If you ever thought keeping a couple of backyard hens would be fun and rewarding - you are probably right. There are breeds to suit basically any situation - even an apartment if it boiled down to it!
things to first consider before you start up and choose your hens
*how much space do you have that you want them to use?
*what other individuals, animals are already present and involved?
*how much time are you going to dedicate to keeping the birds?
*what is your area's climate?
then on more personal notes
*what colour preference do you have?
*what egg colours do you wish to be collecting daily?
Hens are easy to maintain. Once trained to use their coop for safety they are easy to round up every night if they are allowed to free range- which I heavily support and eggs will be easy to collect if they feel safe in their coop to lay there constantly. By not allowing new people all the time in your coop, the birds will use it as their safe getaway and as long as it is maintained predator proof the birds will remain that way.
Bantam hens are available for small garden spaces and they are much better to maintain if you want to really keep your garden manicured and abundant. Bantams are usually the size of pigeons and more often than their standard counterparts, they come in many beautiful colour . The drawback is their small size allows more predators to target them. however, their small size allows them to be more agile and capable of flight, except in some flightless examples like silkies. Allowing them to free range very successfully on people's properties.
if you don't want a farm, you can atleast have some hens. hens do not need a rooster to lay eggs and they will practically keep themselves if you have enough space to free range them. They are also the most affordable pet you could have, the poor man's pet if you may, as they are cheap, usually the most you would pay for a rare breed is us$200 for a pair. Usually you are looking at $2- $10 a chick. Best thing is feeding chickens can be as cheap as you want it to be. Free range forage, food scraps, store bought feed, like pigs, being omnivorous they will consume a wide range of items and if you are lucky, once a day, lay you a lovely egg.
Here at the Animal refinery, I'm working with various chicken breeds to supply eggs to people in the local vicinity. Behind this guise which helps me keep the chickens fed and exercises them as the egg layers their offspring must be, and yet these are all generally considered "ornamental breeds". These "ornamental breeds" are often times primitive in build with larger wing proportions, longer legs, making them easier adapted to free range livestyles and under my observation it pays off. The breeds built this way catch more insects and range much faster and wider to search for food compared to heavier breeds like sexlinks, plymouth rocks, silkies, wyandottes - basically anything above 5lbs that cannot scale 6 ft in a single flight. I have some heavy breeds in the flock so the comparison is very obvious.
I've got 3 up and coming roosters. One Cream Brabanter, a Russian Orloff and a Minohiki/Yokohama long tail. These three are great breeds, docile, friendly beyond the normal and beautiful beyond the normal. The only one I questioned using in the program is the yokohama, but the decision was made earlier and hopefully we come out gold. He might just be the starter for the season and have one of his offspring take his place the next season. The orloff and Brabanter will be used for 2 seasons and a revision will be held for the 3rd season.
My aim is to provide mixed breed hens with genetics carrying all the fancy feather patterns so people can start flocks off from mine knowing they will get beautiful, strong and healthy birds.
I'll be concentrating on 4 major category breedings:
*dark egg layer
*green egg layer
*crested and bearded fowl
*bantam super layer
The dark egg layers will be a combination of partridge penedesencas, barnevelders breed to the russian orloff and brabanter roosters- in a ratio- one breeding to the brabanter- 2 to the Orloff.
The brabanter introduces the possibility of crests and keeps the breed light. The Orloff keeps the eggs brown and gives the lovely mahogany and white plumage that makes them stand out so much. Also added onto this project is Osa my easter egg layer who lays pink eggs. For she lends her cream and blue genes which will create outstanding colours with the Orloff.
The green egg layers will be a combination of my ameraucanas, lightening their build with the Brabanter and Yokohama and then bringing them in for more blue on the 3rd season with an Araucana rooster, which are the real blue egg layers.
The crested and bearded fowl will encompass all these, infusing black minorca bloodlines- a robust Mediterranean breed that is the largest quick on its feet breed of chicken. The hens are close to 7lbs but unlike the heavy breeds are light in build so they are formidable looking birds, big and stately and yet still light in build. Infusing their genetics for free range excellence and large eggs. Also creating birds even large hawks will not bother.
The super bantam layer is a hen targeted for the urban garden, small but large enough to produce a good little egg and productive enough to be considered for commercial use. A mix of super pretty colour patterns, mille fleur, porcelain, blue laced red, silver laced, partridge laced, golden laced and buff laced patterns will be used and bred the first season to the Yokohama and then in the second season I will have a pick of small pure bred bantams from Ideal again to pick from- golden neck d'uccle, porcelain dutch, self blue and Ameraucana bantams. So Second season will be fun to infuse the new blood.
Rooster care and management for a happy farm...
Mind you, without Roosters around, hens will do their own rendition of a rooster's crow once in awhile..... nothing loud, very funny though! Hens on their own will become very devoted to their owner treating you like their rooster following you around. The only drawback is you will have no chicks without a male around. Roosters kept by me are always boxed at night so they cannot raise up and make too loud a crow. The box is completely blacked out and this makes them often stay quiet until 9 or 10 in the morning when I open them up and feed them. After that they are allowed to start the day, court the ladies and crow to their heart is sung out. This allows people to not be woken up in the middle of the night or early morning by stray crowers. As some roosters can be quite persistent. Generally I do not tolerate roosters that are gamey- meaning, feisty and aggressive, choosing the more docile roosters less prone to pick fights and constantly mount the hens, there are variations in different birds' behaviour. So choose to breed from the rooster who crows less frequently and is less aggressive and maybe in 10 years time, roosters will not have such a bad reputation. We can make it a memory of yesterday, through our human selective breeding, being the whole basis of domestication.
Chick Care
If you are getting young chicks. Especially if you live in the United States where there is a system of sending out day old chicks from large hatcheries, then you might benefit from reading this paragraph. Observing hens raising their chicks, you will notice they often times pick food up and drop it infront of their brood. The chicks do learn from their parents what to eat and what is dangerous. As chicks often set out in their post parcels still expect a mother. We can do the best we can in providing this role, especially if you choose this road to take in acquiring your stock, then you really should give the young birds the best possible start to life.
-If possible, use a ceramic heat lamp so they are given a discernment of day and night. When newly arrived chicks come, give them water immediately and take each chick to the water source and apply with a teaspoon or dropper holding the chick with its beak to the liquid to take its first thirsty gulps. I like to add sugar or honey to the water for the first three days to help get chicks started. The extra glucose helps them forage and eat more. When the chicks have started actively foraging and eating their starter mash, introduce them to some healthy dry dirt found in a nice sunny patch in your yard. If you do not have access to outdoor foraging for your chicks, then greenfood will be essential. Keeping things interesting will be the key to stopping featherpicking and other unwanted acts. I give chicks that I have to keep indoors alfalfa cubes as a big bag for horses costs $11 and I take a couple of cubes out and soak them so they get soft and feed it to the chicks. I have never experience feather picking and other nasty behaviour by supplying growing chicks with raw or boiled egg, left over rice, left over greens, alfalfa cubes, dry earth and starter mash. The mash is given daily and all the others are rotated throughout the week.
Egg maintenance and management
If you want your hens to be happy, healthy and productive. Make sure firstly the dietary requirements are being met. I have layer pellet available to the hens throughout the day, recycle all egg shells back to the hens- they eat them right up. Of course clean water is a good idea and most importantly, a stress free environment. The hens give birth to an egg everyday! This means the body needs the nutrients to produce that egg daily and the hen becomes a slave to the needs to produce the egg for us. So she requires lots more food than a rooster or non producing hen spending her day actively foraging to find nutrients for the egg to come. Keeping people and other animals from disturbing their foraging forays is a must and if you want to always be able to collect your eggs in the coop, you must provide enticing nestboxes and not allow other people or animals to disturb too much, depending on the level of tolerance the birds have for that. You might find them trying to lay elsewhere to hide the eggs after you let a family tour your farm or garden and you got excited to show people the eggs and brought them in and showed them the hens' nests and people talking in shrill or loud voices, moving quickly and trying to move towards shyer birds will sometimes convince them its safer to nest elsewhere. I let people see the coop from the outside windows, unless the person if very quiet, and the birds seem undisturbed. If you want hens to keep laying and not go broody it is wise to collect the eggs daily. Between 6 to 12 eggs in a nest will signal a lot of broody breeds into starting a family- and you might just want more eggs to eat, so collecting them daily will keep broody hens from hitting the cycle. On the other hand, to get some hens broody- keep eggs in their nestboxes to allow them to start setting on eggs. Once they start and you see for a couple of days that they are staying put, you can switch eggs out and give them fertile eggs and they will raise chicks well. Nothing better than a mother hen raising chicks.
good luck with chickens. I enjoy them tremendously. The Russian Orloffs are one of my favourite, full of sweet personality, very sociable and friendly with all the other birds and extremely cuddly with me. The are really like cockatoos or puppies in the way they love to jump into my lap and nuzzle. The other amazing thing is they are very pretty to look at.
The crested fowl are also a love of mine, elegant lined and beautifully feathered, they really bring a touch of fine living to the any flock. For free ranging Polish/paduan hens it is best to have other breeds with less feathering around the eyes foraging with them as they cannot see well anything coming from above. The warnings of keener visioned birds will warn them and once they are warned of danger they are capable of flying so they can get away from ground predators in the event one breaks into your yard.
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