Chickats What I Have Learned Since Getting Chickens

1. Chickens are beyond awesome, they are miraculous. (at least some chickens are). I am especially enamored with my scrawny gold sex-link who produced a JUMBO egg-a-day for the majority of days that I had her in 2011. In 2012 she started the year with a much needed molt. Can't wait to see her feathers.

2. BYC forum is the best source for information because of the talented helpful people who hang out here. I think that 80% of what I learned has come from the forum. The other 20% divided up from books and the chooks themselves. Some from the great infor at My Pet Chicken's instruction pages, and some from the Omlet forum in the UK.

3. Chicken owners have strong opinions on chicken raising. What works for someone else may or may not work for my flock and vice versa. For example....I would not go without regularly worming my chickens, and finally found a worming program that works for me.

4. Getting eggs from your own chooks is so rewarding.

5. Few chickens, say two to four, is a very different chicken experience from a large flock. There is something about having so few that you can really focus on each of them, that makes them more 'pets who provide breakfast' and less just livestock.
Small coops/runs where chickens are close to you versus large coops where they can high-tail it away, also provides a different chicken experience. Really!

6. My chooks are such outdoor birds. They go in to sleep and lay eggs. Well my first three. My newer ones will go in to get out of the wind and cold, but not my first three. Go figure. They will even be out in the rain. (they do have run covers).

7. Extreme heat is harder on chickens and their owners than you would believe. Here we don't have dreadful cold, but heat is very dangerous.

8. Springboarding from number 5 above, few chickens in a small enclosure is such a different experience from the huge coops with normal BIG flocks that I remember encountering as a kid, that I would really recommend it. Another thing I have seen is that if one is sick and needs exceptional attention and handling, that chicken would be more 'tame' going forward. It of course depends upon the flock-raisers reason for having chickens and their desired out come, but there can be a vast array of chicken keeping experiences, objectives and results..

9. Life goes on, and your other chickens continue (hopefully) even when your favorite chicken dies.

10. This video of rescued ex-battery hens in the UK is an example of how 6 hens could fit in an Eglu Cube. Their previous life provided much less space, and they now can also free range. So the idea of some folks that it would be "cruelty" seems to be unproven by this video. . It also shows the very docile temperament of these chooks. See how calm they are in that parking lot, and how easily they get their toenails trimmed at the beginning. Can't imagine some chickens being that calm with the catching and handling. Amazing.

11. I believe that there are two paths to odor-free chicken housing. One is to have enough space that the chickens spread out and droppings are few and far between, as in free-ranging. The other is to do a daily cleaning, like mucking out a horse-stall - clean their dropping tray on a daily basis and there isn't any bad smell. Brilliant!