Hi, i am thinking about maybe getting a few chickens as pets.

I want to go in fully informed though as i want to make sure i can provide everything they need before i take the plunge.

I have been looking at chicken coops and runs which i can afford if i get on e bay they seem quite reasonable.

With regards to looking after them i would like to know what they need to make them happy.

Do they need specific bird feed? If so how much would it cost to feed say 6 chickens for a month?

I would like a coop that is attached to their house so they can come out whilst i am not there but when i am home i would like them to be able to mooch around my garden.

Is there anything that could poison them (flower wise) will they just bog off in to neighbours gardens?

Do they need vaccinations?
worming?

I would like to rescue ex battery hens instead of buying some, has anybody done this and what success have you had nursing them back to health and getting them happy to lay?

Thanks for any contributions.

Mmm where to start !
Don't believe the advertising bumf about how many chickens a coop will hold. Aim for half again the recommended space (at least)
It is nice to have a 'hut' with a small run attached so that you don't have to get up at crack of dawn to let them out. They can pootle about in a small run until you decide to liberate them and give them more space when there is supervision and the risk of foxes is less.

They need layers pellets, and possibly some mixed corn, but the corn is a treat not a staple diet as it can make them fat and stop them from eating the pellets which are much better for them (Think of it as dinner and chocolate !) most animal feed shops will sell these in small quantities to save you having to buy a 20kg bag.
I'm trying to work out how much weight mine get each a day probably about 75-100gm. I will let you do the maths (not my strong point) I pay £7.50 for 20kg bag of pellets. They will obviously eat less feed if they are free ranging for some of the day and can pick up a lot of their own food. You are not legally allowed to feed kitchen scraps to chickens any more so I will not mention the love of brown bread !
Mine often have free range over the huge garden and seem very good at ignoring poisonous plants so I personally wouldn't stress unduly about that.
Vaccinations have to be done in the first 24hrs so if they have not done when you get them they cannot be done later. I worm them every few months and have found the best way to delouse is to mix some powder into the area where they dust bath, that way they apply it themselves.
I have had quite a few rescue battery birds and whilst they don't lay every day, the eggs are bigger and you still get 3-4 a week off them. They usually rehabilitate quite easily.

agree with sassinak but would add try to get a house with as large a run as your garden can take as chickens allowed free access to average small garden do have tendancy to trash it. limited access works better if you want a few flowers/lawn left.
they aren't expensive to keep, set up costs are main thing- ie the coop and run. 
try to get your birds in one go from one place as adding later can be a bit of a game as birds do form a strong pecking order and can get rather nasty to single additions added later.
x-batt hens will have been vaccinated as chicks, as are hybrid hens, purebred birds generally are not as are bred more by hobby breeders. its not something you can do later- has to be done at day old but usually only issue if you are keeping 100s.  worming is easy- simple powder called flubenvet added to feed for one week couple of times a year- or you can buy a small bag of feed with it already in.
main thing is what sassinak said at start- Don't believe the advertising bumf about how many chickens a coop will hold. Aim for half again the recommended space (at least)
some of the numbers sellers sugguest would mean keeping them not much better then battery conditions!

I made our chicken hut. It cost around £50 and it's big enough for me to stand and have a twirl about in, useful if you feel like having a waltz with your hens. The bought stuff was 8 8' round posts, nails, visqueen and some flags. It's a round house with a reciprocal beam turf covered roof. The posts are set in a circle and each post has a 2"x4" nailed linked each post to the next. The roof is literally made out of scrap, bar the visqueen. I used short length laths. Imagine the way Morris dancers's swords end up interlinked.. Each of the short length laths are balance on the wood connecting the posts, overlapping each other towards the centre of the circle. I could break any of those Laths with very little force, but together they are strong enough to hold the weight of several people--we have the photos to prove it :)! It leaves a nice skylight in the centre .

We used scrap wood to form the walls, got an old ledge and brace door, built a nest box into the wall and an internal shelf with roost so they have a two storey building. I invited friends over for a BBQ (no, chicken was NOT on the menu :( and we built in that day.

I use a deep litter system on the flag floor (the flags stop any rats from coming up.

This building has been up for 10 years. I need to replace the turf roof because the hens ate all the grass last year, but it's perfectly dry and I guess it will stay up for another 20 years without any trouble.

Now for the not so good news: I spent about £1200 fox proofing the pen (45 x 20'), buying a second nursery coop and putting in a small pond. I had a fairly pointless chickenwire fence before that and they had a fantastic time wandering about the back street, down the hedgerow and onto the green. Everyone except one household loved them (one of my neighbours even set up a webcam and the birds' antics were regularly enjoyed by viewers around the world.

I guess the moral is you can spend as much or as little as you like. There are plenty of rural livestock/deadstock auctions where you can pick up arks fairly cheaply depending on size, materials etc. I've never bought that way because I still think you can do better and cheaper yourself. Chickenwire doesn't last that long and neither does cheapo wood. Do the right thing and recycle!

Feed: chick crumb for the little ones for up to 4 months, layer pellet and mixed grain for the mature birds. My birds adore boiled rice, the apples that fall off the tree into their pen and go nuts for raspberries. They have killed off the grass in their pen so I cut grass every day to give them. I get the excess greens from other allotments--they were very grateful for rocket the other day.

Your hens will need dusting for mites and the coop will need a scrub from time to time. That's most of it, I think :)--you could try this free newsletter http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/1/2aprilchickens11

Good luck, I wouldn't want to be without my birds, even the meany Pterodactyl sisters (Sussex/silkie crosses)--life is exciting with hens.

how much would it cost to feed say 6 chickens for a month

I'm feeding 20 (bantams and big guys) and 25kg of layer pellet and 20kg of mixed grain cost me £15.05 last weekend. That lasts about 3-4 weeks, it depends how much other scraps they get.

Just a comment on the silly unenforceable rules and regulations that are in force.
You can pull carrots (for example) in your garden, cut off the tops and feed them to the chickens. That is garden waste and is permitted.
If you take the forementioned carrots into your kitchen to cut the tops off, you can no longer feed it to your birds as it has become kitchen waste which is forbidden - even from a strictly vegetarian kitchen !!

I don't know too much about looking after them but I know JTF wholsale have coops with runs attached on special offer at the minute , they have 2 sizes available aswell. :)
We have 1 near us , not sure if they are nationwide.

What ever you do get a coop that has an onduline roof, it looks like corrugated black plastic stuff but is vital to help in the fight against red mites, which have to be one of the worst pests to get rid off, if you can get it proper old fashioned creosote painted all over the coop will prevent red mites taking hold in the first place, unfortunatly creosote is one of those things that the EU thinks we're too dozy to use responsibly and has restriced it's sale for agricultural use.
If you take your time to get a good set up you'll save yourself loads of bother later on, be careful of coops off E-bay, cheap ones are cheap for a reason and if you go on any poultry forum you'll come across lots of people who bought a cheap one only to find it barely lasted a year. If you want to do it on a buget buying a small shed or similar from B&Q and converting it would be a good option rather than paying for a poor quality coop, try and get one made from the thickest shiplap you can find and you should be ok. So called chicken wire is another thing to avoid, it's too fimsy and the holes are too big, hens can get they're heads stuck in it and rodents can get in, what you want is weld mesh, which is much thicker and has small holes, it is expensive but should last 10 years or so.
Next time your in a newsagent have a look for the Practical Poultry magazine, it's probably the best one on the market, it also has books to buy, I found Getting Started With Chickens to be the most useful.
Where abouts do you live ? if your anywhere near Fife your more than welcome to come and see my set up to give you ideas

My neighbour bought a shed from B&Q and adapted that - it was around 8 yrs ago and it's still going strong.