5 Inquiries to Ask Sooner than You Ship Chickens Residence

In the event you want to elevate yard chickens, it is important to ask quite a lot of questions. Nonetheless primarily essentially the most well-known query — “Why did the hen cross the freeway?” — isn’t one among them, primarily based on Heather Kolich, a School of Georgia Extension agent.

What people need to know is that “chickens don’t cross the freeway successfully,” she talked about.

That’s not one different riddle, she’s quick to stage out. What she means is that chickens have specific needs. Do you have to do your homework and understand these needs sooner than you carry your chickens home, Kolich believes anyone can effectively elevate yard chickens.

That may help you place collectively, listed below are 5 questions Kolich talked about it is best to ask sooner than setting up your first coop.

1. What are the native tips for yard poultry?

“The very very first thing it is important to find out is whether or not or not you can even have chickens the place you reside,” Kolich talked about. To make that dedication, check your neighborhood covenants and your metropolis or county ordinances.

Even when the covenants and ordinances enable yard chickens, you additionally wants to check to see if there are any limitations. “Some legal guidelines prohibit the kind of chickens you can elevate, the amount you can have in your flock, and the place you can place your hen coop,” Kolich talked about.

2. Why do I want to elevate chickens?

Many people want chickens as pets comparatively than to spice up them as part of a rising movement of elevated meals consciousness and urbanization, talked about Kolich. “Nonetheless,” she prompt, “elevating yard chickens is simply not the similar as having a cat or a canine. Chickens have completely totally different needs.”

She locations gentle on the prime of that report. “Chickens are light-sensitive and need 14 hours of daylight on every day foundation to offer eggs,” she talked about. When day dimension grows shorter throughout the fall, hens will stop laying, and the decrease in gentle may set off them to molt. “When chickens molt, they substitute their feathers, first shedding outdated ones, then rising new ones,” Kolich talked about. “It takes energy to do that.”It’s best to make the most of artificial lighting, paying homage to an incandescent bulb throughout the coop, to enrich daylight hours and to keep up hens laying via autumn and the winter months. Nonetheless the trade-off, Kolich outlined, is that the chickens acquired’t substitute their feathers on account of the ability they need to do this may be going into egg manufacturing.

Laying hens will often produce an egg a day as quickly as they’re the precise age, Kolich talked about, putting that age at 18-22 weeks. In the event you want chickens which is likely to be egg specialists, Kolich steered White Leghorns as a most well-liked choice. Chickens that serve a twin goal for egg and meat manufacturing embrace Rhode Island Crimson, Plymouth Rock, Wyandotte and Intercourse Hyperlink, she talked about. (Hint: Do you have to plan to spice up chickens for the frying pan, oven or grill, don’t let your youngsters title them!)

For the doc, Kolich equipped a reminder that laying hens don’t need a rooster to offer eggs. Totally different causes to stay away from roosters, she added, are that they may violate native sound ordinances and, on account of they’re defending of the hens, may drawback you, your youngsters or your neighbors’ kids. Then once more, the worst noise hens will make is boasting after they lay an egg, she talked about with a chuckle.

3. What do I feed them?

Chickens need the acceptable sort of weight loss program to develop successfully and produce eggs. “It’s very arduous to meet their dietary targets by feeding them kitchen scraps or scratch grain paying homage to cracked corn,” Kolich talked about. Whereas searching for a large bag of cracked corn and broadcasting it on the underside might be an outstanding bodily train and might appear to be an outstanding issue for the birds, cracked corn is low in protein, she talked about.

It’s important to utilize a industrial mix that is formulated for the age and stage of the birds in your flock, Kolich prompt. As quickly as laying hens begin producing eggs, that feed should be a laying ration extreme in calcium.

Enterprise feeds could be discovered at a neighborhood feed and seed retailer or from on-line suppliers.

4. Can I add new birds to my flock?

Positive, nonetheless it is important to separate birds primarily based totally on their age.

“Completely totally different ages need completely totally different feed mixes,” Kolich talked about. “Youthful birds, for instance, can’t take a laying ration. It’s too extreme in calcium and can set off kidney points for them.”

In addition to, she added, the pecking order is precise. “Older birds may chase youthful birds from the feeder.”

5. How do I defend my flock from sickness?

Yard flocks are these which might be prone to get avian sicknesses, Kolich talked about. “That’s considerably true when yard chickens are seen as pets and are allowed to mingle with wild birds, considerably waterfowl.”

The true hazard with sickness in chickens raised at home is that the implications can lengthen successfully previous the yard. China banned imports of U.S. poultry and eggs after a USDA-confirmed strain of avian H5N8 influenza was present in wild birds and in a so-called yard flock of guinea fowl and chickens in Oregon, primarily based on a report in The Wall Street Journal in mid-January. The poultry commerce is economically important to Georgia and quite a lot of different totally different states, Kolich emphasised.

A way for people who want to elevate yard chickens to verify they start off on the acceptable foot is to purchase chicks from hatcheries that participate throughout the Nationwide Poultry Enchancment Plan, Kolich talked about. Birds raised in hatcheries collaborating on this system are licensed to be free of sicknesses, Kolich talked about.

To be on the protected side after receiving birds, Kolich talked about it’s a very good suggestion to isolate the model new birds for 15-30 days. All through this time, she talked about, seek for indicators of respiratory and digestive sicknesses and parasites.

Totally different safety precautions to keep up your birds disease-free (and out of your neighbor’s vegetable yard) embrace:

• Sanitize your boots and alter clothes after visiting totally different yard coops and sooner than you enter your coop. Pure supplies can observe garments, Kolich talked about. If that supplies carries sickness organisms, they may infect your flock. “Sicknesses are arduous to remedy, and there are just a few medicines for laying hens,” she prompt.
• Have your entire gear in place sooner than you carry your chickens home, and when setting up your coop and any adjoining runs you need to positively enclose the tops. Together with defending your chickens from wild birds, this may increasingly even help maintain them shielded from cats, raccoons and coyotes. Keep in mind, “chickens don’t cross the freeway successfully!” she talked about.
• Do not place the coop or the runs near a water provide, paying homage to a pond or a stream.
• Do not let your chickens drink from an open water provide.

For native advice, check collectively together with your nearest Cooperative Extension agent. There are Extension sources in every state throughout the nation, Kolich talked about. The School of Georgia moreover presents a “poultry ideas” internet web page with a wealth of information for people who want to elevate yard chickens.