Chickens are some of the best introductory animals to homesteading available in today’s market.
You can find them on hundreds of websites, get them in the mail as chicks or eggs, and make fast friends with them if you want to be pals with your poultry.
Today, we’ll take a look at a few easy ideas to make poultry care easier!
Feeders and Waterers
For feeding and watering your birds, I strongly recommend going and grabbing two 5-gallon buckets from your local hardware store. For watering, get coop cups and drill them into the very bottom edge (not underneath) of the 5-gallon bucket. You can then hang this at head-height for the birds so the water stays clean or place them up off the ground.
The other 5-gallon bucket will be your feeder. Clip the bucket via its handle to the wall of the coop with a carabiner. Using a hole saw, cut a hole for a 90″ white PVC plumbing elbow.
Fit the plumbing elbow into the hole and trim the inner, bottom edge of the elbow with a reciprocating saw. You can offer 5 full gallons of feed to your birds at once this way and it seriously cuts down on them throwing it everywhere.
Related: 7 Chicken Mistakes You Should Never Make
Remember to put the lids on to prevent the water from getting mucky or the food from spoiling!
Keeping the Coop Clean
The deep litter method is always preferred for small homestead coops.
Throughout the colder months, spread a little lime on top of your filthy bedding and cover with at least 2″ of fresh bedding on top of it. When the world warms up again, go ahead and scoop out the entire coop and lay fresh straw, hay, or shavings down.
In warmer months, using a little fine gravel underneath the bedding is a great idea. It helps your birds find stones to eat for their crops and it offers drainage for the heavy summer rains (if you have those).
Dusty Birds
Unless you keep waterfowl, you know that birds aren’t a big fan of getting a bath. That is, a bath as we’d consider one. They prefer a dust bath.
The question is, how do you keep your dust in the coop? And how do you make sure they have enough access to it?
I recommend going and getting a big 50-pound bag of play sand. This is usually very clean sand and easily available at your local hardware store. Even better, it’s usually pretty cheap.
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We dig out an area in the coop that is well covered and give them a sand pit to play in. This helps them clean up, keeps lice off of them, and it gives the birds something fun to do.
Do you have bantams? These birds may benefit from a small tray like a chinchilla would use.
You can get chinchilla dust on thousands of websites and this performs the same function for these tiny birds.
While they can use sand, too, it may be beneficial to use something like chinchilla dust for them. Sand is a little grainier than chinchilla dust and may irritate bantam birds’ respiratory tracts.
Enrichment for Enclosed Chickens
Keeping contained birds entertained is a pretty easy task, but we thought we’d see if we could give you a few new ideas.
Offer chickens live mealworms or crickets in paper towel rolls stuffed with hay, grass clippings, or straw. Don’t cram it in so tight that you hurt the prey bugs, but make sure that they can’t just run out of there. You may offer a few small holes for the birds to peek in and eye the insects.
Give them your scraps! You’d be surprised how much chickens appreciate a little meat attached to a T-bone steak or the remains of your pork barbeque.
Plus, chickens will get calcium and trace minerals from the bones. Just make sure that pets can’t get to the cooked bones, too.
I set up a small musical area for our birds. Use brightly colored children’s toys such as children’s mini xylophones to encourage your poultry to start up a little band. They like the colors and are attracted to tap them with their beaks or scratch them with their feet. The sounds intrigue them and you’ll find out which chickens have a musical heart within your flock!
Finally, I love finding old fish traps with large holes and stuffing them full of vivid fruits and vegetables, then hanging it overhead so the birds can peck at it all day long. Some birds may even jump up on top of the device and try to pry the lid off!
Nesting Area
A well-designed nesting area is essential for encouraging your chickens to lay eggs consistently and comfortably. Construct a nesting box that is private, clean, and easy for your hens to access.
Ideally, each box should be about 12 inches wide, 12 inches high, and 12 inches deep, providing enough space for your hens to settle in comfortably. Line the bottom of the box with straw or wood shavings to create a soft, sanitary environment.
Position the nesting boxes in a quiet, dimly lit corner of the coop to mimic the privacy of a natural laying site.
Ensuring that the boxes are elevated off the ground can also help keep the nesting area clean and discourage other chickens from using them as resting spots.
By providing a comfortable and secure place for your chickens to lay their eggs, you’ll not only improve their overall well-being but also make egg collection easier and more efficient.
If you have more than enough eggs, you can learn here an ingenious method to keep eggs fresh for at least a decade.
Weathering the Storm
Cold weather offers a distinct challenge if you want to keep your birds laying and cozy warm. If you live in an area where snow is frequent, as mentioned before, the deep litter method is a necessity.
You can also add a color-change LED to their nesting box area. This allows the birds to enjoy a variety of colors throughout the evening (we recommend red during the evening and bright white during the day) as well as giving them a little extra warmth.
However, if you’re coming into summer you’re facing a completely different challenge. As mentioned above, try to keep your bedding light and airy. I don’t recommend offering your chickens fans since the wind gusts can cause respiratory issues, but there are other ways of keeping your birds cool.
Freeze 2-liter (or larger) soda bottles full of water and place them around the coop. This allows birds to snuggle up to them to chill out when the heat is at its height. You can also add ice cubes directly to their water source, though these may melt pretty quickly in extreme temperatures.
Since chickens don’t appreciate being doused with water, I usually freeze cucumbers or bananas and toss them into the coop during the hottest part of the day. Not only does this impart important electrolytes and minerals, but the chill will last as it works its way through their digestive system and gives them a chance to get rid of some of that heat.
Remember, chickens are pretty weather-resistant and if your animals seem lethargic, I recommend taking them to your local veterinarian.
Have other neat ideas? We’d love to hear about them.
This article first appeared on Self-Sufficient Projects.
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Chickens are the next best pet to have besides our cat and dog, chickens give us eggs to eat.
The city government makes restrictions on keeping roosters in city limits because of the noise roosters clucking.
But okay for homeless drug addicts to smoke crack and poo on our streets.
Americans, patriot, your replacements are coming very soon.
DC Swamp and enemies have a few months left to destroy our America.
You decide in November 5th, 2024.
Check this out; Schools Bracing for ‘Enrollment Cliff’ Amid Declining U.S. Birth Rate
Is that why we have illegals coming through our southern border?
We have free abortions for females who want to murder their kid and reduce our American population. So Biden can find more housing in America for his homeless illegal families coming to broke back America.
I’d rather have more chickens that produce eggs then illegals we have to support on the American taxpayer’s dollars.
It depends on the city. We got the city to change their thinking and can have up to 6 hens even in residential areas. Neighboring cities aren’t having as much luck. Laws based on ignorance.
Remember to keep the cage clean (as mentioned above) because chicken poop is very good fertilizer for your garden.
JoAnn
Chickens will help us eat our way through the food supply hiccups.
This is why we need to keep looking at current news items for our prepping.
Bette Midler Suggests Biden Arrest Republicans, Allow FBI to Use Deadly Force to Regain Democrat House MajorityStop funding hollyweed movie stars, they give to progressive heathens.
In California the state is making it hard to fry an egg on a non-gas stove to cook on. California’s liberal politicians want to BAN all natural gas appliances and impose RETROFIT MANDATES on every homeowner – costing them $30k per home to replace gas appliances with all-electric appliances!
The 9th Circuit Court recently issued a ruling blocking this insane attempt to ban all natural gas appliances – as well as the costly home retrofit mandates.
What will they think of next. I like cooking on a wood stove for my bacon and eggs break fest.
Correction: Hard to fry on a gas stove.
Cooking on an electric stove doesn’t have the same flavor as a gas or a wood stove does. The all electric kitchen can be shut off by the bureaucrats cutting the power switch off at the power plant or your home main power switch.
Don’t bet on being able to cook with wood. The Big Brother EPA together with insurance companies have all but restricted the use of wood burning stoves for heating/cooking out of existence.
Making us use electric is the easiest way to control us.
A farmer friend of mine was having his chickens attacked by a fox. After losing about a half dozen, he went out and bought a bantam fighting cock. Guess what? The night after he put the rooster in the pen, the fox came along and tried to attack the rooster. The farmer found the fox dead in the chicken coop the next morning.
If you live in a cold winter area, frozen waterers are a problem.
Easy Fix, I use the 1 gallon plastic one with a tapered bottom. Build a simple box about 8 inches square and with your jig saw, cut a tapered hole in the top to set the waterer base into. then place a light bulb fixture with a 25 watt bulb in the box under the waterer. Keeps the water from freezing to at least 30 below zero, and the chickens seem to like the red glow from the base.
PS
Warmed water in cold weather doesn’t hurt either.
i live in texas, summer is 8 months long with triple digit temps and tropical humidity, i’ve done misters, electrolytes, all manner of things to keep them from dying from heat stress – the easiest and thus far best solution – setting out small tubs filled with a couple of inches of water – i’ll find several standing in each of the tubs, a kiddy pool works – they don’t last long though, several rubber or plastic feeders work great, haven’t lost a single bird since employing this strategy
We hang large zucchinis from our garden in their coop with twine. The “girls” will pick away at it and have fresh vegetables whenever they’re in the mood…which is often.
Be sure to suspend it off the ground to avoid ants/ bugs and mice but keep it low enough for chicken pecking. It’s like watching a boxer swinging away at a punching bag!! You can do the same with cucumbers, squash, watermelon rinds, etc. as chickens eat pretty much everything. Especially satisfying in the hot summer months.
James Strawser,
Howdy, down here in the SW, several of us have wood burning stoves for heat and or cook with no government issues… Of course I only use mine during the Winter months to heat up the main room and maybe heat up a pan of soup or chili as well… I could easily fry something up but I don’t like the splattered grease remnants… I’m sure the EPA that you mention is around, but they have bigger fish to fry than this little old minnow… oh ya, forgot, I also pop popcorn on my wood burning stove, Grandkids really like doing that when they visit… hahaha
I enjoyed this article on the Chickens, as I’m about to get into raising a few myself mainly for eggs but possibly meat later on… I’ll be checking back as I can always use advise on just about anything, right now, especially Chickens.. I also subscribe to Backwoods Home mag, as it always has a wealth of info every now and then… and I like to read.. Ya’ll have a good day, ya hear…lol
I live in Hokkaido Japan ( Christian missionary) have one hen, who’s picky, doesn’t eat the powder part of the food, what contains the best aminoacids and natural minerals.
Well, to solve this, I cook every week a larger batch of Moroo carrot soup. A thick carrot soup. I mill partially the food ( very high quality chicken food mix) and I mix in the carrot soup.
The chicken loves it; it eats up everything, and she’s perfectly healthy ; laying heavy , amazing eggs every day.
There are daily pasture hours, when she search for grasshoppers, and enjoys fresh greens; she loves best plantain and dandelion leaves.
Very docile; if I raise my hand toward her she jumps on my arm, and there sitting comfortably she arranges her feathers or taking a nap.
She’s born at home from a farm egg trough a cheap Chinese egg hatcher .
A picture of the “ingenious” suggestions would have made this a good article.