My wife and I have been raising chickens for many years now. We have discovered that chickens aren’t hard to take care of. As long as you follow a few best practices you’ll have happy, scratching and pecking chickens all year long.
Chickens are easier to raise than you think. As you start to establish your routine, things will become easier. It’s essential to make sure that you enough free time every day to tend to your chicken’s daily needs. Also, ensure you have enough space for them to forage.
This article will go over many of the challenges you’ll be faced with when it comes to raising your flock. We will give you time-saving tips, tricks, and insights that we wish we knew at the beginning of raising chickens. Will help answer many common questions you are sure to ask along your chicken raising journey. Our goal is to raise happy chickens, and we want you to do the same.
Daily Chicken Care
The best thing you can do for your chickens is to establish a daily care routine. Your daily care taking duties are often the easiest, but they are the most essential for your flocks well-being.
Depending on your setup will depend on the amount of work involved. The freer your birds are to roam the more effort it will require in keeping them safe and sound.
It will make your life a lot easier if you have your chickens in a pen with an easy accessible coup. An enclosed pen with a coup will serve as protection and make it easy to round up of your flock and collect your eggs.
Your daily task should include:
- Making sure your chickens are all accounted for and healthy.
- Provide fresh water and feed if needed.
- Collect eggs if your chickens are laying.
- Watch your chickens for a few minutes to make sure their behavior is normal.
If you are raising baby chicks, make sure they are warm and have plenty of food and water. Chicks require a bit more work than your adult birds, but their needs will slow down as they start learning their pecking order in life.
You are going to want to check on your baby chicks several times a day. I know that might seem like a lot, but a quick glance to make sure they have food, water and are warm is all it takes.
Tip: I highly recommend investing in gravity feeders for your chickens. Having gravity feeders will not only save you time in having to feed your chickens. You will save money from not having wasted chicken feed that would otherwise be lost to the elements and the ground.
How to Take Care of Egg Laying Chickens
When it comes to taking care of your laying hens, it’s important to make sure you are making their lives happy and stress-free. A stressed hen will most likely stop laying eggs.
Curious about “What Can Make a Laying Hen Stressed?“
Proper nutrition is an essential part of taking care of your egg layers. Make sure you are providing the right feed is critical to their success and the quality of the eggs that they lay.
Tip: The best chicken feed you can give your laying hens is “Layer Feed”. We usually give our ladies DuMOR and Producers Pride Brand, and it seems to work well for us.
How to Care for Chickens in The Winter
Your routine for taking care of your chickens in the winter months will only vary slightly than any other time of year.
If you have free-range chickens, there are usually fewer bugs for them to eat. You’ll have to substitute that fact with more feed.
Ensure your chickens have a warm covered place to roost. Having a well-insulated chicken coop is your best bet to keep them warm and cozy.
You don’t need to have a fancy expensive chicken coop – you could convert an old dog house with straw inside to keep them warm.
Regardless of the housing situation that you provide your chickens, make sure your chickens have a way to avoid predators. It’s better to keep them fenced in than to be eaten, or worse sport killed.
Don’t worry too much about the cold. Chickens are pretty resilient creatures. They can easily survive when temperatures hit the teens. When they coop up together they can keep their area warm and cozy.
Your biggest concern in the winter months would be making sure their water source doesn’t freeze, and they have a warm dry place to escape the elements.
Other than it’s the same process.
Tip: Raising chickens in the winter doesn’t have to be hard. Just make sure you provide them with a warm space to coop up. Give them extra food and water, and your chickens will thrive.
In summary
Raising chickens doesn’t have to be complicated. Get a daily routine and stick with it you’ll find out that taking care of chickens it’s actually rather easy.
Just make sure you remember:
- Give your chickens enough space to be chickens. Chickens are happiest when they can scratch, peck and roam free.
- Provide the right feed for your chickens to ensure they are happy and healthy. Give them more food and water in the winter.
- Make sure you give your chickens a safe place away from predator dangers. Having to worry about predators will stress your chickens.
- Spend time with your chickens and study their behaviors. You will learn tell-tell signs if something is wrong with them so you can take the right actions to fix any problems.
We hope you learned something from this article and are well on on your way to raising happy chickens.
If you have any questions please reach out to us [email protected].
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