Benefits and Steps of Raising Chickens In The City

Owning a small flock of chicken is the new trend nowadays and city dwellers are discovering the delights of raising their own chicken. This article tackles the basics of raising and maintaining a few chickens in an urban setting.

But first, what are the benefits of raising hens? Well, there are many.

Aside from being an excellent source of food hens will help you in your pest control, to grow a healthy garden and can even be a pet to your children. Since insects, including potentially harmful insects like grasshoppers, fire ants, ticks, termites, fleas, flies are all food for the hens they act as a means of natural pest control.

Chicken are even known to kill and eat scorpions! So, when you have chicken you can stop spending money on dangerous chemicals and let the chickens do the work for you for free. Another side benefit of raising your own chicken is the chicken manure you’ll get for your garden which when mixed with other organic materials like saw dust, wood chips makes for an excellent and natural fertilizer which can even outperforms the commercial fertilizers.

But make sure that you mix it with some composting material because it is too potent by itself. One of the best benefits of raising chicken is that it can give a hands-on learning experience to your children and chicken are gentle enough to be considered as house pets.

Of course, the main and most obvious benefit of raising chicken is the steady flow of fresh eggs. Home grown eggs are much better than the eggs you purchase in your local grocery store and as a rule almost always taste much better mostly because those eggs come from chicken farms where chickens are commercially raised and the main concern for the farms is mostly the profits and not the quality of care or even feed provided to the chickens.

Determine how many eggs you can consume and give away or sell in a day and limit your flock to that amount considering that each hen will lay one egg approximately every 24 hours. Do not make the mistake of raising too many hens.

The first step in starting your chicken farm is by collecting information about local rules and regulations regarding raising chickens within city limits like the number of chicken you are allowed to keep etc. Mostly this information can be had by making a phone call to your city hall or by simply checking their website.

Roosters are usually banned in most cities due to the nuisance they create but since you don’t need them anyway this is not much of a problem. Once you get your legal issues straight its time to buy the chicks.

You can buy one day old chicks in spring at your local feed store. Before purchasing the chicks do make sure that they have been vaccinated against Marek’s disease and Coccidiosis and that they come from a flock which has been tested for Salmonella.

Chicks are too small to be kept in chicken coops right away and should be kept in small pen or box with wood shavings and some heat source like a heat lamp. Gently handle the chicks every once in a while so that they can become accustomed to humans.

The feed store can help you about what to feed your chicks. Once the chicks are about 30 days old they would start to feather and at this time they can be transferred to their coop which would be their permanent home.

The coop should have nesting boxes for the hens to lay their eggs and roosts where they would sleep. Chickens require about 8 to 10 square feet each and should be waterproof. They should also have a door large enough for humans to enter and small windows which can be opened or closed depending on the weather.

A fence in “yard” connected to the coop is also necessary so that the chickens can roam about without being threatened by predators like dogs, cats or raccoons. You can expect to start collecting the eggs after about 4 – 5 months from the date you purchase the chicks and once you reach this stage the only task left for you would be to feed the chickens, clean the coop and collect the delicious eggs.