Some thoughts on chickens...

[EelKat]

On FaceBook today someone was talking about getting chickens and looking for advice on the matter, so I thought I'd start a thread over here, so I could repost my answer. If you've ever raise chickens and have some advice to add, jump on in.

[EelKat]

I had hens before I was homeless - used to live on an egg farm that I had converted into a rooster rescue. Because of the location (New England forest) predators were a big problem: bear, fox, otter, coyote, martens, weasels, raccoons, skunks, rats, eagles, osprey, hawks, buzzards, kestrels,owls, turtles, and snakes all enjoy eating chickens...and we were surrounded by swamplands so we had plenty of all of them.

The building had to have cement floors to keep out the diggers, and a 8 foot tall heavy gauge chain link fence, with a net roof to keep out everything else. When I was outside with then, I free ranged them, but predators are not scared of me (no animal is) which required me to carry a steel quarter staff and a machete to fight off attacks while the rooster ran inside. I had the flock voice trained to run on command (I spent 27 years studying chicken behavior and language, and isolated what their "clucks" and "shrieks" meant, so a "hawk attack" shriek would send the flock running indoors while a "eagle attack" shriek sent then flat on their back to play dead (you can't outrun and eagle and they don' savage - playing dead it your only chance of survival). If well cared for chickens live 20 years.

Sadly animal predators were not what ended my rooster rescue operation: people did that. The same vandal who burned down my house and cut my car in half also cut the heads of 75 of my chickens and hung their bodies in my rose bushes. If you are not quite so isolated (very few people live as far off the grid as I do) you won't have as many predator problems, (I was having daily attacks for 30+ years, because of the location) , but all it takes is one weasel or one fox to clean out a 100+ chickens in a single night - both go into an attack and kill frenzy and won't stop until the whole flock is dead.

The chain link fence (like the kind used around prisons) (and sunk into cement to prevent digging under)) will keep out everything but bear- a hungry bear in Spring will take out the fence and tear the side off the building to get at the chickens, but they'll only take one chicken at a time: grab and carry style - but than they leave the yard open for everything else to come in until you fix the fence and wall. I found planting blueberry trees, blackberries, strawberries, and raked piles of leave (for bees to nest in) all around the fence keeps out bear as they only eat chickens if nothing else is available. (I've 5 bear in the swamp I live in so they are a daily problem for everything not just chickens - they are not mean, but very nosey and curious and get into everything).

Netting or chicken wire over the top of the fence keeps flyers in and flying predators out and also helps with weasel who will climb over if they can't dig under or squeeze through.

Snakes can be a huge problem, because no fence will keep them out - roosters will gang up on and kill a snake stabbing it to death with their spurs, (though mine were rescued pit fighters so that might have had something to do with it)I have never lost a bird to a snake because I rarely had less than 100 roosters at any given time (the building held 2000 birds - but I never had more than 500 at one time). I was constantly having to rescue snakes (adders, runner, ratsnakes, garters, and copperheads) from the roosters. Garter snake won't eat chickens, but they eat rats and mice which go in after the grain so snakes were always in the building waiting for mice to run by.

...if you've never raised roosters before a word of caution: they have been known to kill small children, cats, dogs, foxes, and delight in slaughtering rats: roosters are extremely violent and their spurs can grow to 8 inches long. I had to have plastic surgery to rebuild my face after one rooster to a flying lead at my head and twice stranger ignored my "Beware of Roosters: Enter yard at your own risk" signs, and thought it'd be cute to show their kids a rooster up close: one a 2 year old boy and the other a 3 year old girl: both ended up in the hospital and a very lucky to be alive today.

People trespassing on your land to look at your hens can be a HUGE problem. They will ignore trespassing signs, stomp over your vegetables and pull up your flowers to get to your chickens and stepping on and killing baby chicks is a huge people problem. I've been able to find ways to keep out every predator except the human kind. Though 2 different times of children being hospitalized after stupid parents said "But it's only a little rooster" did go a long way to keeping people out.