A great idea to utilize that extra space in your backyard would be to raise chickens.

It might sound outlandish to a city folk but if you own a house with a decent sized backyard you can utilize a fraction of that to raise chickens. Raising chickens in your own backyard would save you money and provide you with healthier food – especially since you know what your chickens have eaten, where your chickens been, and how well they’ve been care for….

Imagine gathering farm fresh eggs in the morning rather than those stale store bought eggs that have probably sat on the shelf for over a month?

Conventional chickens are often de-stress the chickens with drugs (because of their poor living conditions) or use the drugs to fatten them up.  On the contrary, if you’re raising your own chickens, you have your own enclosed backyard you can let them run free which helps exercise them (leaner meat) and they’ll have lower stress – hence, happier chickens.

If a little extra coin is appealing to you – you might even make some extra money on the side sell your chickens or supplying eggs to your neighbors (but I warn you – once they buy once from you – they’ll be customers for life!).

Chickens are the smallest of the farm animals and don’t need much space to raise them.   They’re quirky little animals which can also double as great pets (and the kiddos love them too!)

Just like humans who are not able to perform as well when they are under stress or are not happy, the chickens that you are raising in your backyard would not be able to go about their duties once they are stressed as well.

Once stress sets in to your chickens, you would realize that they would become unable to do their regular activities as easily as possible. You would be able to notice that egg laying would not be as common as before, and that the chickens would become quite moody and may brood all day.

If you want to be able to keep a good flock, it is then highly important for you to ensure that your chickens are happy and stress free. In order to do this you must make some adjustments whenever you realize that they would be placed in stressed filled situations.

For chickens, these stress inducing events would include

Weather:

As previously tackled in other posts in this site, weather plays a big part in the mood and happiness of the chickens. They would not be able to be comfortable if the coop is too cold and may be too tired or dehydrated during the summer months. The important thing is that you would be able to regulate the temperature in your coop to ensure that they are always comfortable.

For the hot weather, you should always ensure that there is water in their container to keep them from getting dehydrated. For the colder months, you may want to place a vinyl covering in the coop to help keep it warm.

Breeding and Laying:

Even the act of breeding and laying the eggs can be quite stressful for the chickens. This is especially true for the first time egg layers. The hormonal changes and the additional effort necessary in order to lay the eggs means some adjustments for the chickens.

To help them, you must try to ensure that their breeding and nesting environment is as comfortable as possible. Try to give them a warm and dry place to breed so that their stress can be lowered a bit.

Environment:

You should also be aware that sudden changes in the environment can also add to the stress and restlessness that your chickens experience. After some time, chickens enjoy a certain level of comfort in a certain environment. Introducing changes to it, such as new chickens to the coop, or new areas to explore can make them moody and add to their stress.

You should probably ease in all the changes and not make them too sudden that the chickens would suddenly be shocked by the new additions.

By ensuring that your chickens remain happy and stress free, you would be able to enjoy the full benefits that raising chickens in your backyard can give you.

The truth is that raising backyard chickens is not really for everyone. There are some people who are better suited at it than others. This is because there are some qualities that people have which would really translate well for people who are deciding to get into this kind of activity.

Here are some of the qualities that are necessary for people who would want to start raising backyard chickens.

You should be willing to put in the hard work:

When it comes to raising chickens, you should be very willing to do some hard work in order for them to grow well. You would need to invest in the time necessary to building and cleaning the chicken coops, gathering the eggs, and even feeding and cleaning the chickens themselves.

While this feeding or cleaning may not be that different from what you would have had to do if you had other pets or animals in your household, the chickens would have some special considerations that may make the task more difficult. As such you should be more than willing to learn these nuances so that your chickens would be able to raise well.

You should be very aware:

While not necessarily fragile creatures, there are still plenty of things that can harm chickens. Predators, pests, or even illnesses could lead to the loss of a chicken. Worse, some illnesses or pests can transfer from chicken to chicken which could lead to problems for every chicken inside your coop.

To be able to avoid this, you have to be very aware of the actions of each of your chicken. You should monitor their behavior and demeanor and immediately isolate them when signs of sickness or pests are showing up.

By being aware you would be able to ensure that you are rainsig would immediate be able to get the necessary medical attention that they need. Aside from this, you would also be able to ensure that the disease or pests that is residing in one of your chickens  would not transfer to the others.

You should be an animal lover:

Raising chickens merely for the sake of the profit and benefits that you can get from them is not necessarily wrong. The only problem is that by doing so, you may be exposing yourself to the risk that you would eventually get tired of caring for them.

This is in contrast with someone who is raising chickens because they really love to be around animals. These people would usually be more aware of the status of their chickens and would be more willing to put in the hard work necessary to care for the chickens well.

While there are still other qualities that would help when people would decide to raise chickens, these three would already be great indicators of how successful you would be when you decided to raise some backyard chickens.

One of the most important things that you have to ensure when raising backyard chickens would be proper nutrition. If they are getting the proper nutrients in their systems, then there is a higher chance that they would become more active in egg laying or would be easily able to reach their potential size.

You should understand that when it comes to raising backyard chickens, nutrition is not only about the food that you feed to your chickens. While it is a main factor, you should know that there are other factors to consider about it.

Here are some of the things that you could do to be able to ensure that your chickens would always receive the proper nutrition.

Purchase the Proper feeds:

As mentioned above, feeds are very important when it comes to the nutrition of chickens. That’s why it’s not good to just purchase any type of feed and feed them to your chickens. What you should purchase are those that are set for the specific type, age, or breed of chickens that you are currently raising in your backyard.

When you visit the local feed store, you should check the different types of feeds that they have and buy items accordingly. This means that if you have chicks or young chickens, then the best purchase would probably be the starter pellets. They are specially formulated to give the chicks and young chickens the nutrients that they need to grow well.

On the other hand, you can’t keep on using starter pellets once the chickens have already aged. You would then have to purchase a new set to ensure that they would be able to maintain their health.

Water:

Another important aspect of chicken nutrition would be water. You should ensure that your chickens are always well hydrated. This means always checking up on the water level in the chicken coop.

You should habitually change the water as well. This is because some chickens would not drink the water if the supply is muddy or grimy already. Changing it once a day (or more) would ensure that the water supply is filled with fresh and clean water.

Lastly, you may want to check up on it more during the winter months. You should be aware that there is a chance that the water supply in the chicken coop freezes over because of the weather.

Vitamin supplements:

There are also some vitamins that you could give your flock if you want to ensure their proper nutrition. Most vitamins would enhance the calcium or proteins in the body of your chickens. But of course, there are other types available depending on your need.

By ensuring that you ensure the proper nutrition of your chickens, you are more than likely to have a productive backyard chicken raising experience.

If you are raising backyard chickens, one of your first concerns would always be safety. You would want to protect the chickens from any external threats such as predators, parasites, and even poor structures such as lose nails and other sharp objects.

However, one of the most often overlooked considerations when protecting your chickens is the harm that they can do to themselves. You should realize that all of the other safety features that you have set up to protect them from outside threats would be rendered useless if they would commit the damage themselves.

That is why it is very important to consider the usual capabilities and tendencies of your chickens when you are designing your coop and caring for the chickens. This would ensure that not only would you be protecting the chickens from external factors but would also safeguard them from doing the harm to their own bodies.

Here are some of the things that you should be aware of in order to protect the backyard chickens from themselves.

Remember that Chickens can fly!

While they may not be able to cover long distances, you should remember that chickens are still able to go at a large vertical height. Some chickens can even fly up to and escape if left unchecked or are allowed to roam free around the backyard.

You should ensure that your fences are of adequate height so that the chickens would not be tempted to jump over them. You should also install adequate ceilings in your coop. Lastly, you should ensure that the ceiling would also have no sharp objects sticking out so that you don’t risk having anything injuring your flock.

Aside from doing structural changes to the coop, you may want to clip their wings. Of course, you must know what you are doing and understand how to clop properly to ensure that you are not going to hurt or damage your chickens.

Chickens may get aggressive with one another:

You should also remember that there is a pecking order in the coop which would usually allow the chickens to function without chaos. They would follow their leader and have this certain amount of space reserved for each other.

Once you introduce new chickens to the coop, this order may become more hectic and that the chickens may suddenly become highly aggressive and even fight each other. That is why you must ensure that you have done the proper integration techniques to avoid having infighting among your chickens.

Of course, there would always be some chickens who are too aggressive or too rowdy for your coop, you may have to really give them away or cull them just to ensure that the harmony of the chicken coop would be able to stay.

Remember that not only should you protect your chickens from outside interference but also be wary of the things that chickens do that can harm themselves. By being aware of these things you are able to ensure the health and safety of your chickens.