Why Chickens?
I'll be honest. The first and foremost reason is because I'm a sucker for animals. A big sucker. And I LOVE chickens. Many chicken owners say that having chickens means having constant entertainment - chicken TV! Plus, they eat bugs, fertilize your yard, eat kitchen scraps, and produce eggs. What's not to love? Right now, it takes us a while to compost our kitchen scraps in plastic containers but the chickens will do it instantly (without the plastic). In goes the scraps, out comes the poop. And our compost bin has become a breeding ground for some very pesky houseflies... houseflies whose larvae the chickens would gladly eat (while they simultaneously did us yet another favor by turning our compost). In theory, chickens produce meat as well - but my birds won't be for meat. (The exception will be if one of the birds is mean and picks on the others. Then that bird will become somebody's dinner.)
Picking the Breeds
I spent a long time playing with the Chicken Breed Selector on MyPetChicken.com and if that wasn't enough, then I consulted the book How to Raise Chickens by rare chicken breed expert Christine Heinrichs. Here's what I came up with:
- One bird for colorful eggs, like an Ameraucana or an Araucana.
- One supercute bird, like a Silkie or a Cochin
- One bird for max egg production, like a Rhode Island Red
- Maybe a Wyandotte because they are good layers and I think they are pretty.
Silkie's have a reputation for being very broody, so I would like to get a bird that is equally cute but less broody. (Broody means that the bird wants to sit on the nest and hatch its eggs - a problem if your birds are for egg production and you have no interest in producing chicks.) Feathery feet are a must.
I've been enlisting allies in my chicken conspiracy: my boyfriend's kids. The older girl wants a cute bird with feathery feet. Awesome. That's on my list. That can be her chicken. The toddler wants a "naked chicken" (a naked neck chicken) because she met one the other day and she thinks it's hilarious to say "naked chicken." Hmm. So do we skip the Wyandotte or just get 5 chickens instead of 4. We'll see.
Eggs, Live Chicks, or Adult Hens?
So once we decide how many and what kind of chickens we want, how do we obtain them? Do we go for eggs and hatch them ourselves, do we get day old chicks, or do we get some adults?
The advantage of eggs is that the kids can see them hatch. The downsides are that we must buy an incubator and not all the eggs may hatch. Plus you'll have to wait a while until they are old enough to lay eggs. Money's in short supply, so I'm not a fan of that idea.
The advantage of day old chicks are that you can get them in the mail, you can handle them so they are used to being handled by people as adults, and you can have the chicks sexed with some degree of success to make sure you get all hens and no roosters. I am somewhat worried about accidentally getting a rooster. If it happens, I'll give it to a nearby farm or perhaps offer it to someone brave enough to kill it and eat it. (If you want to get day old chicks and you are very worried about accidentally getting a rooster, you can get a breed called Sex-Links. The female sex link chicks look very different from the males so there's 100% accuracy in sexing them.) The downside is that you have to wait a while before they lay eggs and if you order them by mail I think you need to order at least 25 of them so they have enough body heat to survive. You can solve this problem by splitting an order with some friends.
As for adults, you can get hens that are all ready to go, already laying eggs. You can make sure you get no roosters. But they are already adults so you can't handle them as chicks to make sure they are OK with being handled. Plus, you can't get them via the mail.
I am all for getting day old chicks. I was planning to get them via the mail. I'm sure I could get some chicks locally but I probably couldn't be as picky about breeds if I do it that way. I figured when the time came I'd ask a farm if they'd want the remaining 20 or so chicks that I had to order to make sure they had enough body heat to survive in the mail. I don't know how expensive that would be, actually.
Just for kicks, I went to the McMurray Hatchery homepage to check on the availability and price of the chickens. The golden laced wyandotte I wanted was sold out, as was the Naked Neck and all of the Cochins. Drat. The Araucana female is $3.15, the Rhode Island Red female is $2.40, and the Silver Laced Wyandotte is $2.65. That makes 3 out of 25. To round out the order, I added 22 extra Rhode Island Reds. A vaccination for Marek's Disease for every chick is $.15 per bird. It is recommended and so are some baby chick feed products. Altogether the order is $71.99 before shipping. $53.59 of that is the 23 Rhode Island Reds. In other words, buying chicks via mail and giving the extras to a farm for free would cost me about $50 plus shipping. Hmm. Bad idea.
A better idea I recently discovered would be to buy the chicks through City Farmers Nursery, a local nursery here in San Diego that keeps a running list of customers who want chickens and then places the order when they get enough customers to do so. They also raise and sell chickens. Plus they are a great nursery and I'm happy to be able to support them with my business.
Getting the Yard Ready
Part of the appeal of backyard chickens is that the chickens can eat your weeds, eat the maggots out of the compost (or whatever pest bugs you have around), etc. Plus their eggs are healthier if they are able to eat grass and bugs. That means the yard oughta have some grass and bugs. We've got plenty of weeds in our patio area, but the lawn itself is mostly dead. My eco-conscious boyfriend didn't think the lawn justified the amount of water it required since California's in a drought (I agree!).
My goal is to get the yard into shape with native plants that resist drought. I want to give the plants a chance to establish themselves before the chickens attack them. Unfortunately many native plants resemble small bushes that often look dead even though they aren't. That's not what anyone wants in a yard. Another alternative I don't like are cacti. So I've started asking around about native plants.
One person recommended Blue Grama Grass, which looks like a very good idea for replacing the lawn. Another alternative would be the SW Native Grass Seed Mix. It would get pretty tall if left unchecked but I think the chickens might be good lawnmowers. Other recommendations were Lemon Pop flowers, wild anise (Carum Keloggii?), and oat grass. Last week at the farmers' market, I asked a native plant expert for his recommendation and he sold me cluster field sedge. I'm not sure that was such a good idea but we'll see. It seems like everyone you ask has a different recommendation. In the end I think I'll go back to City Farmers' Nursery and ask for their advice.
Next step: Planning and buying or building the coop |
