Ready to give up on my chooks, help please.

[Cara83]

I have had so many issues with raising chickens, I have had mites and coccidiosis and had to lay a few to rest, whilst some just died. They are now 8 weeks old and outside the past 2 weeks.
They are becoming way more work than I anticipated.
The smell, the flies and the poo everywhere is getting to much for me. Why do people say they are easy??
I worry about them in the wet weather also.
I live in town and whilst I'm allowed 7 chickens by council, I only have 5 and they have a mobile chook tractor, I can move around the yard.
I worry about my neighbours complaining about the smell and flies.
I hose down each day and move them but they just go back to where they used to be and cry, so the area dosent get a break.
Today I got garden lime and moved them to the other side of the house in hopes of that area being less smelly and get rid of the flies.
I clean out the roosting area every few days and use wood shavings or hemp bedding.
Am I doing something wrong?
It's really getting overwhelming for me.

 

[raingarden]

There is grass growing in the yard and the porch isn't covered in poop. It looks to me like you're doing really really well but you might have to lower your standards.

 

[RooStar Chicken Gang]

What country are u in? Australia? if they r to stressful for you to look after maybe get another animal to farm... like worms.

 

[Ursuline Chick]

Welcome from New Orleans. I think you feel overwhelmed right now as they are both young chicks and new animals to care for. Take a deep breath and look on forums for information you may need or be unaware of. The more you know the easier it is to care for them. And then you have all of us on BYC to help with any specific questions. Don't be shy or concerned that your question may be foolish, we all had those questions at the beginning (or sometime in our chicken keeping)
If in the end you really feel like chickens are not your thing, you can try re homing them and find something else as a hobby.
Good Luck

 

[swamphiker]

The good news is that your pullets are big enough to be much hardier than chicks! Although disease, parasites, and predators are all issues for chickens at all stages of life, things will get easier as they grow and you get used to caring for them. The folks on BYC are very helpful with all sort of issues and questions.

Also, if you end up deciding that chicken-keeping is not for you, selling young hens and supplies will likely be easy since they tend to be in high demand.

 

[ChickenLeg]

When overwhelmed think about doewsizing to 3-4 birds, the older these birds get the more mess theyll make and more feed theyll eat = more poop. Also I prefer bantams, much easier to manage, less mess, and less feed! If you downsized you could keep them in the chicken tractor 24/7 and move them to a new plot of grass everyday, this way they cant go back to the same spot or poop on porch

 

[Shadrach]

Mites and coccidiosis are common problems with chicken keeping. Some people are lucky and rarely have to deal with them while for others it's a constant battle.
Some observations. They are not meant to be taken as criticism, more as a view from the chickens perspective.

I imagine myself as one of your pullets standing on the steps and looking over the fence at all that greenery with trees and shrubs for cover and interest. I would be thinkiing that there are probably some great patches of bare ground over there were I can dig a big hole and search for worms and grubs. I think I would make another patch for a dust bath and then go and doze under a large bush were I felt safe fromm predators.
What I am trying to say in the kindest way possible is if I was a chicken I wouldn't want to llive in your yard. It's far too tidy and bare of interesting things.
It is unfortunate the impression people get regarding the keeping of chickens.
They are not easy to keep if one is mindfull of the environment chickens would choose to live in.
If you are fussy about having your plants the right way up, a spotless lawn and patio chickens may not be the ideal creature for you to keep.
While still a bit on the tidy side the pitures below are a fair representation of the kind of landscape chickens view as a lovely garden.

 

[K0k0shka]

I'm sorry you are feeling overwhelmed. Chickens can be incredibly easy IF you have the right setup. If you don't, they can be quite overwhelming, and can be unhappy themselves as well as making you unhappy. There are some chicken basics that keep being repeated over and over on newbie threads by the experienced users, but I don't know if they exist anywhere as a bullet point list to point you to... Here are some examples:

- Space. Extremely important. Both your coop and your covered run are way too small for the number of chickens you have. Small space + too many chickens = too much poop and smell. You need at least 4 square feet per bird of coop space, and 10 square feet per bird of run space.

- Free ranging. I don't know if you intend to let them loose all over your property, or if that's a product of them crying and not wanting to stay confined to their covered run, but keeping them loose like that means there will be poop everywhere. You can't walk around your yard or go down your steps without stepping in poop. I don't know how big your whole property is, but what's in the pictures looks very small. Chickens need space to roam, but you need space as well. Sharing the same space will inevitably result in conflict, even if just the frustration of poop everywhere. On a larger property, there's more space for the chickens to spread out on, and the poop is more spread out as well, but free ranging in a small city yard is not a good idea as it will concentrate the poop in a smaller space. Free ranging is also dangerous because of predators, so expect more losses if you don't keep them in a predator-proof run.

- Bedding. That grass is nice but it won't last long. Your chicks are still young, but as they grow, they'll get more and more destructive. They love to eat and scratch through grass. You'll end up with bare patches that will get muddy when it rains. Grass is also really hard to clean from poop. You can't rake it, can't bury the poop in bedding, the poop doesn't compost easily. Washing poop away isn't a good idea. Wet poop smells. The way to control smell with chickens is to keep everything as dry as possible, not wet. And you need some sort of bedding for the run, not just grass. Wood chips work amazingly well and are popular with a lot of folks. That, and other organic material (organic in the sense of "plant material" as opposed to sand or rock, not "organic" as the fancy buzzword of the hippie food industry). Dry fall leaves, mowed grass clippings, yard waste. Mix it all up. When combined with the poop and moisture from weather, it composts in place and doesn't smell. That's what I have in my run. I don't clean my run, and it doesn't smell. The chickens mix it around and it composts. I have a thick layer of pine shavings inside the coop, and it doesn't smell either, but I have a large, roomy, airy coop with lots of ventilation. Small, cramped coops are hard to ventilate well, coop concentrations are higher (unless you clean every day) and they tend to smell.

What I would recommend is building a proper coop and run that can hold the number of chickens you have, following the above recommendation for square footage. If that would mean making it bigger than what you'd want to sacrifice from your yard, then scale down the number of chickens, but don't compromise on their space. Remember, space too small = too much poop concentration = smell. So figure out how big of a structure you are able/willing to have in your yard, and how many chickens can fit in it. Then build a properly sized coop and run for them, give them adequate bedding, points of interest in the run (things to climb on, hide behind, dust bath to roll around in, etc.) and keep them inside the run so your whole property isn't pooped on, and you'll find that chicken keeping is a whole lot easier. Good luck!

 

[WhySayWhat]

Some people just don't like the smell of chickens. My husband and son both think they smell awful, I don't notice any smell unless they drop a particularly ripe bomb nearby. My daughter thinks the chickens are the BEST thing in the world and would spend all day every day outside with them. Everyone is different in what we can handle (I can't deal with cat or dog vomit, but my husband has no issues with that).

 

[MTKitty]

Ask yourself - and be brutally honest, no need to share w/anyone else - do you really want chickens? No shame in saying you don’t. Just because your city council says you can, doesn’t mean you have to.

If your answer is that you do want them in town, then @K0k0shka’s advice is a good place to start evaluating your keeping practices.

Best of luck!