Do any champdoggers keep chickens?  We are looking at a house over the weekend which sounds lovely and has a chicken run in the garden.  I do like the idea of keeping chickens but don't know very much about them.  Are they high maintenance in terms of cleaning out / regularity of feeding?  How much do they cost to feed?  How easy is it to keep foxes at bay?  And how can we tell if the facilities that have been set up for them by current owners are adequate?  Any insights gratefully received!

i use to have five chickens a few years ago, they are cheap to feed, we put a dog food scoop of grain in in the morning, and then they had the feild to wander around in before taking themselves back to their hut when it got dark. brought they eggs in each nite, use to get 4 each day (1 never laid). the foxes did come once, and got one that hadnt gone back in the shed, therefore always remeber to shut them in at night. adequate facilties-security, probably a padlock suitable lock, as foxes are very clever, laying boxes (just bigger then the chicken), enough 4 each one plus one. we cleaned them out every month, but they only spent the nights in the shed, so would be more then that it if was an enclosed shed and run. only hard work is scraping faeces off when hot. the initial outlay of getting each chicken depends on the breed and if its a rare breed that you are looking at. hopefully that helps.

If you do a search on chickens loads of info should come up as i started a very similar thread myself about 3 months ago ;-)

Several CDers keep chickens and they are a wealth of knowledge :D  Unfortunatley i can't help you as we decided  that we had enough animals at the moment and would wait a few more years before giving in to our chicken passion!:D

Good luck!!

we used to keep chickens and as well as the layers pellets that hey had each day they had all the house hold scraps, plus any weeds from the garden, (chickens make great rubbish bins :D ), we used to clean them out once a month as they like to smell their own mess, or so im told, in the shed. if you feed kitchen scraps that has to be emptied and cleaned everynight, there is never much need for emptying though, as well as cleaning around the dish, as any food left encourages rats and foxes. we used to shut the chickens in as it got dark to avoid them being eaten by foxes,
hth
tanya

chickens are great pets, great personalities, they don't require that much care just a warm clean coop, locked up at night and let out in the morning and they are cheap to feed too, if you just want them as pets then have you considered getting some x-battery hens, they get rid of them about 9 months old i believe, they will still lay but most of all you would be giving them freedom and a good home, i had two years back and one was totally bald we called her plucky i have fond memories of my chucks

I love 'em!

We've got best of both worlds because we've got long term charge of the (now single) chicken next door while her owners are away for an extended period.  So she digs up their garden but just sits on our fence!  A few weeks ago she managed to escape out of the back gate and somehow ended up in the local pub!!!  It was very embarassing to go and get her back - it was a bit like a joke ' a man walked up to the bar with a chicken under his arm.  Is this your chicken he asked the landlord ........'

Anyhow she keeps the garden free of weeds, slugs, snails and ..... flowers too!  She's very low maintenance apart from putting her away at night and letting her out in the morning.  You do have to be a bit careful about vermin because of the food left lying around, but our cat takes good care of that.  We get an egg a day which is just great.

I shall be sad when she isn't under our care anymore.

Thanks for all your comments - and that's a great idea about rescuing battery hens.  I guess I'll have to suss out what the neighbours are like when we see the house so that we can ascertain whether someone would be able to lock the hens up at night if we were away for a weekend or something. 

Definitely got for the battery hens -- they get culled at 70 weeks. I used to do research on a battery farm, so around the 65 week mark, I'd start advertising the most healthy hens for rehoming.

havent got time to re-type all my old posts, but do a search on it as plenty already said!

This is a lovely site to learn about different types of poultry and keeping them :) :)

http://www.poultryscotland.co.uk/

Hope this helps, my friend keeps poultry and I'd love to be able to but my garden's too small :( :(

We keep chickens too, despite having four BARF dogs :D

They are dead easy to keep - just their house and run which must be secure. They just need letting out in the morning and shutting in at night. We've not had them long actually but wouldn't be without them now :)

Layers Pellets cost about £5 for a sack which lasts a month and we also feed corn about an hour before bed-time to make the eggs nice and yellow.

I agree that they are good rubbish bins - anything that doesn't go in the dogs goes in the chooks.

What time do they need to be locked in? Does foxy come out as soon as it gets dark or can you wait until slightly later - I'm just thinking about the winter and the fact that I occasionally might not get in until 7.00.  The dog can come to work but I think my boss would draw the lines at chickens!!

I've seen the fox out at all times, including the day too.  Fortunately my dogs are in the kennel next to the chickens which I think puts Mr Foxy off a daytime visit.  Ours always goes to bed at dusk and she sits on top of the compost bin to wait.  It's a risk if you leave them out any later.

Ideally dusk; that's when predators start hunting. That said, I saw a fox taking a neighbour's chickens in the early afternoon on a bright summer's day, so they're never completely safe. But dusk is the start of the danger time.

Where we camped last weekend the farmer had a couple of chickens taken in broad daylight from his farmyard.  Hungry cubs this time of year.

Just seen this thread - I have a mixture of large and bantam breed chickens as well as call ducks and my mad Belgian Shepherd dogs of course :D. Just LOVE my chooks and would'nt be without them. I have found that the loose feathered breeds tend to be the most placid especially Orpingtons and Cochins - they are also less 'flighty' so unlikely to try and fly over the fence. We allow our Dutch and Belgian bantams ( they are TINY ) the run of the garden - they have become very tame and when I go out to do a spot of gardening they love to follow me around muttering softly. They are also brilliant at getting rid of garden pests - my hostas are completely slug free since I had garden hens !. I also have both full size and bantam Light Sussex which are very good layers and will lay right through the winter. In the 9 years that we've had the hens we've only lost 3 to foxes - but you do have to make sure that they are locked up at night - they tend to take themselves to bed so it only means shutting the door ( unlike the ducks who think its great fun to watch me trying to round them up - particularly in the rain !). It's not neccesary to keep a cockrel in order to have eggs but I find that the hens are less likely to bully each other with a 'man about the place' - hens can be quite ruthless to others lower in the 'pecking order' and you do need to introduce new hens very carefully. Cockrels can be very noisy so make sure that you have understanding neighbours before you get one .

I change the huts every week using a dust free sawdust as bedding and feed them a mix of layers pellets, corn and scraps ( no meat though ) they must have grit to help them digest their feed - they have free access to water which is changed twice a day and my larger breeds free range on our enclosed orchard ( @ 1/2 an acre) so can pick away at weeds and various creepy crawlies. I dust the huts against red mite every autumn and give preventative treatments agains worms and feather lice.

Chickens are great fun and low maintenance  too - I would recommend them to anyone looking for a cheap, amusing and productive pet.

Yvonne

Beware as chicken keeping can bring sadness.  I let ours out at 6.30ish this morning before walking the dogs.

I phoned my son from work this morning to give him todays list of chores which included clean out the chicken.  He went to do so and found our lovely Chook lying headless with guts removed :-(

Sometime in between 6:30 and 11am Mr Foxy obviously came to visit .

much sadness Jackyat...we have lost dozens this summer, all during the day, between 9am & 6pm. We have shot 5 foxes here but they still take them

it may have been a polecat, they often bit their heads off nasty little things! poor chucks

Our neighbour keeps chickens (just a few) in their front garden in a run. One day she was weeding when a fox took one of the chickens from the run while she watched, just a few feet away They only shut them in at night :(

Daisy

Sorry to hear that Jacky - I don't think I would cope very well with chicken massacre, I can see myself getting very attached to them.  We went to see the house I mentioned at the weekend, plus some others and I'm now a bit torn.  It's our first house purchase and I can't make up my mind between two houses - my heart's with one (the one with the chicken run!) and my head's with the other.  I know everyone says property is an investment (and it certainly is - can't believe how much we are spending as first time buyers), but I'm more inclined to think of myself as purchasing a home.  Do I go with my heart or head?