| The workshop began with chicken anatomy and show and tell. The speaker walked around with a very patient and good-natured Rhode Island Red, letting us all pet her and showing us things like where her ear lobes are.
The main take-aways here:
- Chickens vary in size (bantams are smaller than regular sized chickens and Jersey Giants really are giant chickens from New Jersey)
- Some chickens have spurs and some don't (some hens can have them, it's not just roosters)
- Chickens vary in other ways - different numbers of toes, feathers on their feet, different types of combs and wattles, etc, so if your chicken looks unique, it's not sick or deformed. At least, it probably isn't.
- Eggs and poop comes out the same hole, called a vent.
Then she came around again with this rather fed-up bantam Ameraucana (who behaved very well but was not happy to do so), showing us the chicken's crop. This is where food goes before it goes to the chicken's gizzard (stomach). It can feel kind of hard when it's full and she walked around and let us feel it. If your chicken's crop becomes impacted (which can happen), one way to tell is because the chicken begins losing weight - i.e. the chicken is not absorbing nutrients. To help your chicken out, she recommended bread with olive oil. Here are some good tips I found to try if this happens to your birds.
Also, once the food passes through the crop it reaches the gizzard. Because chickens do not have teeth they swallow grit which grinds their food (along with muscle contractions) in their gizzards. Therefore: as a good chicken parent you should make sure to provide your chickens with access to some appropriate grit.
Egg laying: It takes chickens about 4-6 months from birth to start laying eggs. Different chickens lay eggs at different frequencies but she said her 9 birds lay about 7 eggs a day between them. Also, the birds lay fewer eggs in the winter.
The next segment of the presentation went over chicken behavior. What struck me most was how charismatic they are. Chickens certainly do not think that they were put here on this earth for the purpose of being egg-laying machines, and I find it amazing and cruel that some humans have that idea.
First, pecking order is REAL and chickens (in some cases) WILL peck one another to death. Someone in the room said that if a bird is bleeding the others will go after it. If you see a bird bleeding, isolate it from the others until it heals.
Also, chickens will get bored. If they do, that's bad. Bored chickens find interesting things to do like peck one another. Lesson: make sure your chickens' lives are interesting with things like bugs to find and eat and dust baths, etc, so they don't get bored.
The speaker noted that the first time she saw her chicken taking a dust bath, she thought it was dead. Unfortunately, she was probably extremely sensitive to dying chickens at that time because she had just lost one. She got her chickens as adults from two different flocks. When she brought them together, each group had different germs and immunities. The result was two sick chickens and one casualty to date (most likely two, she said). Very sad. She says in the future she'll raise her chickens from chicks.
Also, she noted that when you integrate new chickens into your flock, do it at night. When they wake up, they'll figure the new chickens must have always been there. Likewise, if a hen is getting broody (i.e. wants to have some babies), if you stick some chicks under her during the night, when she wakes up she'll figure "They hatched!" She'll just kinda take it from there as the mama hen.
One more item on chicken behavior. She says people ask "Will they make noise?" and the answer is YES! She said one of her chickens gets really excited every time she lays an egg and wants to be congratulated for it. Apparently it's a very loud event. You can check out this site to help choose a breed of chicken that fits you (docile or not, frequency of egg laying, egg color, etc). Of course, just because a breed tends a certain way, that can't account for all individuals.
About chicken food, she said that chicken feed is labeled as starter, grower, layer, broiler, and finisher. Sadly enough, we label our chicken feed based on what we want the chicken to do. Baby chicks get starter, then grower. Layers get layer so they lay eggs. Broiler for the chickens headed for the oven, and finisher as the last thing they eat before we eat them.
She said the feed comes in a variety of forms but she gives her chickens pellets because chickens are messy eaters and the pellets are least likely to be wasted since they are big enough for the chickens to find them and pick them up again after dropping them. There's also chicken scratch (whole grains and cracked corn) as a treat, and you can feed your chickens FRESH kitchen scraps too. She said the key is FRESH because your chickens can get sick from spoiled food just like people can. And, of course, chickens will gladly eat any bugs they can find - including black widows. And if the chickens' diets are too poor, the eggs will have weak shells or no shells (and a no-shell egg might also indicate the chicken is sick). I found a great site on chicken feed here.
Regarding coops, she said there are a few essential elements your chickens need and that's about it. Beyond that, there's a lot that the world of coops has to offer and the choice is yours. You need a secure place where your chickens can go at night where they are safe from predators. You might also want a chicken run that is safe from predators too. A chicken run should provide at least 4 square feet per chicken, but the more space, the better.
Roosts: You need a place for them to roost that is ideally 18-24 inches off the ground. Use a rod that is 2 inches in diameter, or 1 inch for bantams. Give your birds 8 inches of space per bird on the roost. You can have more than one rung but be aware that all of the birds will be fighting for space on the top rung and nobody wants the bottom (it's part of the whole pecking order thing).
Nest boxes: You need a place for them to lay eggs. These should be 12x12x12 or 12x12x14 if your birds are a very large breed. She recommended bedding of some sort in the bottom so that the eggs won't crack. She uses pine shavings and someone in the audience said that he attaches a foam pad to the nesting box under the bedding too. She said your chickens will let you know if they don't like whatever material you use to line their nesting box - they'll kick it out of there very quickly.
That pretty much covers what I learned in the session, but I want to leave you with a great chicken site so you can get more information. And I am seriously considering moving east into the mountains so I can have some chickens. |
