Friday Photo Post: Chicken Care Redux.

“Chickens are easy.” I heard this many, many times when we were planning to start our foray into livestock-keeping with a small flock of heritage-breed chickens. Folks at the farmer’s market, our neighbors, people we met at community events in the months after we moved to the area would ask what our plans were, and I would answer that we were going to start with some chickens. “That’s a good idea. Chickens are easy!”

And you know what? They were right. Chickens are easy to care for. This was brought home to me at the end of July when I wrote out, in exhaustive detail, complete with accompanying photos, the instructions for taking care of our chickens for some friends who were going to be house-sitting for us for a few days:

1. You don’t have to do anything about them on Friday evening when you get here. They’ll be in the coop and they’ll be fine until Saturday morning.

2. On Saturday, morning, as early as you’re up and functioning, go out and open the chicken door so that they can go out.

• Open the people-sized door
• Slide the chicken door up
• We usually leave it propped up outside for the day because if we leave it inside the coop the chickens knock it over and poop on it.

• *IMPORTANT* Close the people-sized door when you’re not inside the coop, because they may escape out that door otherwise.
• IF A CHICKEN ESCAPES they will follow you at dusk to the people-sized door. Open it and step back; they will hop in. Don’t worry about Carter harassing an escapee, he’s very good and doesn’t bother them at all.

3. Fill the waterer

• Take the waterer out of the coop. It will probably be full of sawdust.
• The hose is lying on the lawn

• You need to turn the water on – the tap is back here. I will clear the weeds out a bit more for you!

• The waterer has this locking mechanism. Turn the handle, and the top should slide up.

• Dump the old water on the grass. Use the hose spray to clear out the soggy sawdust. Fill with fresh water. Carter likes to drink from the waterer while you’re filling it up.
• Put it back on its little platform in the coop.
• ***VERY IMPORTANT*** Please remember to turn the water to the hose off when you’re done.

4. Fill the feeder

– The chicken food is in this black garbage bin in the garage.

• Fill the black bucket.

• Take it back to the coop and pour the feed into the feeder from the top. Don’t worry it some spills, the chickens will find it. You don’t need to fill the feeder all the way up, one bucket-full is plenty.

• You probably won’t need to feed them on Sunday or Monday, they will probably have plenty of food left (how much they eat depends in part on the weather).

In the evening, around dusk (8pm-ish), when you see that the chickens have gone into the coop:

5. Close the chicken door.

• You’ll probably need to brush the sawdust out of the track so that it slides down all the way. There are work gloves in a basket on the wall behind the front door so that you don’t get chicken poop on your hands.

• If you feel it’s getting late, and you get worried that they aren’t in yet, put a scoop of food in the black bucket (they recognise the black bucket) and carry that into the coop and pour it in the feeder. They will come rushing in.
• Don’t worry about the board. It’s their ramp to get in and out, but they knock it down constantly, and can get in without it.

Eggs:

If you’re happy to collect the eggs from under the chickens, please do. If you don’t want to bother, that’s OK. There won’t be any embryos, because it takes over a week for the embryo to develop, and the chickens will only have been sitting on the eggs for 2-3 days. There will probably be some eggs lying around on the floor of the coop that aren’t being sat on (so if you want to collect and eat those ones, go ahead). Three “eggs” are not eggs at all, but decoys made of wood designed to encourage the hens to lay in the nest boxes. Some of the hens will get off their nests to go outside when you open the chicken door, some will stay sitting. Check any eggs you collect for cracks. Carter gets the cracked ones, hard-boiled.

Any questions?

And now, next time we have house-sitters, I can direct them to this post for instructions on how to take care of the chickens.