Today, I am sharing the conclusion of my five part series in getting started with backyard chickens.  Raising chickens has been a very easy experience.  I would highly recommend it to everyone that is interested.  It is addictive and provides fresh eggs for you and your family as well as many other life lessons.  Spring time is almost here and so are the chicks at your local feed and grain stores.

EGG LAYING

Most pullets will begin laying eggs around 20 weeks.  However, don't be surprised if you are waiting until 6 months of age for your first egg.  Larger breeds take longer to get there.  Remember, you will need one nesting box per four chickens.  Often, one box turns out to be everyone's favorite.  It is not uncommon that I find two chickens in the same box laying eggs, while the other boxes remain empty!

Once chickens reach 20 weeks of age, make sure that you have plenty of calcium available to your flock.  This will help the chickens create nice strong eggshells.  Some individuals even refeed the chickens' egg shells back to them.  Spread the egg shells on a baking sheet.  In an oven on low, dry the egg shells to remove the moisture.  Once removed from the oven and cooled, gently crush the egg shells into small unrecognizable pieces.  These can now be re-fed to the chickens.

Sometimes, though rare, you will find that one of your girls becomes egg bound. This can happen for a number of reasons. The egg becomes stuck in the vent and you will need to assist the egg out of the chicken.  If you can visualize the egg, you can help.  Wrap your chicken's head and body in a towel, keeping the back end exposed.  I find this keeps the chicken calm.  With some Vaseline, gently lubricate the egg and try to coax it out of the vent, taking great care not to break it.  There are techniques available as well if you cannot visualize the egg.   After success, you will see that the vent area will have pink tissue exposed.  The vent is prolapsed.  Apply some Neosporin and if severe, Preparation H to the vent area and place the chicken in a dark (does not stimulate egg laying) warm place to rest. Be sure to provide food and water.  After a day or so, return her to her flock.  Hopefully, the next egg she lays will be easier for her to pass.

CHICKEN DIET

You will find that your chickens love to eat kitchen scraps as well as tasty findings around the yard that they discover on their journeys.  Once pullets reach egg laying age, they should be eating layer grade food.  Roosters are fine to eat layer pellets.  It does not harm them in any way. 

Chickens love to eat apples, berries, breads, broccoli, corn, cucumbers, lettuces and greens, melons, oatmeal, rice, squash, zucchini, grapes tomatoes and pumpkins. Chickens should NOT EAT salt, citrus, processed foods from the kitchen, potato peels, avocados, sodas/carbonated beverages, chocolate, coffee/coffee grounds and onions.  They should also avoid greasy foods as well.  Kitchen scraps should always be fed in moderation.  The chickens will lay best if they primarily eat their layer pellets.  Here is a more thorough list.

I also supplement my flock's diet with food grade diatomaceous earth and I put apple cider vinegar with the mother in it in their water, 1 tablespoon per gallon, as well as electrolytes and vitamins during times of stress.  In addition, once a week, I give them organic plain yogurt. In my experience, it does not give my chickens diarrhea. It helps with preventing egg eating and also acts as another calcium source.

PREDATORS

Depending on where you live, there are many predators that would like to have your flock for their next meal.  If you are a responsible flock owner and you take proper precautions, the risk of losing one of your beloved chickens to a predator can be minimized.  Potential predators include fox, coyotes, bob cats, fisher cats, raccoons, weasels, rats, snakes and hawks.  Here are some helpful tips:

1. Use predator proof locks on all your coop’s and run’s doors.

2. Use only ½ inch hardware cloth on your coop and run. Do not use chicken wire.

3. Bury the hardware cloth 18 inches around the perimeter of your run and coop, bending the bottom portion of the buried wire out a couple of inches. This will help deter digging predators.

4. Remember to lock up your flock every night in the coop.

5. Install motion activated lighting near your coop.

4. Remember to lock up your flock every night in the coop.

5. Install motion activated lighting near your coop.

KEEPING ROOSTERS

We never intended on having a rooster.  However, because Sikie Bantams are difficult to sex, we ended up with two roosters.  Unfortunately Peanut was rehomed and Chocolate was too.   If you decide to keep a rooster, you will need to take a few more steps to be sure that he does not become a nuisance to those around you.  I would also recommend that you check with your local laws and verify that you can keep a rooster.

Roosters are noisy and do not crow only during the daylight hours. Roosters will crow at any time of the day, even in the middle of the night. They crow for several reasons, not only due to light exposure. They crow to assert their territory, ward off danger and to alert the flock.  When keeping a rooster, you need to be respectful of your neighbor's rights. Like barking dogs, rooster can become annoying to those within earshot.

1. Keep your rooster in the coop during evening and early morning hours.

2. If your rooster crows for more than 5 minutes consistently, investigate the cause.

3. Provide distractions to help with crowing, such as treats and scratch.

4. Discuss the rooster with your neighbors. Consider sharing your eggs with them. A dozen eggs can create an amicable relationship with your neighbors.

5. Welcome neighbors to stop in and visit your flock. The chickens might enjoy your neighbors bringing them treats like celery and lettuce.

6. Re-home aggressive roosters.

BROODY HENS

Hens go broody when they seek to hatch some babies of their own.  Often you will know that a hen has gone broody, because she sits on the nest even when it is empty.  Broodiness, if let to run its course, lasts about 20 days.  While she is broody, she will briefly come off the nest one or two times per day to eat, drink and poop.  There are techniques that you can try to break a hen of its broodiness.  In my opinion, they are cruel.  I prefer to let nature run its course. It is a good habit to harvest the eggs from the nesting boxes a few times per day.   This helps to decrease broodiness.  Be sure to keep a fresh supply of water and food close too.  She will not venture too far away from her nest, eggs or no eggs.

HATCHING EGGS

If you have a broody hen and a rooster, you can try hatching some of your eggs.  A hen will sit on any fertilized eggs.  You can even purchase eggs from a hatchery, if you have a broody hen.  You can also incubate eggs on your own with an incubator. 

Either way, it takes anywhere from 19-21 days to hatch eggs.  If you are hatching eggs the natural way, you will need to create a brooder and a safe haven for the mother hen to be!  Also, it is a good idea to set up visitation of the broody hen with her original flock.  This way they remember each other.  It will be easier to reintroduce them with minimal disturbance of the pecking order and avoid you having to deal with broody poop!

Be sure to candle your eggs at about one week and then at 14 days to determine that they remain viable.  Eggs that are not fertilized or no longer have developing fetuses within them will turn rotten.  They can emit harmful gases and can even explode!  It is best to remove them as soon as possible.

ILLNESSES

At some point sooner or later, one of your chickens will be under the weather.  It is best to remove that chicken from the rest of the flock.  Some people will cull their chickens once they appear ill.  I take mine to a veterinarian that specializes in birds/chickens.  There have been two instances where the vet has helped restore my chickens' health.  Although there is a lot of information on the internet about dealing with sick chickens, it is my opinion that they should only serves as guides.  It is always best, when available in your area, to see the chicken vet.  They are the experts.  They had many years of schooling regarding avian illnesses and they cannot be replaced by the internet.

That first little 'peep peep' from under the wing of your favorite hen, a chick the hen hatched, is something you'll never forget.

That sweet little face is the culmination of the hours and days and weeks that you've put into raising your backyard flock.  In our case, my son strangely knew exactly which of our 14 girls would be the first broody hen - it would be Lucky Wattles, he said, and he would name the first baby 'Pip'.  And so it was.

The Benefit of Broody Mamas

I wasn't sure I wanted to raise chicks this year.  Our hens are only slightly more than a year old and because they're pretty happy and healthy, we've likely got another year or so before their egg production begins to drop off (or so all the books say).  So when suddenly it was May and my son asked if we were still going to raise a small batch of chicks this year, I cringed a little.  No, a lot.  Not only do we not have room for a big brooder, but the idea of having to deal with thermometers and washing water founts every day made me want to run back to the city.  Well, not really, but you get the picture.

Now, conveniently, we had two hens go 'broody' right around that time.  I have to admit that I didn't do a lot of research - it was one of my rare 'dive right in' moments.  We stopped collecting eggs for a couple of days, crossed our fingers that some of them were fertilized courtesy of our big Buff Orpington rooster, and hoped for the best.

21 days later, we had our first chick.  A day later, another 2 sweet little fluffballs.  All tolled, we ended up with 6 live chicks from 14 eggs between the two hens - 2 babies died when their eggs were broken before they were ready to hatch, and the rest either didn't develop fully or weren't fertilized in the first place.

And now, 11 days post- the first hatch, everyone is doing great and we're well on our way to revitalizing our flock with new egg layer for next year.  That is if they're all hens, of course.

Lessons Learned

To say this has been an adventure is an understatement.  There are things I should have known before we started (like the challenges of having two mama hens with chicks in the same flock), and things I'm glad I didn't know (like the fact we'd find dead pre-hatchlings in the nest).  Mostly, it's been a great experience (my son loves it), but it's also been a lot of work.

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you decide to give your broody hens the opportunity to do what hens are meant to do.  It's not an exhaustive list, and I'm not an expert, but it's a good place to start!

1. Separate the Hen(s) - In the days leading up to the eggs hatching, I asked experienced chicken raisers on our Modern Homesteading Facebook page what their best advice was regarding separating the broody hens from the rest of the flock.  As is always the case, we got a lot of different opinions.  What I learned was this: there is no one-size fits all solution.  What will work for you will depend on a number of things: the breed and size of your flock, the temperament of your birds, the size of your chicken house, your nest box set-up, how much time you have to keep an eye on your new additions, and so many other little details.  But in our case, I should have separated the hens when they started sitting on their egg clutches - not after the babies hatched.  What happened was that some of the other hens were hopping into the broody hens' nesting spots and depositing their eggs, which at first added more eggs to the clutch than I originally wanted (hence why we had two hens incubating the eggs - I couldn't tell which ones were the originals and which ones had been recently deposited), and necessitated me marking each of the 'sitting eggs' with an X.  Then when the babies started hatching, we lost a couple, I'm assuming due to other hens stepping around in the nest boxes in a way nowhere near as carefully as the broody mamas and cracking the egg shells before the chicks were ready to hatch.  I tried to keep them safe with chicken wire set up around those two nest boxes (with water and food there for the mamas), but it didn't work very well.  In the end, after the babies hatched, I set up one of those folding dog fences on the floor of the coop, configured into two compartments -  one for each new little family.  Unfortunately, that didn't work so well either, as the two hens were at each other through the wire fencing, knocking over their food and water in the process and stepping on the chicks.  The set up now is one pen using the dog fencing for one family, and a large dog crate for the other, complete with food and water.  Everyone seems happier (myself included).
2. Smaller Clutches are Better than Large - Our Lucky Wattles started out sitting on 14 eggs.  That's WAY too much for a tiny little hen.  So instead of disposing of eggs, we moved 6 over to the other broody hen, Miss Snooty Pants (yes, we called her that for good reason), and hoped for the best.  Next time, we'll make sure to only allow a certain number of eggs in each clutch (I'm thinking 8 is a good number) - it increases the chances of successful incubation and I assume is much less stressful for the mama.
3. Mama Hens Know What They're Doing - Compared to the constant diligence required when brooding chicks without a hen (or even more so, when incubating eggs in an incubator), letting hens look after eggs and chicks is a breeze.  There's no need for thermometers or brooding lamps (unless it's really cold), or showing the chicks where the water is - mama hen does all that and more.  Ours have been out free-ranging with their mamas since about Day 4 and it's fascinating to watch her show them what's edible, what's not, where the water is, and keeping them warm.  Bottom line?  Mama definitely does know best.
4. Other Hens Can Be Nasty - I was warned (thanks Facebook friends!) that part of the reason for separating the  mamas and babies from the rest of the flock is because other hens can be brutal with chicks, even killing them.  Since I didn't really want that, I made an effort to keep them all separate.  But other people say that they just let the mamas defend the babies right from day one.  I'm not quite ready to risk a dead chick - not after all the work I've put into them - so I'll be waiting til the chicks are older, wiser, and bigger and can fend for themselves a bit.
5. You Don't Necessarily Need Special Food - We're feeding non-medicated chick starter and free-ranging somewhat, but I've heard from a number of people that they have their chicks out free-ranging with the mama hen right from day 1 and don't use chick starter or any grit.  You'll need to assess how much food is available for them while free-ranging to determine if there's 'enough' for their quickly growing bodies.  As for me, I'd rather be safe than sorry and will continue to offer both to our 6 little cuties.  Note:chicks apparently can not eat layer mash, so it's important to ensure they don't have access to it.  Formulations for laying hens contain far too much in the way of minerals (calcium in particular) for chicks, so if you're not free ranging your babies or making your own feed, you'll need chick starter (preferably as 'natural' as possible, ideally 'organic', and if not, then at least non-GMO - it does exist).  Here's a relatively updated list of organic chicken feeds in the US and Canada:  Organic Chicken Feed Suppliers.

We've learned so much more than this, but these 5 points stick out as important for the first week or two.  We'll definitely keep you posted as things progress...

One of our Facebook friends said that there's nothing cuter than a mama hen out with her babies, showing them the world and clucking softly.  Now that I've experienced it first-hand and spent a lot of time out in the rain observing our new little 'families', I'd have to say I couldn't agree more.

Have you ever raised chicks with a hen doing most of the work?  Is there anything I missed in this article that you think would be important for new chicken raisers to know?  Are you new to this gig and have questions about hens raising chicks?  If so, share it in the comments below!  We'd love to hear your experiences!