Raising Chickens 101 Good Breeds For The Beginner

Chicken breeds

There are over 400 breeds of chickens!

hi everyone! I am on vacation in Tokyo right now! It is raining outside but we are going to the fish market anyway to have sushi for breakfast! Then on to Nippori to buy fabric. I love Japan! Anyway, I prepared a post for you for my chicken series before I left and here it is: Here are the most recommended breeds for the person who wants to get started with raising chickens for eggs. These chickens are also easy to find locally and have good attitudes in general!:

White Leghorn

White leghorns- These are the best egg layers.

Araucana

Araucanas or Eater eggers lay bluish green eggs.

Orpington

Orpingtons known for gentleness and large brown eggs.

Wyandotte

Wyandotte have a pretty lacy pattern on the breast, are super friendly and good layers. They are also known for broodiness,which means they make good mama hens!

Rhode Island Red are a common breed that are good layers and broody as well.

Heritage Chickens

You may have heard of this type of chicken.

Heritage breeds are historic breeds that are in danger of becoming extinct ,like heirloom vegetables, due to industrial farming practices.

Keep these breeds from becoming extinct and shrinking the gene pool of chickens by raising some.

You can find a list of heritage breeds online and there are special hatcheries you can order them from.

Pin It

Chickens 101: Building your chicken coop

My speaking engagement at the Craftcation Conference in Ventura this past weekend went well!

 I attended some good workshops like making mozzarella cheese in half an hour and the history of the DIY movement. I met sewing celebrities Christine Haynes the author of Chic and Simple Sewing and Jenny Hart, the author of Sublime Stitching! There were lots of fun and crafty workshops, especially for the beginning seamstress.

In speaking to the attendees at my workshop, a lot of crafty types are getting into raising chickens right now.

Chickens are hip!

I think raising chickens, sewing, growing your own food and doing homemade crafts with your kids are all ways to live a more simple and crafty life.

So why am I blogging about chickens on a sewing blog?

Because I think you should try it!

Welcome to the second installment of my homespun living series, Chickens 101

Click here to read part one: 

What you should know before deciding to get chickens

CHICKEN COOPS!

Getting your Coop Ready

Before you buy your chickens you need to have your coop in place.

As mentioned before chickens are social so plan on starting with at least two hens. 

You can have a coop only and let your chickens pasture freely in your backyard

or have a coop with an attached and fenced run to protect your garden. Chickens can make a mess of the yard!

I let my chickens roam freely but I do have a fence around my vegetable garden.

You do need a yard to have chickens, even if only a very small one. They need dirt.

If you choose not to have a run, make sure you shut up your hens securely in their coop  at night.Raccoons and coyotes and large owls strike even in urban environments!

You can convert an outbuilding in your yard or you can buy a small portable flowerless coop on wheels that can be moved around your yard called a chicken tractor.

Essentials for a chicken coop

The truth is people have been raising chickens for thousands of years without all of the requirements I am about descibe!

But if you want to avoid a stinky backyard and chicken disease this is good advice to take.
You will need a coop for sure and an attached run, and area where the chickens can roam outside that is fenced is good too.

Proper Fencing and latched gates for your coop are essential and your run should also have one.

You can have normal gate fencing around your run but line the bottom with wire mesh to keep out snakes.

A well ventilated coop

Ammonia buildup and heat problems in the summer can be deadly in a hot, unventilated coop.

Mesh walls on three sides of the coop are ideal.

Choose strong wire mesh.

Predators can break through chicken wire!

You need plenty of light because the chickens' laying instinct is triggered by light so if your coop is very dark you might consider installing a lightbulb to turn on during the day.

But make sure your nesting boxes are in a darker part of your coop because although light triggers hens to lay they like a dark spot when they actually sit down to lay an egg.

Nesting boxes

You need nesting boxes for your hens to lay their eggs in.

3 hens can share one box.

You can buy nesting boxes at feed stores or you can improvise your own from old crates or even cardboard boxes.

You can build your own from lumber and can find lots of tutorials online.

Roosting poles

Hens are birds and like to sleep on a perch.

Your roosting pole should be about 2 inches in diameter.

Don't use metal pole or PVC piping because chickens need a rough texture for their feet to grip on.

You can use.

• Wooden dowels
• 2 inch wide wooden Closet poles
• Tree branches

Place your poles about 2 feet off the ground or you can use a staggered ladder type perch so they are abocve and behind each other and each gets their own little perch.

I have an antique ladder with rounded rungs that I have propped against the wall.

Droppings tray. 

Place an old board under the roosting poles.

Chickens poop a lot in their sleep and it will drop down

You can take the board out and scrape them into compost pile.

Bedding:

I recommend the deep litter method:

Here is  how:

Start with a clean henhouse.

Throw about a 5 inch layer of straw or wood shavings on the floor.

If you have a run outside you can cover that with hay or shavings too. It will break down naturally and you wont need to remove it.

When you check the coop you can scoop out droppings with a small shovel. 

Then rake the hay a little and add more hay or shavings on top weekly.

Once the bedding is about a foot high, remove it with a rake and replace it with new hay, about every few months.

Once a year in spring,remove all the bedding and scrub down your coop.

Don't forget to compost all the old bedding.

The rich nitrogen is very good for the compost.

Deep litter bedding keeps chickens warm in winter and the smells will be minimal with this method.

If you do smell  a strong smell of ammonia you will know it is time to  replace the bedding.

Pin It

Home Spun living Blog series: Chickens 101

Welcome to my new blog series,

"Homespun Living"

On Fridays, I will be posting about different aspect of handmade living .

The first subject I will be covering in this series is raising chickens.

This series focuses on raising hens for eggs.

Are you a crafty type person who likes :

Sewing

Gardening

DIY Projects?

Do you want to be even more self- reliant?

Why not raise some hens?

WHY RAISE CHICKENS?

• Eggs that are healthy and delicious for your family.
• It's pretty simple to do. If you can raise a dog or cat, you can raise chickens.
• Most suburbs, cities, and towns allow a small flock of hens. 
• You don't need a rooster to have hens who lay eggs and roosters aren't allowed in most towns because they are so noisy. I have one but I live out in the country.
• When you read about what goes on in factory farms you will not want to eat their eggs...
• A fun and rewarding educational experience for your children. There is nothing like needing eggs for a recipe and going out to the hen house to gather them with your little one!
• Chickens create the world's best fertilizer for your garden.
• Chickens in your yard eat ticks, mosquitoes, and other pesky bugs.
• Chickens can be raised in even small backyards.
• Chickens can be hilarious to watch and each one has a different personality.

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED

Zoning:

Before you get started you need to find out what the zoning ordinances are for raising chickens where you live. Contact your animal control office or your city hall to find out. Most places allow a few hens but if you want more than a dozen hens or want to add a rooster to your flock you may need a permit.

Neighbors:

If you have neighbors you may want to discuss your chicken raising idea with them before you get started. You don't want to ruffle any feathers!

Space Requirements:

Chickens need about 10 square feet of outdoor space per bird. Plan to start with at least two hens. They are social creatures and don't do well alone.

Time Requirements:

If you want to start with chicks you will need to devote about a month of intense supervision to raise them. But once they are old enough to be outside maintenance is relatively simple. Plan on about 10 minutes a day for chores like raking bedding, gathering eggs, and putting out fresh food and water. Set aside a couple of days a year for larger chores like removing and replacing the deep litter bedding and disinfecting the coop.

Next Friday I will be discussing how to get your first coop set up!

Pin It

Chickens 101: It All Starts With The Coop: Or The Glamorous History Of My Chicken Coop

An otherwise boring looking chicken coop but one with an interesting past.

I don't have any sewing projects to show today. I have two somewhat interesting projects I am almost done with. The first is a wool toddler coat I'm making for Gigi from a 1942 pattern and  the second is a fake fur vest I am just finishing up. If you have ever worked with fake fur before, you know it's a messy business and I would rather clean out my chicken coop any day rather than work with this stuff again.
In the meantime, I thought I would share a strange little story having to do with chickens since besides being a sewing person, I am also a "Chicken Whisperer"
 OK, that may be overstating things. Speaking at the upcoming Craftcation Conference doesn't make me a chicken expert per se, but I do know a thing or two about or feathered friends after raising them for the last 6 years.
If you have ever wanted to get involved with raising chickens you do need to have some sort of coop before you get them unless you don't want your chickens getting mauled by raccoons or coyotes, and I  tell you this from experience. I once left the coop open and walked into a morbid scene worthy of a slasher film the next day. The heads were actually ripped off of my poor hens. The damage was most likely rendered by a marauding raccoon, one of the most vicious of hen predators. My  second piece of advice to you after you get a coop is, don't forget to close it at night.

I worked very hard to give this coop an "authentic" country feel. Some worn out tires would complete the rustic, shabby, but charming look I am after, don't you think?

We are lucky enough to have a really good coop and we got it for free. We used to live up in the mountains above Malibu, California in a place called Topanga Canyon. People like Jim Morrisson and Janis Joplin were known to have holed up in the canyon and it has a "colorful" past. I had heard stories about the place and there was a nudist colony up in those hills somewhere. When I was about 20, I went to a paty with my friend up in Topanga Canyon. The old wooden house was on a big property that was full of old trailers, lovely oak trees, and a giant American flag hung across the whole yard. As someone from the party strung his guitar and sang "Girl from Ipanema" in the dappled sunlight, I thought,"This would be a cool place to live someday."
 And that is what I did. 

The Inn of The Seventh Ray in Topanga Canyon, where I was married.

There is a crystal shop there where you can go in and lay on a bed of crystal that the owner believes has alien powers and vibes. There was a group of mom's at my son's kindergarten who would get together during the full moon and chant. Topanga was just that weird! When my six year old daughter was bit by a rattlesnake there in our front yard I took it as a sign that God above wanted us to get out of that place so we moved back down into the city of Los Angeles. But not after dragging our chicken coop with us.

This photo of Topanga Canyon Inn Bed and Breakfast is courtesy of TripAdvisor
The view from beautiful Topanga Canyon.

To get to Topanga Canyon you have to drive up the beach at Pacific Coast Highway and turn north. At the corner of PCH and Topanga were some old ramshackle but very charactered and storied properties that had been there since the 1930's. They overlooked the ocean but were owned by the County of Los Angeles so although the inhabitants lived there for decades, they rented the properties.There was an old motel there as well, and many rock musicians were said to have stayed there in the sixties and seventies when the Topanga hippie scene was at it's zenith. The county decided that that land near the ocean was too valuable to have a bunch of ramshackle dwellings on it and they were going to evict everyone and tear down those old houses and put up something that would be more in the "New Malibu" style. Something expensive and elegant like a fancy hotel. Sadly, they never did develop the property so all those poor folks were kicked out of their homes for no reason. All the inhabitants were given a 3 month eviction notice and had to clear out because all the structures were to be condemned. After everyone was gone, the houses stood there empty and on one was a beautiful abandoned chicken coop. My husband didn't feel the least bit guilty about going to rescue this chicken coop. He got some guys together , used someone's truck and put that giant coop on the back of it in the dead of night and drove it home! 

He brought that coop back to our property but we never did get any chickens and when we sold the property to a greedy forensic criminal psychologist and his crazy wife they demanded that the the chicken coop stay! The law states that only permanent structures remain with the house but these people didn't want to hear about that. Somehow I could not picture these folks as the chicken raising types.
 "And what is a criminal forensic psychologist", you might ask? A psychologist of serial killers. This man and his wife were pure evil from day one. We tried to get out of selling the house to them because we didn't want to saddle our poor neighbors with these characters , but they threatened to sue us so that was when we decided to take the chicken coop with us. 

They did send the letter threatening to sue us over our taking the chicken coop but nothing ever came of it.

And so now here she stands, an ordinary chicken coop with a storied and glamorous Malibu past on an old orange ranch out in the country. Doing what she does best. Housing baby chicks and their mommies and a mean old rooster.

So maybe the chicken coop you get isn't as interesting as mine. I won't hold it against you.

Pin It