What information do you wish you had known starting out?

[LIsaajb]

Recommend good books for beginners! I wanted to be ready when our chicks came home so I read books on chickens all winter. Most of them were poor in the infomation they had and were written in a way that would scare off most people from getting chickens.

 

[CharlotteHens]

I wish I had designed my hen house with access to the three nest boxes from outside the enclosed hen area so I could get eggs without putting on yard shoes to avoid the chicken poops. I found great design on line but I didn't think about removing the eggs daily without being in their area. The design link is available on my page under CharlotteHens along with pictures of the hen house area. Next time!

 

[ChickChickChicky]

I wish I'd known that raising chickens is NOT rocket science (as some people would like to make it out to be). I find that chickens are rather like rose bushes... some people fuss and fret over every single detail of a rose bush's existence, while others (like me) know that they really are just like any other bush, requiring no special treatment, rather just good, common-sense basic care, to thrive.

 

[zuckermansswing]

As a suburban chicken keeper -- mine is not a full-time farm operation -- I was concerned that my girls be safe and happy if I was away for a weekend, without having to depend on the sort-of-reliable neighbor kid to feed & water. This is doable if ...
1) ...run is plenty big for four hens -- they prefer to be meandering free in the yard, but they're ok and safe in the run for two days. They have several nest boxes both in the coop and out, so I have 6 or 7 eggs to collect on Sunday night.
2) ...you use a water system that cannot be knocked over or pooped in, continually providing fresh water
The Beaktime system is great -- I clean and refill the 5 gal reservoir every couple of weeks but otherwise it's no-maintenance http://www.beaktime.com/
3)... you use a food system that cannot be knocked over or pooped in. BYC thread a while back discussed upright plumbing pipe as a great storage/feeding container. I have a 3" pipe lashed to the wire of the run, loosely capped at the top and ending in a Y-bend "feeder" at the bottom. I also use 2" pipe dispensers for oyster and grit. Also have a standard 11-lb feeder hanging from the ceiling of coop -- but if they fly into it they can spill a lot, so it's really more for mixed omega/feed when I'm there daily.

(One of these days I will get around to posting a coop page with pictures. Everything I know I learned from BYC!)

Happy hens!

 

[zuckermansswing]

Oh yes, buying from a reputable breeder like http://www.dare2dreamfarms.com/ is vital. (They deliver all over Southern California -- even swapped out a "bad egg" grumpy hen for me and replaced with my favorite little Dominique, Coco.)

Mine will come running for raisins, and live crickets from the pet store. Spoiled? Nah...

 

[LaynaDon95]

I wish I had known that they needed a dust bath. If all your chickens have access to is grass, then you end up with a bad case of lice! O.O

 

[buckabucka]

I would say facilities. Knowing now what I didn't then, just to know more are to come. Some have to be separated and some have to be quarantined. Just to have enough places to be able to keep them all up and keep me comfortable in mind.

This was something I learned after-the-fact also. We needed to build a division down the coop and run with chicken wire for the purpose of introducing new chickens, and it also serves to house a broody hen, or a place for an injured hen to recover, near the others but not in direct contact. If you buy straight run or might consider hatching, then you will need a bachelor pen, - away from the hens, for growing out the roosters. And if you might ever buy pullets from someone else to add to your flock, you need a quarantine area, far from your current hens. Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but it is also good to have some Blu-Kote on hand. We needed it within our first week of raising chickens.

 

[Cass]

I'm sure others have said it already but let me add : I wish I had known that chicken math is a DISEASE that all chicken owners get. Period. Regardless of their initial intentions....so build as big as you can afford and remember reuse/recycle....chickens don't care what it looks like (your neighbors might)

My neighbor was just going to buy my eggs. Then she was going to get 3 hens. Then she got 7. 2 died(predators) so I gave her 2. Now she wants to know if her coop will hold 12. All in 6 months time. Shortly after I gave her 2 , I ordered 10 from a friend.

(And I won't tell you how many my coop for 6 is holding...thank god I built big and my SO didn't mind me taking over the part meant for "storage")

I'm telling you it's a disease....there is always another breed you want in your yard and you can't get just ONE....and so it goes.

 

[TwoCrows]

Build as big as you can! You will almost always want more chickens and if you don't have the coop space, you will be sorry. I never thought I was going to want more chickens than I started out with. And my coop was built for the amount of chickens I started with. So I do not have ANY more room for more!!

So for those of you who are starting out, build as big as you possibly can, because there may come a day that you do want more birds and you will then have the space. If you don't ever get any more birds, then the existing flock has a huge coop.

 

[buckabucka]

I'm sure others have said it already but let me add : I wish I had known that chicken math is a DISEASE that all chicken owners get. Period. Regardless of their initial intentions....so build as big as you can afford and remember reuse/recycle....chickens don't care what it looks like (your neighbors might)

My neighbor was just going to buy my eggs. Then she was going to get 3 hens. Then she got 7. 2 died(predators) so I gave her 2. Now she wants to know if her coop will hold 12. All in 6 months time. Shortly after I gave her 2 , I ordered 10 from a friend.

(And I won't tell you how many my coop for 6 is holding...thank god I built big and my SO didn't mind me taking over the part meant for "storage")

I'm telling you it's a disease....there is always another breed you want in your yard and you can't get just ONE....and so it goes.

HA! This is SO true! We bought 25 chicks, a handful were straight run, so we ate all the roosters but one, and were down to 17 for the first winter. In the spring, I hatched eggs and added 5 hens, so we were up to 22. This past winter, I saw a good deal on started pullets, and added 6 more hens, so I'm up to 28. This spring, I bought a second incubator and we have 49 eggs in there right now, and we're building a second coop!