Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 11:32 pm
So far in Urban Agriculture : the Road To Self Reliance, we've talked about composting and the utility of bees. These topics fairly easy to digest because they don't get too close, conceptually or in practice, to the Darwin-soaked reality of traditional rural farming. Today's topic, though, brings us to the DMZ-like frontier that separates recreational gardening from serious urban agriculture.
When people think about raising chickens, they generally envision Napoleon Dynamite's dollar-an-hour stint for the FFA or old Foghorn Leghorn shorts. Urban chicken raising has little relation to the stinking hell-evil that is factory farming , and doesn't much look like Warner Brothers either. Urban chickens are about harnessing symbiosis and reducing your overall cost, while breaking yet another link in the chain of modern slavery.
Animals are a pain to have around, so there'd better be a pretty good argument for getting involved with them. If you grow food for yourself, it turns out that there sure is. Adding chickens to your urban agriculture setup is not only a way to get verified poison-free eggs and / or meat, but help address certain key problems that confront the poison-free urban agronomist :
1) Chickens are a powerful pest control solution. Insects that eat crops and arthropods that bite humans are among the bigger drags for the urban farmer, and they're a natural part of the chicken diet. If you have awful leaf-munchers or hideous scorpions plaguing you, and you let some chickens run around your crops for an hour or so a day, the chickens will cold massacre the offending bugs and leave you with fewer problems. It's kind of amazing that chickens like to eat scorpions, but it's a keen fact.
2) Chicken poo will kick-start your compost with a high concentration of nitrogen. It's easy to collect from the bottom of your chicken coop.
3) Chickens scratch the ground to a depth of a couple of inches, which beneficially aerates your soil without disrupting its 'trophic levels' (more on this next time)
4) Chicken eggs, which most reasonable people consume in some form, are a valuable source of protein and effective emulsifiers for cooking. If you want poison-free eggs from the store, though, you'll have to pay in the neighborhood of $5 per dozen, which is a lot, considering that poison eggs can be had for about a buck. If you grow your own, you can get your cost per dozen down to three bucks and change.
5) Chickens can also be deployed for weed control after your crop plants are past the seedling stage, as they'll look for tender shoots popping up between your plants, and eat them.
Chickens are a key component of permaculture systems and can make your overall urban agriculture plan more efficient.
* What you need to raise chickens in the urban environment *
- Most municipalities allow citizens to keep chickens on their property. Check with your local government office to see what the regulations are for your 'hood. In Cake City, for example, you can keep up to twenty hens on any lot of 10,000 square feet or more, and on smaller lots with the notarized permission of neighbors. Note : roosters are generally illegal in urban areas because they are hella noisy. Fortunately, they're not needed at all.
-Space planning : you need at least four square feet of space per bird within the coop and seven square feet of bird in 'run space' (where the birds can roam about regularly at will). This adds up to eleven square feet of living space for every chicken you keep. Most single-family urban chicken farmers keep five to seven chickens.
-Coop construction : you have a choice between stationary coop construction and what is known as a 'chicken tractor,' which is a chicken coop that is mobile and is shifted regularly for the purpose of preparing ground for planting.
In the chicken tractor method, the chickens' scratching lightly tills the soil while the straw and droppings from the bottom of the coop compost to improve the soil quality. The coop has no bottom, which means that the chickens scratch directly on the soil and bedding. The tractor is not cleaned out, but rather picked up and moved over its width every couple of weeks to prepare the next planting bed. Advocates of the tractor method point to good crop yield and low cleaning hassle as advantages.
The stationary coop, the edges of which must be buried six inches below ground to foil burrowing mammal pests, does not have to be moved around, but must be cleaned (you can shovel the bedding shavings or straw straight into your composter).
The coop should be be built out of wood and covered with half-inch metal mesh hardware cloth -- not so-called 'chicken wire,' which invites other small birds to visit and steal all your chickens' food. Their bedding can be straw, wood shavings, or shredded newspaper (but be aware that you'll be composting the bedding, so don't use bleached or highly treated paper). In constructing the coop, you need two elevated sections : the slightly elevated 'nest boxes' (one for every 3 or 4 of chickens) where the eggs will be laid, and the 'roost,' which is simply a ladder of thick dowels and moderate incline where the chickens will sleep.
The nest boxes should be about fourteen inches on all sides and have a roof with a fairly sharp slope to prevent the birds from hanging around up there. The chickens do not sleep in the nests; they will roost on the highest available part of the coop (the roosting ladder).
Chickens need shade, so be sure that you have the coop situated in a shady spot. Many urban agriculturalists grow grape vines over the roof of stationary coops -- this both shades the birds and provides them food with fallen grapes; the vines also cool the coop. Also be aware that chickens don't like to be cold and windblown, so be sure to install a windbreak for them during cold or windy weather. Cover the coop with a blanket in cold weather so that their combs don't get frostbitten. In hot summer days, you can place frozen water bottles in the coop to help them stay cool.
Generally, coops are best designed with an enclosed / covered roost and nest space and an open 'run.' While rain doesn't bother chickens in warm climates, they prefer to sleep in enclosed roosts.
It's not advisable to let your chickens range completely free -- you'll the lose ease of composting benefit, chickens may be eaten by predators, and they'll generally just go ape in your space. A controlled forage time of an hour or so a day is recommended.
As Dr. Roe points out, chicken poo is full of microbes that are potentially dangerous to humans. For this reason, I recommend that urban agriculturalists use the stationary coop method and compost all bedding to zap the nasties. Don't forget to wash your hands after handling birds, and as always, wash produce thoroughly before eating.
-Chicken feed : you can buy commercial chicken feed ('starter' feed for chicks and 'lay pellets' for mature birds; the difference is in the higher protein content of the 'layer' feed) or feed them straight mixed grain that you buy or grow. Each chicken consumes about one-third of a pound of food per day. Now, if you're trying to be poison-free, you'll either have to shell out for organic feed or grain or grown your own feed, which requires a lot of space. You can let your chickens forage and scratch around freely; chickens will find tasty critters (insects, arthropods, and even rodents), seeds and seedlings to eat. [The also scratch to find dust to bathe in.] Now, they'll also eat your crops if left to their own devices for too long, so keep an eye on them. Chickens will also eat all your table scraps except for those on the following list :
Not to feed chickens :
-No salt or heavily salted stuff,
-No chocolate
-No avocados or other slimy stuff
-No raw potatoes
-No stuff that's gone bad
Be aware! Chickens must have food and water at all times. Put marbles or rocks in their water dish to prevent them from sitting in it. Chickens should be fed twice per day. Buy a or build a tube-type gravity feeder and waterer, and load up several of them if you go out of town for a few days. If you can get someone to check on your chickens while you're gone, do so (let them keep the eggs if they want).
The most useful chicken feeding vessels are troughs with adjustable-height legs and an 'anti-roosting wheel' at the top that prevents the birds from dawdling in their feed, which is gross.
Chickens, like all birds, have no teeth and need to be provided grit to digest their food. Crushed oyster shells are favored, and they'll get grit while foraging. You can mix one part grit to ten parts grain in their feed, or just put a handful of grit once a week.
Chickens' feed should also be supplemented with grass. Add a capful of cider vinegar to their water once a week to bolster their health.
*Getting started*
Get this : you order chicks and they come in a box. A freaking box! Different breeds produce eggs with different characteristics. 'Americana' chickens lay eggs with green shells, "Araucanas' lay blue eggs. The 'Rhode Island Reds' are favored for reliable brown egg production and mild character; the 'Barred Rock' is similarly esteemed. The 'Orpington' breed is known for high egg volume. The common commercial 'Leghorn' variety is to be avoided -- in poison-free conditions, they don't flourish and don't lay as well as the Reds. Not to mention, they're not nearly as funny as the cartoons lead us to believe. 'Bantams,' which are chickens that are pint-sized when fully grown, lay eggs just fine, but they're more likely to fly around and give you headaches. P.S. -- if you get a rooster in a box of chicks, you'll have to give it away to a farm or something. You can tell the difference between male and female chickens two ways : first, the hens are much wider with bigger breasts. Second, roosters start crowing pretty early.
You're going to need about a square foot per chick at first, indoors. Get some boxes about 2 and one-half feet tall and put a heat lamp over each, clamped to the size of the box so that they can move. . You don't need a lot of heat; a standard 65 watt incandescent bulb is a-OK. If the chicks huddle around the lamp, they're too cold; if they stick to the edges of the box, they're too hot. Their bedding should be pine shavings rather than straw at this stage, and cleaned regularly. They eat 'starter pellets' at this stage.
The temperature in their box should be about 95 Fahrenheit degrees the first week; drop the temperature five degrees each week for six successive weeks. At the end of six weeks, they are more or less grown; chickens should be in full feather before being exposed to 100-degree or higher temperatures.
You can check local classified for 'pullets,' which are chickens 10 to 12 weeks old. This can save you a little time and bread on the raising process.
Chickens start laying eggs at about 20 weeks' age, and that's the dang payoff. They'll lay very well for the first couple of years, tapering off slowly after that. Maximum life expectancy is about a decade; in Cake City, they live about five years.
*Eggs n thangs*
I was pretty surprised to discover that you don't need roosters around to get eggs from your hens. Those hens crank out eggs no matter what; the roosters' only function is to fertilize them. Chickens will start acting real friendly when they're ready to lay eggs. They'll go into the nest box to lay, and the first eggs will be very small. Egg size will gradually increase over time. Healthy chickens will lay one egg approximately every thirty-six hours, but in practice it ranges between two and six eggs per week per chicken. Egg production is mostly dictated by solar cycles, and you can fool your birds into laying more by artificially lighting the coop. Beware, though : this will exhaust your chickens.
If the chickens are reluctant to lay, you can trick them sometimes by putting golf balls in the nest boxes. They'll sit on them and eventually lay actual eggs there.
Check your chickens twice a day (feeding time is convenient for many folks) for eggs and also to observe their general health. Don't wash eggs too much after collecting them -- just wipe them off lightly with a cloth. Eggs come out of the chicken covered in an invisible natural sealant that can keep the eggs fresh for several days with no refrigeration.
To determine egg freshness before consuming them, immerse them in water. If they sink to the bottom, they are fresh, If they stand on end, they're safe but borderline -- these are OK for hard-boiling. If they float, they're rotten -- toss 'em.
Fresh eggs are uber tasty, and it's a good idea to give some to your neighbors to butter them up a little. Chickens can get noisy, and egg-sharing is a clever way to maintain goodwill.
* Chicken behaviors and health *
Chickens do weird things, largely because they have bird-brains. Understanding these behaviors will help you deal with them without being freaked out. Here's a list of some of the main chicken mood syndromes :
-The pecking order : this cliche is literal and is real -- chickens have a pretty rigid social hierarchy that is kind of gross. The alpha chicken will peck at the beta chicken, and so on down through the strata of wimpitude. This is sad, but normal. You'll see some of the lower-order chickens showing bald spots near the tail where their feathers have been pecked out; don't worry unless the bald area seems bloody. If you discover that you have a psycho chicken on your hands, one that pecks others bloody regularly or causes real injury to others, you'll have to get rid of it. Such aggro bully birds aren't good for the coop, but they make a fine stew. You can attempt to stop the pecking with 'Rooster Booster' brand product; you apply it to the victims, and the attackers detest the taste.
-Molting : chickens molt, that is, lose their feathers, during conditions of short days and low light. Molting feather loss occurs all over the body of the hen, whereas pecking loss is localized at the tail area. The birds will lay fewer eggs during the molting period.
-Getting 'broody' : sometimes, chickens will get it in their heads that they ought to have some babies. This is called 'getting broody,' and they'll mope around in the nest box. We can't have them sitting there all the time, so if they won't snap out of it, put some ice water under the next box to chill them out. Another tactic is to get a new chick and sneak it into the nest box at night -- the broody hen will raise the chick as its own.
-Flying : Most full-size chickens don't care much for flying; they're fat and heavy and flying is hard work. However, some chickens are wily and will stir up the other birds to wing. Therefore, it's wise it clip one wing of each fully grown hen. This is like getting a haircut and doesn't hurt the animals if done properly according to the sketch below. Do this when the bird is not molting, and not when the bird is very young.
-Sick chickens : if a bird acts listless and nonsocial, it's probably illin'. Likewise, if the bird is unclean with a messy 'vent' (this is the excretory orifice), it's probably sick. Once you notice this, separate the bird from the rest to prevent the spread of disease. There are bird antibiotics available, but if you use them, the eggs will be inedible for a long time. You can administer a weak solution of vinegar and water through a syringe; sometimes this helps. Since chickens only cost a couple of dollars to replace, it's not sensible to take them to veterinarians or otherwise spend a lot on them. It's best to just keep them separate, try to make them comfortable, and let nature take its course.
-Mites : chickens are susceptible to mite infestation. Mites are nasty little parasitic arthropods. A major purpose of the dust bath is to control these little buggers. The best way to get a handle on them is to buy a bag of diatomaceous earth (food-grade, not pool-grade) and put it with the chickens' grit supply and on the floor of the coop. Diatomaceous earth is in reality the tiny skeletons of animals called diatoms; these skeletons are extremely sharp but so small that they can't hurt humans or chickens. To mites, though, diatom skeletons are like deadly land mines. It's kind of sad, but these mites have to die horrible, horrible deaths so that your chickens can be healthy.
-Flies : these shouldn't be much trouble if you keep the coop clean, but diatomaceous earth can keep these under control as well.
-Stress : birds that are uncomfortable or bothered won't lay eggs. Be sure to maintain a comfortable and clean environment for them.
-Predators : the main beasties you need to worry about that might hassle your chickens are the following :
Poultry Enemy #1 : Hawks and owls. These buddies will snatch up your flock with glee if they can, which is one of the most convincing reasons to keep the birds cooped most of the time. If you just let the chix run for an hour or so and try to supervise them, you shouldn't lose many. Leave them out all day or especially at night, though, and Eddie the Owl is going to party down. Chickens are always instinctively scanning the skies for predators, so when they're out, be sure to leave the coop door open so they can get back in. Note that chickens don't know the difference between an airplane and a peregrine falcon, and they'll cry out at the sight of aircraft.
PE #2 : Dogs. Non-hunting dogs usually don't cause a problem if they're yours; aggressive or hunting dogs should probably be kept separate. Generally, your dogs will want to please you and not eat what they will recognize as your birds. Any foreign dogs should be kept away from the birds, as they won't be as keen on staying in your good graces.
PE#3 : Cats : If you have cats, they probably will leave your birds alone for the same reasons that your dogs will. They will also keep alien cats away. Cats that aren't yours may attack, so again, keep the chickens cooped most of the time. However, many larger chickens can beat up the average cat.
***
There you have it -- the short beans on how to use chicken power to make your life more efficient and your agriculture more productive. It might seem like a big step, and it's a different bag for sure. The benefits to your crops are substantial, and controlling all the inputs that go into your eggs, and saving bread on them, is a serious win in the battle to take back your food supply. And, of course, chicks dig it.
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This piece was drawn largely from the lectures on urban chicken raising presented by Rachel Bess and Myron Mykyta at the Phoenix Permaculture Guild in late 2008.
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