Chicken Farming 101 —

No Need To Chicken Out

By Nancy K. Crevier

“Why did the chicken cross the basketball court?” “Because he heard the referee calling fowls.”

“How long do chickens work?” “Around the cluck.”

“Why do chicks find it easy to talk?” “Because talk is ‘cheep.’”

There are endless jokes about chickens, but talk to any of the many Newtown and Sandy Hook residents who raise chickens, and it is easy to see that it is no joke to them.

Susan White of Next Door Farm in Hattertown has a flock of ten “Helens” that roam her acreage and roost in the coop built by her three sons. The “Helens,” ten hens, are called so after an older family friend who used to drive her chickens around with her and take them on outings. “She called her hens ‘Helens,’ so we do, too. There’s no rhyme or reason,” said Ms White.

Her family has raised chickens for the past seven or eight years, she said, but raised on a farm in Sandy Hook, Ms White was familiar with the process from her mother’s experiences with chicken flocks.

“Having chickens is so easy,” claimed Ms White. “We raise them for the eggs, and they serve as our own natural garbage disposals,” she said. All of the table scraps, except meat or dairy, are collected and fed to the hens to supplement the diet of grain. The hens also feed on bugs and grubs — including ticks — as they waddle about the yard.

Housing chickens is simple, as well, Ms White said. “The need somewhere safe to roost at night — a coop — and they need to be able to get in and out. That’s about it,” she said. The Whites’ chicken coop is approximately 50 square feet, and includes three nesting boxes that they stuff with straw and let the hens arrange. Two-by-four lumber pieces the length of the coop serve as roosts, and the floor is thick with litter that absorbs the manure — and smell. “If you keep the litter fresh and clean it out completely, just once or twice a year, it doesn’t smell too badly except in warm weather,” Ms White said. “Then the outside area can get pretty smelly.”

In the colder months, a heating lamp keeps the chill out of the coop and an electric water heater keeps the water trough from freezing over.

A ramp out of the coop leads to a small run. Chicken wire is embedded in the ground six inches deep all around, and covers the top to prevent hawks from swooping down and snatching the hens.

Predators like raccoons, fox, and weasels can be a problem for free-range chickens, Ms White admitted. “We have lost some. I was in the yard one day and heard squawking, turned around, and there was a fox making off with one of my Helens. I yelled, and the fox dropped her. This was in broad daylight,” she said. That hen survived, merely shaken up. Other hens have not fared so well. One year, the family lost the entire flock to a marten, a member of the weasel family. “It was sad, but we talked about how this was part of the nature cycle, and got new chicks to start over,” Ms White said.

The family collects six to eight eggs every day from the Black Sex Link chickens when they are at the peak of their laying. The number of eggs laid is dependent on the amount of light in the day, so winter months mean fewer eggs.

“I like that I know what I’m feeding my hens, and the eggs are fresh. Think about it: when an egg gets to the store, it’s already 10 to 12 days old. I can collect eggs every day.” The very fresh eggs can be kept at room temperature for several days, too, unlike store-bought eggs. A natural, protective coating on the eggs keeps them from spoiling, so long as it is not washed off.

The Whites’ chickens are kept for fun and practicality, said Ms White. “They are not pets, but they are more than just farm animals to us, too,” she added.

A Lifetime Of Chickens

Betty Lou Osborne is Susan White’s mother, and has had chickens “all my life,” she said, including ever since she moved to Newtown in 1939 at age 13. Currently, her flock numbers 25, and is made up of Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island and New Hampshire reds and blacks, and a few others that she has taken in. “Right now, I keep just hens, and just for the eggs. We used to have roosters, too, and we had them for eating, but not anymore,” said Mrs Osborne.

Fresh eggs served to supplement the family’s income when her children were small. Customers all around Newtown looked forward to her regular egg deliveries on her route, and First National store in Sandy Hook bought from her, as well.

This flock of 25 hens lays at least a dozen eggs a day when they are at their peak in summer, most of which she shares with friends, neighbors, and family who appreciate the fresh flavor of a truly fresh egg.

Predators such as coyotes, hawks, and fox are always a problem, especially for flocks that free-range, as do Mrs Osborne’s. But this flock has two reliable alarms to alert farm workers when trouble is about. The first is a flock of 12 guinea hens, kept solely for their notorious noise. “If anything is amiss, they let us know by sending up a terrible noise,” Mrs Osborne said. Even a strange person near the coop or ranging area is enough to get them squawking.

Twenty donkeys that graze in the pasture with the hens are equally good “first alert systems.” The donkeys, which also serve as nature’s lawnmowers in the pasture, will chase any predator that enters the area. While they rarely kick the intruder, they are more than willing to give it a good enough push to send it head over heels, if the braying does not send them skedaddling.

“Keeping chickens is very easy, and really not a chore,” Mrs Osborne said, as long as a few simple rules are adhered to. Chickens need a safe place to stay at night. Her large coop, with nine nesting boxes, and three two-by-fours serving as roosts, can be buttoned up tightly at night. “Chickens will learn to stick to your schedule, going out at the same time and in at the same time each day, so they are very easy to get back in the coop at the end of the day if you just call them,” Mrs Osborne said.

They also need to be fed and watered regularly. Good quality chicken feed will keep them healthy for the most part, but she believes that allowing hens to range and supplement the feed with grubs, worms, and other bugs is extremely beneficial. “They are happier, too, if you allow them to run,” she said. “You should make sure they have room to roam.”

“You see ‘fresh egg’ signs all around town. I think a lot of people are beginning to raise chickens now,” said Mrs Osborne. “I think that people like knowing where their eggs are coming from, and having them be really fresh.”

Keeping hens is relaxing, too, said Mrs Osborne. “It’s soothing just to watch them. They’re very quiet and peaceful, unless they’re being bothered.”

Adele, Pearl, And Egg

Nancy Dance admitted that the three hens that make up the flock she and husband, John, and sons, Jake and Malcolm, raise are there more for the fun factor than practicality. “They are our pets,” she said, “not farm animals.”

Egg and Adele, two of the hens, were raised from chicks in the family room of the Dances’ Brushy Hill home. After visiting a friend in northwestern Connecticut who owns chickens, nearly two years ago, Ms Dance saw how much her sons liked that flock. Having had chickens as youngsters themselves, the Dances decided to get six mixed-breed chicks from the friend.

The problems was one that is all too common with chicken farmers: it is difficult to determine the sex of a chick. “We ended up with three roosters and three hens,” said Ms Dance. Because roosters can become problematic in a hen house and the family had no intention of increasing the flock, they returned the roosters to the friend and kept the three that became known as Adele, Pearl, and Egg.

“Egg got her name because when we got her home as a chick, she still had a piece of shell stuck to the top of her head,” laughed Ms Dance.

When the chicks’ adult feathers came in, they moved to outdoor quarters consisting of a run fashioned from a dog kennel seated on top of railroad ties, and a large hen house crafted by Mr Dance, a builder. The house is sturdy enough to deter any nighttime predators, said Ms Dance, and includes room for roosting and four nesting boxes made of plastic dishpans filled with shredded litter.

“We only let them free range in the yard when someone is there to follow them around, though,” said Ms Dance. “I’d like to let them wander more freely, but we have three red-tail hawks nesting near our property, so we can’t.”

In one of her wanderings, though, Pearl ingested a screw — “Hens will eat any little shiny thing,” said Ms Dance — and even after a visit to a bird veterinarian when the hen became sickly, and intervention by the veterinarian in Redding where Ms Dance works, the special chicken had to be euthanized.

“People don’t take chickens to the vet,” said Ms Dance, “but Pearl was my favorite and very pretty. She was the boss in the coop.”

Just around the time of Pearl’s demise, another special hen joined the family. “Our friend had started a new flock and there was this one hen who really got picked on. It was a true case of the pecking order in a coop. They would chase her all day until she would squeeze under the fence to get away. Our friend, who doesn’t consider her hens pets, would be greeted by this poor hen every day, and she even named her Fiona,” Ms Dance said.

Thinking Fiona would do better in a small flock, the hen was moved to the Dances’ Brushy Hill home. “Her one toe is broken from being chased under the fence, and it appears she has some kind of a vision and focusing problem. Fiona can’t find scraps in an aluminum-colored pan, so I have to put them in a black pan. She pecks randomly at the air, and makes some strange chicken noises,” Ms Dance said.

Fiona also does not seem to understand the preening process that cleans feathers, so she is a bit of a “dirty bird.” Adele and Egg sense that Fiona is different, so after many attempts at integrating her into the flock, the Dances have fenced off a separate section of the coop for Fiona. “I don’t think she likes being alone, but she’s safe from the others,” Ms Dance said.

Fiona is a very sociable chicken with people, following the Dance family members around the yard like a dog or cat. And while she does not lay eggs every day like Adele and Egg, when she does, the eggs are jumbo-sized.

Keeping her small flock is very easy and does not take much more than half and hour every day, Ms Dance said. Her biggest problems have involved nature. “Our property is so open, that we get all of the snow, wind, and ice blowing into the run. Last winter, our first with chickens, was a real eye-opener,” said Ms Dance. “They were cold.”

The solution was covering the entire pen and coop with tarps to keep out the wind and snow, and covering the top with blankets and quilts. Lights hung inside of the pen provided a sense of daylight to the otherwise tarp-darkened pen.

But that solution led to another problem. Chickens aren’t the only birds that appreciate a warm, dry place out of the wind in winter. Wild birds discovered the shelter.

“I walked in one morning and it was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, with grackles everywhere,” exclaimed Ms Dance. So in the midst of a cold winter day, the Dances removed the tarps, put up bird netting all around the pen, and replaced the tarps once again.

“It was not fun. Winter has been my worst time with the hens,” Ms Dance said.

“The eggs are just a side benefit to having our hens,” she said. The 16 to 18 eggs per week the family gets are shared with friends or used in cooking and baking. “There is no comparison between fresh and store-bought eggs. These eggs have a creamier, fresher taste, and even baking seems better with them. Things come out lighter and fluffier it seems. But really, they are our pets. We think they are just a lot of fun,” Ms Dance said.

“What happened to the chicken whose feathers were pointing the wrong way?” “She was tickled to death.”

And tickled to death is just how these backyard chicken keepers feel about the joys of chicken farming.