Raising Chickens: What Chickens Need to Survive and Thrive

Ancestrally, chicken are jungle birds. They are survivors living in trees and are good at adapting to outdoor conditions. Taking good care of chickens then is easy provided that the chicken raiser give them what they need to survive and thrive. The needs of chickens are few and simple.

Housing

• The first among the basics for raising chickens is a housing that is clean and secured from predators. Chickens are a good prey for foxes to badgers and for cats to rats. The chicken house then should be secured that every possible entry point of predators are closed and barred.

• Build a chicken house that is elevated from the ground. This will keep them away from damp and diseases. While chickens are sturdy birds, they are prawn to bacteria and diseases, many of which come from the damp ground.

• The chicken house should also be made of materials sturdy enough to withstand different weather conditions and it should have ample ventilation.

Space

• Provide enough space for chickens. Chicken could be irritable creatures when the mood strikes them and that could be just about anything. When they are, quarrels will start. When blood is drawn, the blood will strike the fancy of other chickens in the henhouse will start pecking at the bloodied chicken sometimes to death. A chicken house is already cramped when there is less than three square feet of space per chicken.

• Likewise, the nest box should not be designed to accommodate more than four chickens. Two chickens per nest box are good.

• Chicken runs should be secured and fenced around with the base of the fence buried at least 10" into the ground while the height should be at least five feet.

Food and Water

• Chickens could live on yesterday's water but when the water has droppings it has to be cleaned. A steady supply of clean water is essential if the chickens are to be healthy. Vitamins and minerals could also be introduced into the water to boost the chicken's immunity from diseases.

• There are two basic types, the corn, and the pellets. Corn feed is mixed with other seeds and the seed mixed to the corn does not differ much from one manufacturer to the other. The other type is pellets. Pellets have three categories. First is the starter mash or layer mash, the second is the crumbled pellets that are recommended for feeding the pullets and the third is the pellets. There is no difference in composition and nutrients present. The difference only lies in the manner of fineness and coarseness of the feed.

• Chicken eats most food and it is good to let them roam around for variety. Chickens should also be fed grits, as they would need this for digestion to prevent having a sour crop.

These are the basics that the chicken will need to survive and thrive. There are other minor issues like disease prevention, selecting the breed, laws and regulations, but for chicken keeping, these are the things that come first.

Answers To Raising Chickens - A Complete Guide To Keeping Chickens

Raising Chickens 101: Where Do Chickens Live?

Chickens are domestic birds. Dogs and cats are also domestic. You can usually find chickens on farms. They provide eggs and meat for the farmers.

On many farms, chickens can roam free during the day, and sleep peacefully inside the safety of a chicken coop at night. This keeps them away from foxes and other hunger predators. There are several different shapes and sizes of coops, each having different advantages. Some coops have runs. Runs are fenced in areas connected to the coop which allow chickens to roam in a certain amount of space given. All chicken coops protect chickens from the cold and wet weather outside and have nesting boxes for hens to lay their eggs.

Sometimes, farmers decide to let their chickens live outside. Chickens that are allowed to do this are called free-range. They get plenty of sun and fresh air during the day as well as shelter when they need it. These chickens are fed by farmers but also have the ability to search for food on their own.

Chickens are sometimes even kept in large chicken farms where thousands of chickens are crowded together in factory-like sheds. These chickens live in here their entire life and never get to feel the warmth of the sun or see the wonder of seasons. This is very unnatural.

Build A Chicken Coop In 3 Days

Raising Chickens: Getting Started The Pecking Order

Keeping chickens is a practice that dates as far back as when people started domesticating animals. They are fun to have around, are a good food source, and are low maintenance. If you have an ample backyard the idea of keeping chickens may have occurred to you but needed a little more information before getting started.

Of Hens and Roosters

You do not need a rooster. Keeping a rooster is a matter of choice but not actually a necessity. While having these handsome, brassy, noisy, aggressive characters to have around your hens is an attractive choice, the hens are quite content not having a rooster that keeps mounting them as they can lay eggs without the help of the rooster. Chickens are sociable birds. They want to hang around each other most times and cuddle around each other on cold days. You may need only one chicken for a pet however, chicken are happier when in the company of chickens. If you want to keep a few have at least two or three.

The Hen House

Where there are hens, there are predators. Chickens will be happy to be strutting around free range-like but sooner, without a place to roost, you'll end up losing some. In the country, they attract a lot, in the city they attract rats let alone cats. The hen house then is a good area to shelter and raise them. There are fanciful chicken pen designs that are available everywhere if you do not want to go through the trouble of building them. Fancy chicken pens are good and attractive accessory to your backyard. There are however the basic elements to have for a good chicken house. First chicken love having dust baths during the day. They do it all the time so they must have access to dirt where they can scratch and dig and have fun.

The Bigger the Better

While chicken are not territorial, they need also their spaces. Crowding them would result to pecking at each other, sometimes even to death. They do this to protect those that catch their fancy. For example, they'll start pecking at another chicken if it goes too near a string of water droplets running through a hanging string that caught their interest. To prevent overcrowding, allow at least three square feet of space for every chicken. During colder days when they will be huddling hang grass and vegetables that they eat to keep them occupied.

Settling Down

Other people prefer buying pullets and raising them, others want to start with hens. No matter, they will be brought inside their pens to familiarize them to the chicken house. Once there, do not let them out for a while. The chicken has to know very well where the home is otherwise, they will be roosting on branches, roofs, awnings, anywhere they feel safe.

Getting started with chicken is also knowing that they enjoy people leftovers and would fight over it. Their normal fare though is chicken pellets and clean water.

Answers To Raising Chickens - A Complete Guide To Keeping Chickens

Tips On Raising Chickens

The list for keeping chicken, productive, and healthy is not very long. Chicken basically are hardy creatures and it does not take a lot of "do's" and "don’ts". The following tips on raising healthy chickens came from questions that are the most often asked.

What it takes

Chicken like every living creature could get by very well so long as there is an ample supply of feed and nourishment and a familiar place to gather. They could even be content with yesterday's water, a place where they could scratch and forage for food, have dirt baths and things they could peck when boredom sets in.

Favorite Chicken Food

Nothing. Chickens cannot be classified as either carnivorous or vegetarian. Yet they could be picky and scavengers at the same time. Truth to tell, chicken will love eating everything even those that barely resembles food. Feeding the chicken is not the worry. What would bother the newbie more is that a chicken when they have had good foraging around the fence will not eat the chicken feed. When they refused to, nothing will make them. But that is okay, it passes. Often, the foods that they forage are even more nutritious than those that are regularly fed to them. Bugs, ants, insects, roaches, fruit, bread, seeds, food leftovers that had been standing in the fridge, vegetables, leaves, grass, everything and that does not exclude pebbles and coarse sand. They love Chinese dishes and Italian too. Try throwing them spaghetti and see how they will chase each other over it.

A place to hang around

Anyplace. As long as it is a regular place that they could roost, lay eggs and be safe from the elements and their natural enemies, the list of which is longer. Chickens you see are very sociable creatures. They want another chicken's company that they can huddle with especially during cold seasons and rainy days. That does not mean though that they are always placid creatures. They could get very cranky at times and start being irritated at even the littlest of things. When they do, they will throw amicability to the nearest window and peck at their companions and if the hapless companion does not pay attention fast they could peck at that one even to death. On the other hand if there are the so-called birds of prey, chicken are the most ideal birds to prey on.

Keeping them safe

Raising chicken will require among other things a sunny dirt run for them to roam about and scratch around. This is often the worry area. Bu as long as the fence is high enough and deep enough to prevent other predators from coming in the chicken is content and so are you. The chicken coop should be a very safe structure to keep unwanted animals out and keep the chicken secured when it is their time to roost.

Other Tips

There are other tips in raising chicken but basically this are the most important to start with. Getting this part right will raise healthy meat and eggs that you raise yourself that once tried, you will not have another chicken on your table.

Answers To Raising Chickens - A Complete Guide To Keeping Chickens