Is it worth it?

[Chickylove12]

Also worth a read because it is such a great resource for someone contemplating adding chicken to their property:
https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/heritage-chicken-faq

Thanku

 

[Chickylove12]

Good morning wow however it's not the animals you need to worry about, it's humans. We are a breeding ground of parasites, pathogens, diseases, etc. You would not believe how many are on & in your body, as we speak. So get as many fur & feathered babies you want. It's the humans you need to worry about

Ewwww...lol

 

[Frazzemrat1]

I just got my girls in the last year. I can say I never realized how relaxing it is to watch chicken TV. Let alone the delicious eggs and all that. I have more worries about my dogs getting fleas and ticks than I worry about the girls. And if they do get mites or lice or whatever, I'll deal with it.

 

[lazy gardener]

OP, have you ever had a pet? Cat? Dog? they get fleas, sometimes worms, need shots. Gold fish? Any fish owner knows all about Ich! If so, you've dealt with it just fine. If not, well... at 48 it's time for you to experience the joys of pet ownership! If you provide good housing and ventilation, plenty of room, don't crowd your birds, provide adequate feed, and do not start collecting birds from multiple sources, you will do just fine.

I've never used medicated feed, never wormed my birds, never had my birds immunized, never had to medicate them for anything. Only once have I had issue with mites, and that was a one time occurrence. I dealt with it properly, did a complete job dealing with it, and never had a reoccurrence.

As a matter of fact your chickens will HELP you to avoid pathogens on your property: They will eat ticks and other troublesome insects if you allow them to have access to your yard. They will help keep your garden free of the insects which devour and even infect your crops with disease. They will snack on the grass, helping to keep it at a good level. Long grass and weeds are a haven for mosquitoes and black flies. Since getting chickens, my dog/cats have not had ANY fleas. Tick issues are minimal, compared to the issues my neighbor directly across the street has!

And those EGGS!!! Since experiencing home grown eggs, my husband can't get me to go out for breakfast with him any more!

And the garden!!! I never have to worry about what herbicides have been filtered through the manure/compost. There are now very long acting herbicides that are put on fields. The hay gets harvested, fed to the cows, passes into their manure. The unsuspecting gardener gets a load of that manure and applies it directly to his garden in the fall, or composts it for later use. The following season, he is appalled to find that his crops won't grow, his tomato plants are stunted with shriveled leaves. Those herbicides from field to hay to cow to poop have now poisoned his soil, and it takes years to clear that soil so it will grow healthy crops again.

The individual with a back yard flock has the home court advantage when it comes to healthy eating!

 

[Chickylove12]

OP, have you ever had a pet? Cat? Dog? they get fleas, sometimes worms, need shots. Gold fish? Any fish owner knows all about Ich! If so, you've dealt with it just fine. If not, well... at 48 it's time for you to experience the joys of pet ownership! If you provide good housing and ventilation, plenty of room, don't crowd your birds, provide adequate feed, and do not start collecting birds from multiple sources, you will do just fine.

I've never used medicated feed, never wormed my birds, never had my birds immunized, never had to medicate them for anything. Only once have I had issue with mites, and that was a one time occurrence. I dealt with it properly, did a complete job dealing with it, and never had a reoccurrence.

As a matter of fact your chickens will HELP you to avoid pathogens on your property: They will eat ticks and other troublesome insects if you allow them to have access to your yard. They will help keep your garden free of the insects which devour and even infect your crops with disease. They will snack on the grass, helping to keep it at a good level. Long grass and weeds are a haven for mosquitoes and black flies. Since getting chickens, my dog/cats have not had ANY fleas. Tick issues are minimal, compared to the issues my neighbor directly across the street has!

And those EGGS!!! Since experiencing home grown eggs, my husband can't get me to go out for breakfast with him any more!

And the garden!!! I never have to worry about what herbicides have been filtered through the manure/compost. There are now very long acting herbicides that are put on fields. The hay gets harvested, fed to the cows, passes into their manure. The unsuspecting gardener gets a load of that manure and applies it directly to his garden in the fall, or composts it for later use. The following season, he is appalled to find that his crops won't grow, his tomato plants are stunted with shriveled leaves. Those herbicides from field to hay to cow to poop have now poisoned his soil, and it takes years to clear that soil so it will grow healthy crops again.

The individual with a back yard flock has the home court advantage when it comes to healthy eating!

Oh yes I have had cats and dogs my whole life and at one point in my twenties.. did bird rescue for the shelter. Insightful response..thanku.

 

[Henrik Petersson]

Short answer: Yes, it is worth it. Easily.

However, I think it's a very healthy attitude you have, to consider the worst possible scenarios. Chicken keeping isn't a hobby like painting or motorbike maintenance, when if things go south you can just say "the hell with it", and leave everything to gather dust in the basement. Chickens are living, feeling creatures and the moment you acquire them, you also acquire the responsibility to keep them healthy and happy for the rest of their lives. An "it will never happen to me"-attitude is a terrible starting point if you want to keep animals.

My parents have chickens, and I think they have the wrong attitude about it. They don't mind picking up poop, feeding them and gathering eggs, but when the chickens get ill, they cop out. They aren't prepared to one-by-one catch a whole flock to administer medication to them. They aren't prepared to daily swap a bandage on a shy bird with bumblefoot. I'm always the one who has to take care of the difficult stuff.

But I don't mind doing that. If you truly love your chickens, you're okay with doing messy, disgusting, time-consuming, expensive, even painful treatments, because you know it's for the good of the birds. (What I do mind is that most days, I don't have time to visit the chickens, so I really wish my parents were as passionate as me.)

And, even though you should be prepared for the worst, fact is that statistically, your chickens will for the most part be healthy. I myself have in my decade or so in chicken keeping never been hit by the worst diseases, such as red mites, Marek's disease or ILT. And the problems I have had, such as frost-bitten combs and scaly leg mites, have been easily treatable.

Another thing to note is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Make sure to buy healthy individuals (personally, I find that purebreeds seem to be the least healthy...) Keep your coop clean (easy if you clean a little every day). Provide fresh water and good food every day. Let them free-range as much as possible; as with humans, chickens are healthiest if they get a lot of exercise, and free-ranging lessens the amount of poop they step in, increases the variety of their diet and, last but not least, keeps them entertained. There are dozens of ways you can tweak your coop and pen to make them more chicken-friendly, but that's a topic for another thread.

In short, it's definitely worth it, but keep learning as much as you can and prepare yourself as best you can for the worst possible scenarios.

 

[Mimi13]

Good morning, @Chickylove12. Luckily for me, when I decided to get chicks I was completely ignorant to all the diseases and parasites known to chickens. (I’m glad I was, because I would have never begun.) Not long after all my chicks were warm in their brooder did I begin reading about all of the horrible things that a chicken can get and I quickly began regretting my new venture.
Skip to the present - I love my hens and am in the process of building a much larger coop and have 22 more on order for April...even though I now know of all the dastardly things a chicken can get. It has been my experience (from my own and from reading) that all the terrible things that can happen are rare. However, the worms, mites and lice in chickens are givens, just like fleas, ticks, mites and lice in dogs, cats, horses, cattle, etc. They just need to be treated at the time they appear, if at all. Knock on wood, I have not had to deal with the creepy crawlies on my hens yet. And, by the way, those little boogers are not attracted to humans. Whew!
Now, a healthy chicken can and does carry some worms with no ill side effects. Intestinal worms come from the things chickens love most: earthworms, slugs, beetles. Worming chickens isn’t much different than worming dogs and/or horses, except for the fact it’s best not to eat their eggs for a couple of weeks. However, you can scramble them and feed those eggs to your dogs.
As for the other possible things I might have to deal with, such as egg binding, Bumblefoot, and impacted crop, I have an emergency medical bag for my chickens, am read up on what I should do in the event one of these might pop up and I will handle it in the best way possible if and when the time comes. (One reason this site is so valuable.)
Please don’t be apprehensive about getting chickens. They will provide you with much more pleasure than pain. I promise!

 

[Mimi13]

OP, have you ever had a pet? Cat? Dog? they get fleas, sometimes worms, need shots. Gold fish? Any fish owner knows all about Ich! If so, you've dealt with it just fine. If not, well... at 48 it's time for you to experience the joys of pet ownership! If you provide good housing and ventilation, plenty of room, don't crowd your birds, provide adequate feed, and do not start collecting birds from multiple sources, you will do just fine.

I've never used medicated feed, never wormed my birds, never had my birds immunized, never had to medicate them for anything. Only once have I had issue with mites, and that was a one time occurrence. I dealt with it properly, did a complete job dealing with it, and never had a reoccurrence.

As a matter of fact your chickens will HELP you to avoid pathogens on your property: They will eat ticks and other troublesome insects if you allow them to have access to your yard. They will help keep your garden free of the insects which devour and even infect your crops with disease. They will snack on the grass, helping to keep it at a good level. Long grass and weeds are a haven for mosquitoes and black flies. Since getting chickens, my dog/cats have not had ANY fleas. Tick issues are minimal, compared to the issues my neighbor directly across the street has!

And those EGGS!!! Since experiencing home grown eggs, my husband can't get me to go out for breakfast with him any more!

And the garden!!! I never have to worry about what herbicides have been filtered through the manure/compost. There are now very long acting herbicides that are put on fields. The hay gets harvested, fed to the cows, passes into their manure. The unsuspecting gardener gets a load of that manure and applies it directly to his garden in the fall, or composts it for later use. The following season, he is appalled to find that his crops won't grow, his tomato plants are stunted with shriveled leaves. Those herbicides from field to hay to cow to poop have now poisoned his soil, and it takes years to clear that soil so it will grow healthy crops again.

The individual with a back yard flock has the home court advantage when it comes to healthy eating!

No, GREAT post!

 

[Henrik Petersson]

I want to add one more important thing: With most chicken diseases (if not all) there is not one clear-cut answer as how to treat them. One example is de-worming. Some people routinely de-worm their chickens every few months. Others say that you should never de-worm them, because that messes up their natural resistance to worms (or something along those lines). Another example: Some people swear by diatomaceous earth and put it in their coop routinely, others say it will harm the chickens and should be avoided at all costs.

Keep in mind who is giving you advice (a random stranger on the internet, like me, or a trained vet?), study yourself, and use common sense.

 

[Mimi13]

Short answer: Yes, it is worth it. Easily.

However, I think it's a very healthy attitude you have, to consider the worst possible scenarios. Chicken keeping isn't a hobby like painting or motorbike maintenance, when if things go south you can just say "the hell with it", and leave everything to gather dust in the basement. Chickens are living, feeling creatures and the moment you acquire them, you also acquire the responsibility to keep them healthy and happy for the rest of their lives. An "it will never happen to me"-attitude is a terrible starting point if you want to keep animals.

My parents have chickens, and I think they have the wrong attitude about it. They don't mind picking up poop, feeding them and gathering eggs, but when the chickens get ill, they cop out. They aren't prepared to one-by-one catch a whole flock to administer medication to them. They aren't prepared to daily swap a bandage on a shy bird with bumblefoot. I'm always the one who has to take care of the difficult stuff.

But I don't mind doing that. If you truly love your chickens, you're okay with doing messy, disgusting, time-consuming, expensive, even painful treatments, because you know it's for the good of the birds. (What I do mind is that most days, I don't have time to visit the chickens, so I really wish my parents were as passionate as me.)

And, even though you should be prepared for the worst, fact is that statistically, your chickens will for the most part be healthy. I myself have in my decade or so in chicken keeping never been hit by the worst diseases, such as red mites, Marek's disease or ILT. And the problems I have had, such as frost-bitten combs and scaly leg mites, have been easily treatable.

Another thing to note is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Make sure to buy healthy individuals (personally, I find that purebreeds seem to be the least healthy...) Keep your coop clean (easy if you clean a little every day). Provide fresh water and good food every day. Let them free-range as much as possible; as with humans, chickens are healthiest if they get a lot of exercise, and free-ranging lessens the amount of poop they step in, increases the variety of their diet and, last but not least, keeps them entertained. There are dozens of ways you can tweak your coop and pen to make them more chicken-friendly, but that's a topic for another thread.

In short, it's definitely worth it, but keep learning as much as you can and prepare yourself as best you can for the worst possible scenarios.