Chickens

[PaulaSB12]

I have seen in the past posts about people growing food in their garden, and have just joined backyard chickens a forum with a lot of people in America who keep chickens. Are there any disney fans who also keep chickens? I am getting mine in march.

 

[Shmily1]

I don't have any, but my dad has lots of all kinds! He likes the fancy ones the best and has had chickens and many other animals my entire life!

 

[tzolkin]

My parents have chickens, but they have about 300

We're not supposed to have "agricultural" animals unless we have 5 acres. My mom keeps offering for us to take a few chickens and a portable coop that can be moved around the yard during the summers. We may ask our closest neighbors if they mind and just bring the chickens back to my parents' if there are any issues. Our one neighbor down the road had a horse (a double lot... definitely not 5 acres) and no one complained, so it may be fine.

We have a large garden and grow all our vegetables in the summer.

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

We grow lots of vegetables in the summer, and are toying with the idea of chickens next summer. The portable coops sound great! Heck, after chickens, can turkeys be far behind? LOL
We have 25 acres, 10 cleared and 15 wooded, so it's doable.

 

[java]

We're not allowed to have them in our developement but my neighbors do- and surprise one of the chickens is actually a rooster!! cockadoodle do at 5 am every day. If you get chickens make sure they are chickens!

 

[trip]

We're not allowed to have them in our developement but my neighbors do- and surprise one of the chickens is actually a rooster!! cockadoodle do at 5 am every day. If you get chickens make sure they are chickens!

I'd be filing a complaint to someone. I wouldn't be happy with cockadoodles at 5 am every morning.

 

[Eeyore'sthebest]

We're not allowed to have them in our developement but my neighbors do- and surprise one of the chickens is actually a rooster!! cockadoodle do at 5 am every day. If you get chickens make sure they are chickens!

My neighbors did this. I contacted the County Board of Health and they were made to get rid of them. That dang rooster NEVER shut up. It crowed all day.

I grew up with chickens (dad had some) but we were in the country and allowed to have them there. You only need a rooster to fertilize the eggs to make new chickens. Otherwise hens can lay eggs without roosters around.

 

[Boo'sMom]

we do. We have a flock of 10 chickens, and currently 7 turkey...but we live in the country and there are no zoning regulations about roosters.
have you checked out backyardchickens website?

 

[ChrizJen]

We have a little urban farm with 5 of them, all hens. We keep them for eggs, and otherwise they're our pets. (in other words, we'll never kill them for food.)

It was initially a bit of a costly endeavor. We started out with a small "tractor" type coop, which we could move around easily, but we soon learned that we needed a more stable coop for them. We live in a climate where temperatures can reach extremes, both hot and cold. So we wanted a really nice coop that could keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. As soon as the hens were in the nice new coop, egg production went CRAZY!! We're now getting between 3 and 4 eggs per day! We're a family of 3, so you can imagine that this is more than enough for us!!

We love our chickens! Our DD has named them all, and she loves to get in the run and interact with them when they're out!

I'll try to post some pics of our coop and our "girls"...

Sorry. I get excited when I can talk about my chickens!!

*Oh! And I meant to say that we went through our share of roosters when we first started raising chickens (we raised them from chicks). Fortunately we know a guy who lives out in the country and was happy to take the roosters. So as soon as we heard the "cockadoodle-do", they were off to the farm. It was actually quite humorous. One week we had 3 of them who had to be taken to the farm, all on different days. So Monday we woke to "cockadoodle-do", took care of the problem. Then Tuesday, same story...Then Thursday, same story...For a while we were beginning to think that all of our chicks were going to be roosters!!

 

[java]

The good news is that the offending neighbor with the rooster is moving in March. Let's hope they take the chickens/rooster with them or at least relocate them!

 

[ChrizJen]

The good news is that the offending neighbor with the rooster is moving in March. Let's hope they take the chickens/rooster with them or at least relocate them!

I probably would have reported them. That's uncalled for. There's no reason for someone in an urban/suburban area to have roosters...If they want to have a full-fledged farm, they should move to the country. I was really afraid that we were going to be reported each of those mornings we woke to the sound of our roosters. We asked our next door neighbor, though, and she said she never heard a thing.

 

[ElizK]

We have four hens... and we live in a regular suburban neighborhood. We have accidentally ended up with roosters in the past, but they were taken to Grandpa's farm a few miles away very quickly. We definitely don't want trouble with the neighbors. Our hens can be a bit loud when they are laying eggs, but that's almost always in the middle of the day. Now and again we'll pass fresh eggs over the fence to neighbors.

Our hens are kind of funny and interesting. If you open the door to go out into the backyard, they all come running to see you. They want to be near you, and one of them actually likes to be held. We have 3 dogs, too, and all of them have free roam of the backyard. The dogs don't bother them.

 

[ChrizJen]

Sorry the pics are so big. I had trouble resizing them.

Here's a picture of our coop:

Here's a picture of our chickens:

We built 2 light sockets into the ceiling. We have a ceramic heat bulb in there right now to help keep them warm at night, as well as a regular bulb on the other side (you can't see the regular bulb in the pic) :

And here's a pic of the backside where we collect eggs. The nesting boxes are inside this section, and the lid just lifts up and we grab the eggs right from the boxes:

 

[ChrizJen]

We have four hens... and we live in a regular suburban neighborhood. We have accidentally ended up with roosters in the past, but they were taken to Grandpa's farm a few miles away very quickly. We definitely don't want trouble with the neighbors. Our hens can be a bit loud when they are laying eggs, but that's almost always in the middle of the day. Now and again we'll pass fresh eggs over the fence to neighbors.

Our hens are kind of funny and interesting. If you open the door to go out into the backyard, they all come running to see you. They want to be near you, and one of them actually likes to be held. We have 3 dogs, too, and all of them have free roam of the backyard. The dogs don't bother them.

We want to get our backyard in shape to allow them to roam free. Right now we have an ancient chain-link fence around our yard, and the part of the yard between our house and the next door neighbor's doesn't have a fence at all. In the next year or so, we're going to discuss with our neighbors about possibly putting up privacy fencing. When we can get the yard fully enclosed, we'll let them roam more. As of right now, we have to be present any time we let them out of the run.

 

[Villain-lover]

We have a small urban flock of 4 hens. they are so much fun! Really friendly and my 3 yr old twins love them! we are getting 4 eggs most days, usually once or twice a week we get only 3. I would love to add a couple more, maybe in the spring.....
My hubby built their coop and they are free range in the backyard when we are home. they put themselve up in the evening and then we go shut the gate to ther run behind them. Of course they are pets to us, we got them for eggs, bug control, and we use their shavings/waste for compost! When we mow the yard, clippings go into their run, and after they have had some time to turn it over for us, we clean their coop and into the compost bin it goes!

 

[GeorgeG]

When I was a little kid many of the yards, including ours, in our neighborhood had chicken coops and chickens. This was a typical village neighborhood in the NYC suburbs. The coops were like sheds with chicken wire enclosures. I don't remember how many chickens we had, but my guess would be no more than a dozen.

I can see a return to this self-reliance lifestyle in areas where codes don't prohibit it. There used to be a lot more yards with substantial gardens for growing vegetables, too. I realize it's so much more covenient to drive to the supermarket and bring things home to cook in a microwave, but we've made ourselves soft in the process.

 

[ChrizJen]

We have a small urban flock of 4 hens. they are so much fun! Really friendly and my 3 yr old twins love them! we are getting 4 eggs most days, usually once or twice a week we get only 3. I would love to add a couple more, maybe in the spring.....
My hubby built their coop and they are free range in the backyard when we are home. they put themselve up in the evening and then we go shut the gate to ther run behind them. Of course they are pets to us, we got them for eggs, bug control, and we use their shavings/waste for compost! When we mow the yard, clippings go into their run, and after they have had some time to turn it over for us, we clean their coop and into the compost bin it goes!

It's really a great thing to see the whole cycle come together, isn't it? Great tool for teaching kids.
Our 3 yr old has a blast too helping with feeding and just running around playing with them.

 

[Kathi OD]

We don't have any chickens, but DSIL and her husband do. I think they have 9. I've been thinking about getting some lately. I don't think my husband would go for it though.

 

[skater]

We love the eggs! I can't even stand to eat eggs out anymore because ours taste so much better! We currently have about 7 hens and this winter are getting 3-5 eggs a day which is more than enough for us unless we go on an egg spree .

 

[Handbag Lady]

How do you find out of it is within the code of your area?

We live in the city in an apartment. One of our neighbors two doors down has chickens in their patio. The smell is ghastly but we're not sure what we can do about it.

I'm all for home gardens and wouldn't mind chickens if they smelled nicer.