places from time to time.
Perching areas are necessary because chickens don’t like to sleep on the ground in their own poop and where mice can nibble their toes. The ideal perch is a two-by-four piece of untreated wood, placed with the wider side up. Chickens sleep with their feet flat, not gripping something.
Food
Chicken food is a matter selecting a feed from the farm store according to the age of the chickens, your sensibilities and your pocketbook. Add in some chicken scratch and table scraps for variety. Don’t worry; your chickens won’t overeat.
Make sure one of the table scraps you give them is crushed eggshells. They need the calcium. Alternatively, you can buy crushed oyster shell. But if you try to imagine chickens in the wild, there would be a lot of empty eggshells just sitting around after chicks hatch; the adults may as well eat them.
You should also provide grit to have the healthiest chickens. This is something you can either buy or you can just provide it; a bag of builder’s sand does the trick.
Provide grit and shells in separate bowls, apart from the feed, so your chickens can sample as they need.
Water
Water is easy in the summertime, but quite a matter for worry in the winter. Your hens can’t make use of snow or frozen water. The easiest thing to do is get an electric chicken waterer, which will keep the stuff liquid.
Chickens outside
Chickens are happiest when they can explore. Left to scratch in your yard through the non-freezing parts of the year, they will eat bugs and slugs and grit. In the winter, if you can provide some snow-free areas outside, some chickens will go for it and others will stay inside the coop. Some chickens will even venture into the snow.
As for having chickens in your
garden, their time will probably need to be limited. They will eat any seeds you put in and will gobble up the leaves of some plants.
Chickens need change to keep their minds occupied, as well. You can’t just have a 4-by-10 fenced area and expect your hens to behave. Some people have “chicken tractors”, which are moveable enclosures.
Eggs
At their prime, hens will lay about two eggs every three days. But their prime doesn’t last for more than a year or two, they don’t start laying until they’re about six months old, and production can slow down or stop in the winter. It is possible to trick hens into laying in the winter with artificial light, but those tricks are better left to the battery hens.
In a hen’s third year, she will lay around 80 percent of the eggs she laid in her second year, and production will fall off by about 10 percent per year after that. Some hens will lay more eggs, some fewer.
They usually live around five to seven years, but some will live longer. If she continues to live, a hen will pretty much stop laying eggs. (The oldest hen on record was Muffy, who lived to 22, by the way.)