Chickens for Tick Control
There is a lot more information available about chickens than is available about guinea fowl. Chickens and guinea fowl will co-exist (after establishing their pecking order). The Guinea fowl will mostly work the lawns while the chickens will scratch up gardens, leaf piles and more looking for bugs.
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You need to check your local ordinances if you want to keep chickens. Unfortunately, many places have regulated poultry out of existence. Read about our struggle |
If you and your neighbors are not using a lot of lawn chemicals, you can let the chickens free range and you can eat the eggs. Most people will want to buy hens, not roosters. Roosters can be nasty, noisy critters and unwelcome in many suburban areas. .
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Chickens are very little work. You need to have a shed for them, give them water, let them out in the morning and lock them up at night. If you are going to go away, make sure they have plenty of food and clean water. We purchased a deer feeder from Cabellas. It is a 5 gallon bucket with a programmable motor. We have a regular feeder but we set this up to dispense feed throughout the day. Since it is near the edge of the coop, the guineas can also get some food. Water isn't too much of a problem in the summer especially if you have a 3 gallon poultry waterer. In the winter you will need to get a heated base to keep the water from freezing.
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Some tricks we've learned.
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Sometimes chickens will be a little stubborn and not roost in the henhouse. We currently have a pair that want to roost on our windowsill. The trick to picking them up is to make sure they can't open their wings, wear leather gloves to protect you from their claws and turn them upside down when you carry them. Inverting them seems to make them a little more docile. I have seen people carry the birds by hanging them from their feet and that seems to work (without hurting the birds)
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Sometimes you will want to go out early and get the birds in the henhouse early. This can be darn near impossible because they will tend to run circles around you. My son and I found that, in the summer, a pair of super soakers can be used to good effect to herd the stubborn critters back into the henhouse.
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Make sure you have some cover available where they can get away from hawks. Yew trees and the like will help
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It doesn't take much of a fence to keep them in. They are pretty lazy. We got tired of opening the driveway gate all the time so I ran a 3' chicken wire fence parallel to the driveway. They tend to not cross the fence. I didn't like the short metal stake for the fence so I put the rubber bumpers for chair legs on the top of the post. That tends to make them a little safer. When I get a chance, I'll redo the fence to make it a bit more attractive. You don't want to have a solid rail at the top or they will tend to want to hop up on it. Something like a picket fence will work better if you go with wood.
Books on raising chickens.
Chickens in Your Backyard: A Beginner's
Guide |
Small-Scale Poultry Keeping: A Guide to
Free Range Poultry Production |
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
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