hello fellow Texans, I'm so close to pulling the trigger and adding chickens to my list of hobbies. I want to keep it small 3 to 5, I live near Boerne on 1.3 acres. My 3 biggest concerns are; how much care time do they really take? I don't want a rooster, if I get one what do I do with it? Really how bad is the smell? If it's 50 feet from the house am I going to be able to smell the coop? Are the flies bad?
Thanks
Rick
How much time?
That depends on your setup and how much you baby them. If you get their housing/feeding stuff situated FIRST, then it doesn't take much time at all. Of course that depends on what type of setup you have (and how many).
If you end up like us and seem to be in a constant state of flux with breeding/incubating/hatching/separating chickens for various reasons as well as having to construct new housing, it takes longer. When we have chickens living in brooders or in the garage, it takes more time to physically carry them from there outside to runs and back in at night.
If you have things set up right, the daily chores would probably only take you minutes to let them in/out of the coop every day plus any feed/water refilling/coop cleaning.
We use hanging feeders and nipple bucket waterers which greatly decreases daily chores so we aren't always having to clean poop and trash out of the food/water. And we have pvc pipe grit/oyster shell feeders that hold quite a bit so don't need refilling often.
Really, if you set it up right, daily chore time is minimal.
Many people really baby their chickens rather than treating them like the hardy, outdoor livestock that they are. Which is fine if that is what they want. But if you baby them, then they will take a lot more time and effort.
Roosters
If you don't want roosters and aren't picky about what breeds you get, you can get chick that are sexed (which isn't always accurate but better than nothing) or buy slightly older birds. Options for roosters - try to sell them, try to give them away, or butcher them and eat them. There are just too many roosters out there that aren't wanted or needed.
Around here, we eat ours. Didn't think we could do it, but we do it quickly and humanely and when you have the equipment (killing cone and very sharp knife is what I recommend) so it isn't as bad as I was expecting.
If you sell/give them away, you have to be prepared that they might be butchered and eaten by whoever takes them. I know of someone that has been trying to give away an aggressive rooster but can't get rid of him because no one wants a rooster that is going to attack them and this person refuses to give him to someone that will kill and eat him.
If you can't bear this thought, best that you only get chickens you know the sex of already.
Smell
The smell is up to you. We don't have much smell unless you stick your face practically into the poop. And I do NOT change out bedding in the coop that often - like months. We use sort of a deep litter method. Can't do it completely because our chicken tractors are VERY large and heavy and true deep litter is too heavy. But I go for several months without changing bedding in the coop.
We use Sweet PDZ to help control ammonia and help to break down the bedding into more compost-y type material. Sweet PDZ is sold at feed stores as a stall refresher. You can buy little containers of the same thing for chickens that is supposed to help your coop smell good and compost bedding better, but it is much cheaper to buy it in the big bags for horse stalls.
We also move the tractors around so there doesn't get to be a huge pile of poop and mud in the runs, and this also keeps smell from starting. I smell more from people's septic systems wafting on the breeze than I do from our chickens.
Flies
If you practice fly control techniques, it isn't that bad. Things like fly traps, diatomaceous earth in the bedding, getting the chickens to dig in the bedding of the coop to eat larvae, etc. goes a long way toward decreasing flies and creepy crawlies.
Overall, if you do your homework first, and get things set up right, things will be easy, fast, clean, and minimal smell and bother. But a lot depends on your chicken management practices.
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