First, let's talk about the average life of a chicken.
I am so sorry to break it to you. It's true. They are all going to die. Some sooner than others.
I always advise people to start out in spring with twice as many chickens as you would like to have this winter, because half your flock will manage to kill themselves in the next nine months.
Why? How? What is wrong with your chicken keeping skills?
It's not me. It's just a fact. Chickens look for ways to die. We've tried everything to keep them alive. We've kept them fenced in, we've let them free-range, we've put out a guard dog, we've used motion sprinklers. For eight years we have had the same experience: We lose half our flock in winter. It's OK. Just plan for it, buy some extras, and don't get too attached. It's a chicken, not a cat.
We have experienced more bizarre chicken deaths than I care to discuss. If you would like read all about them and decide for yourself if I am a chicken murderer, go here.
SEVEN: Put the food in the coop.
As I mentioned in this article, we offer free-choice food during winter for our chickens. In the past we have filled our king feeder (holds 50 pounds of feed) outside the coop, but every night some local varmint would show up, eat most of it, and dump the rest all over the ground. Ugh.
Since I don't have unlimited funds, this consumption of feed had to stop. I am not trying to feed the local wildlife; I am trying to provide sustenance for my chickens. We tried two solutions.
1. Move the feed into the coop. This was my first thought. It worked, kind of. It kept the nighttime visitors from eating and scattering all the chicken food ... but it didn't stop the daytime consumption. Dang it. Dang, stupid, gross, mangy-looking opossums are eating all my chicken food, and eggs! The good news is that this family of opossums doesn't like chicken. They are just eating all my eggs and chicken food. And the chickens don't seem to mind. Come on, cocks! This is why you are here! Can we please get some crowing when a non-feathered critter enters the coop?
2. Ration the stores. Since the opossums are BFFs with my chickens, they are happily sharing their food and eggs with them, and I can't catch them to save my life, we've started scattering a day's worth of feed on the ground each day. The chickens love scratching and pecking at the food, and the opossum can't eat it all. This doesn't stop them from eating eggs, but my feed bill is lower.
Speaking of opossums. I have a story that may or may not have happened last week ...
We were visiting with family and out past dark. DH got home before the kids and I did. If it's after dark, the general rule is: First one home put the chickens to bed. "Putting the chickens to bed" means "go out to the coop and close the door to the hen house."
So, DH heads out to the chicken coop to close the door and saw some sort of commotion scooting away from the coop. It was Mr. Opossum. Probably the one eating my chicken feed and eggs. Busted.
Well, DH owns a pawn shop. You can see it here. Which may as well be called a "gun shop," because that's the majority of what we do. DH always wears his gun — his 1911 .45 caliber.
If you don't speak "gun," I'll explain. A .45 is quite the pistol. It easily fits in a holster on your hip, but it's a pretty powerful handgun. I'm pretty sure you can stop King Kong or a T-Rex with a .45. So DH was at the chicken coop, and he was armed and dangerous — especially if you happen to be an opossum.
DH saw him scurrying away from our coop, where I'm sure he was partaking of all my eggs and feed. Being the loving cowboy he is, DH secured the chickens in the coop first before giving Mr. Opossum his full attention. DH knew which way the varmint went, and he knew what opossums do when they run away: They climb. And one of the great things about iPhones is the flashlight feature. Need a light? You got one in your back pocket! DH used his phone flashlight and quickly spotted Mr. Opossum in the trees.
Varmint vs. .45. Let's just say if you lived in my county, you may have heard a couple of loud gunshots at about 8:00 last Tuesday night. And I have one less critter to deal with.
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XO,
Candi
If you would like to know the good, bad, and ugly of owning chickens, this article is for you. This is actually the 3rd part in a three-part series called "Chicken Advice You Won't Find in a Book." Here are the links to the first articles:
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Well, maybe. I did have a batch of turkeys with infectious bronchitis, and it was ugly. Some didn't die, but we ate those who survived long enough to recover and didn't expose any others. I currently have a Speckled Sussex that is 9 years old and she still lays an egg every now and then. Also a group that is 7 years old that includes a Golden Laced Wyandot, a Cuckoo Maran, a Barnevelder, a Welsummer and an Aracauna. I get two or three eggs per day from those 6 "old girls". We do raise meat chickens every year and manage to "only" lose one or two to the raccoons, but that's with double fencing, a wire top for the run and chicken wire buried a foot under a layer of dirt floor. My 32 new pullets have the same fencing arrangement. Our biggest predators are the neighbor's dogs and the owls that live in the top of the barn, so I fence everything. We live trap and shoot the groundhogs but "relocate" the possums several miles away out into the National Forest because a possum will eat 2,000 ticks a year and we do have Lyme disease in this area. So, is it possible to raise chickens that die of old age? Yup, but you have to build Fort Knox. I don't even have doors to my coops that close, and I don't have barn cats or dogs there as my farm is shaped like an "L" and my house is at one end and the barns/coops/gardens are at the other. Chickens do die. Some just die for no apparent reason, some are culled because they eat eggs, some get injured and can't survive. I find the "heritage" breeds live longer than the egg laying machines that are hybrid chickens, that chicks from a reliable hatchery have a lower mortality rate than the feed store babies and that good high protein feed helps. Ask Sparkle, who still is the "rooster" in our coop as I have only hens. She runs the place, because she has seniority. And, although they are "just chickens" and I currently have 61 of them, I'm gonna cry myself when that 9 year old force of nature goes feet up.