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Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow

This is definitely the place to be when you keep poultry! You might stop by your state thread and chat with your BYC neighbors on how they do things in Alaska... https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/north-to-alaska.84141/

Make yourself at home here and ask as many questions as needed.

Welcome to our community!
 
tad1384 said:
I’m new to chickens but now that we live in rural Alaska with no access to a grocery store, I have a friend who is going to help us start keeping chickens. Being it’s already September, it might be too late to get started with chickens before winter rolls in, so we’re going to start getting stuff laid out for new chickens next April. We’re hoping to have 4-6 chickens to start.
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Some ideas for things you might want to learn more about:

--eggs can be stored in the refrigerator for quite a few weeks. If you just want eggs, if might be easier to buy a bunch of them every month or so, rather than actually raising chickens that need care every single day. If you want to have chickens because you want chickens, not just because you want eggs, then obviously you should get the chickens as you are planning to do :)

-- hens lay more eggs when the days are long (summer) and usually fewer or no eggs when the days are short (winter.) If you provide supplemental light in the winter, to give the effect of long days, you get more eggs in the winter. (Possible down side of that, it is thought to reduce how many years the hens will remain healthy and be able to lay eggs.)

--Even with extra light in the winter, each hen will typically take a break from egg laying for several months while she molts (lose old feathers and grow new ones). As hens get older, they typically lay fewer eggs. So if you want a steady supply of eggs, it can be good to add a few new hens each year, or you can replace the whole flock each year (common in commercial settings, less common in backyard flocks where individual hens are often considered pets.)

--plan ahead for enough chicken feed, if you can't just run down to the store for another bag any time you want. As a rough estimate, if you buy feed in 50 pound bags, one bag will probably last about a month for the number of chickens you want. The number goes up or down depending on how much they eat (more in cold weather), how much they waste (often depends on the style of feeder), how much is eaten by other animals (mice, rats, and squirrels are common offenders), and how much else the chickens eat (table scraps can reduce your chicken feed bill, or they can make your chickens fat and unhealthy, depending on what kind of food is involved.)

--water is very important to chickens, and can be hard to manage in cold weather. Chickens seem to drink small amounts frequently, so they don't do well if you just give them fresh water once or twice a day and it freezes quickly. Thirsty chickens do not eat either, which also causes problems in cold weather (they need more food to keep warm, not less.) Eating snow is not usually a good solution, because thawing enough snow into water will make them really cold. It's really nice if you can manage to keep their water thawed (heated waterer, or something similar.) It can also help if you give them wet mash (chicken food + water), because they will often gobble down a lot of that, which takes care of both water and food for the next few hours. Chickens typically do not eat or drink at night, so it is important to let them fill up before they go to sleep at dusk, but after that you don't need to worry about their water freezing during the night. Just give them more in the morning.

--make sure your chicken coop is sturdy enough for the local weather (don't want it to collapse in the snow), and in that climate the coop needs to be big enough for the chickens to stay inside for months on end. Chickens in some climates can go outside every day, so they don't need as much space in the coop, but I'm thinking that may not be an option in the winter where you live.

(I grew up in Alaska and did have chickens. But I was down on the Kenai Peninsula, where we had fairly easy access to stores for groceries and for chicken feed, and the winter does not get as cold as it does in some other parts of the state.)
 

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