Hens in a small backyard...

[cowchipss]

Fellow chicken lovers,

This is my first post on the BYC Forum. I know this topic has been covered a hundred times and I've read some of the threads on small acre chicken keeping. Here's my slightly specific "problem" (We are all entitled to feel our situation is different on some level, right?). I searched the forum for "manure", "poop", and "waste" but didn't see the information I was looking for, so I am hoping a few of you may have experience.

Background: I'm moving from a duplex to a house with a small fences in fairly private (surrounded by shrubs) backyard. I recently read a local magazine that referenced BYC and immediately looked up the laws for my city. Two hens are allowed. I checked with my close friend and soon to by land lord of this said house about having chickens and he said "Enjoy your new home, take care of it, and knock yourself out. :-D At this point I'm thrilled...

I've raised chickens before, when I was younger, but in a stationary coop and run with plenty of distance from the house and no neighbors bordering that side of the property. So keeping chickens in close quarters to both myself and neighbors is a new endeavor.

My main concerns are following through with the "take care of it" part
:
*Not tearing up the yard, which I think should be fine since my chickens would only be "free" for about an hour a day.
AND
* To be able to keep the pen and run from smelling since we'd like to enjoy a small back patio for grilling and general patio relaxation.

Here's my plan so far. Please tell me if you think this may be possible.

1) Build a tractor and run similar to an example I found on the tractors page of BYC.

2) I plan to keep 3 hens (although the code calls for 2, to protect against having 1 lonely chicken if 1 days or is picked off)

3) Rotate this tractor over an unused flower bed that I paced out to be approximately 7 feet x 30 feet

4) Till up the ground once uncovered by the recently rotated tractor

Do you think it's possible to keep smell down to minimum that way? I really hope so but appreciate your own experienced answers. :-}

Thanks for taking the time to read my close quarters quandary.

~B

"A cowchip is paradise for a fly"

 

[aubreynoramarie]

My backyard is TEENY. like, one millionth of an acre. The only time the girls wet stink is right after a big nasty wet poop

You'll figure it out! Three birds will no create a terrible smell problem if you are diligent. About cleaning the coop. I do a full clean out and replacement of shavings and hay bi-weekly

 

[welasharon]

That's too much work for me. I use sand and never clean it! Mine is covered also so it stays dry. Dry poop is not smelly poop!
sharon

 

[suzyQlou]

I don't have much experience yet, but I'm in a similar situation. I have 3 hens, and I'm building a tractor. Some things you might want to consider:

7x30 is a nice size for a rotational run area. Standard lumber size is 8 ft, so you might want to expand the flower bed just a little bit. If you had an 8x30 area, you could make an 8x4 run with easy sawing, and march the run right down the line. 8x4 would also give you 32 square feet. I've read that you need a minimum of 10 square feet per bird. My three chicks are happy with this size (of course they are not quite full-grown yet).

How often are you planning to move your tractor? How often are you planning to till?

My chicks are outside only on nice afternoons. They generate enough poo that I am planning to move the run every day once they move into the tractor full-time. I don't have a nice dedicated area like you do, though. My chicks are just going to travel on the lawn. Moving the run isn't much work, but I'm sure tilling would be. I wouldn't want to do that too often. How are your winters? Will the ground freeze too much for a tiller? My chicken area doesn't really smell after a day. I think it's because I'm not letting the poo pile up. After a good rain, I can't tell where the chicks have been. (Before a good rain, I can see a trail of poo, but it's not much more than the bird poo under my maple tree where the robins and mockingbirds gather.)

Even though my tractor area doesn't stink, my compost pile DOES! You will need to have a plan for the overnight droppings that gather in your coop. Before chickens, I had a very lazy, low-maintenance compost pile. I just added yard and kitchen waste to the pile behind my shed. In the Springtime, I harvested the compost from the bottom of the pile. Now I need to constantly turn my pile to make sure it is getting good air circulation. It's been a very wet Springtime, so that might be why it needs constant care. I'm considering getting a more efficient composter (a barrel-shaped one that I can spin or something similar) to control the smell better. My neighbors are pretty far away, but if they were closer they would probably complain.

Your landlord is lucky. If you and your chickens ever move out, that flower bed of yours is going to grow the most beautiful plants in the neighborhood!

 

[lorihadams]

You may want to look into getting bantams...smaller poop

No seriously, I would think that if you did as you have planned you wouldn't have any problems. Do you have any leaf litter close by? I piled 3 feet of leaves in my girls run (10x10) when I first got my coop and run set up before we moved to larger property and they LOVED it! When they got done scratching it around and breaking it up it was the best compost additive ever!

 

[cowchipss]

Aubrey

Thanks for the support

Welasharon

Thanks. That is an excellent point. Dry poop = good. I'm still in the planning stages so I 've added a covered run to my “want” list. My childhood chicken run was not covered and after a rain it was pungent. I'm thinking about making part of the run's roof removable though because my original idea was for an uncovered run since I remember the chickens dusting and sunbathing a lot. That way during rainy seasons I can keep it covered, dry, and hopefully stinkless.

SuzyQ

The heads up about lumber size will definitely go into my coop planning. This will be my first construction project so factors like that would help greatly in the ease of things.

I failed to mention that I live in Florida so in a rare day or two the temperatures gets to freezing for only an hour or so. And as far as tilling the ground, I was using the term loosely... I think that raking or churning may have been a better description of what I might do... ;-)

lorihadams

The abandoned flower beds are packed with leaves and pine needles. So that's another factor I'll take into account. My first thought was to remove it but you make a very good point. Creating compost is a new thing for me.

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments!

 

[elmo]

Roughly 50 percent of poo management can be taken care of with a poop tray under the roost. I use plastic boot trays that I empty out into our composter every morning. A quick hose off, and the trays go back into the coop. If you take care to fork each morning's fresh droppings under whatever green/brown matter you have in your composter, you won't be attracting flies, and if you keep the moisture level in the composter adjusted propertly, you won't have any odor, either.

Keeping odor under control in the run is pretty much a matter of keeping it dry, and not overstocking the given area. I don't think you really need to till the ground under your tractor each time you move it. That sounds like an awful amount of work to me, not to mention the fact that you'd be tilling up your whole yard in no time at all.

I have stationary runs with sand in them, plus a couple of day tractors so our chickens can enjoy eating grass and scratching for bugs. We don't find poo in the ground under the tractor to be a problem. I move the tractor every day or two in order to keep the chickens entertained, because after about that much time they pretty much have grazed off the tops of the grass and found all the tasty bugs.