This is the second of two posts that make up a Beginners Guide to Keeping Chickens. If you missed it you might want to check out part 1 first.

How much contact time do chickens need?
Chelsea asked how much time we spend with our chickens every day.  Unlike cats and dogs, chickens don’t seem to crave human company and interaction overly so there’s no need to worry that you need to be able to give them lots of “quality time” (so long as they’re kept disease free and have all the food, water and shelter that they need). Chickens are friendly, inquisitive creatures and do like to know what you’re up to but in the grand scheme of things they’re much more bothered about whether they get to free range or not.  Ours are on their own for 8 to 10 hours a day while we’re at work. They happily keep themselves busy in their run for this time but are also very excited to be let out to free range for an hour or so when we get home.

Are they noisy?
If you only have hens then there’s no need to worry about that signature, neighourhood-rousing cock-a-doodle-do. But it’s only fair to warn you that hens can still be a bit noisy. We were getting up at sunrise in over the summer months to let our chickens out into their run so that they didn’t wake the neighbours with their chatter.  They’re only really loud enough for immediate neighbours to hear, but definitely loud enough to wake a light sleeper. There are all kinds of things that you can do to try and limit how early they wake up such as covering their hutch with dark tarpaulin to fake night-time. Touch-wood our neighbours haven’t complained and once the rest of the world is up and going about its business then the odd “I’ve laid an egg, aren’t I amazing” noisy announcement is drowned out the noise of cars, people etc.

What about going on holiday?
The chickens are fine on their own for the weekend provided that you leave them ample water and food and that they’re safely shut away in a fox-proof run (knowing this was one of the tipping points that finally made us give chicken-keeping a go).  If we’re away for longer than overnight then we ask a friend to pop in and feed them and collect the eggs.

This post is a summary of everything we’ve learnt in our first four months of chicken-keeping, especially for those of you thinking about getting your own chooks one day.  Our three ex-battery chickens are completely charming chatterboxes and super-easy to look after, but there are also a few things I wish we’d known before we got them and which I wanted to share with you.

This is very much a beginners perspective on keeping hens - experienced poultry keepers would no doubt have other wisdom to add and similarly I'm sure we'll keep learning as we go.  If you are seriously thinking about getting your own hens have a read of this post first and then I urge you to go and hang out over at the Omlet forums for a while where just about any question you might have will already have been answered (probably several times over).
 
Our regular chicken care routine
We both work full time but we haven't found looking after the chickens a big task to fit into our routine.  Here's what we do:

Once a day
1. Top up the water
2. Top up their food
Chickens eat steadily throughout the day, storing the food in their crop to digest it at night. We feed our three special food from Allen and Page that is designed for ex-battery hens.
3. Collect any eggs (yay!). We're averaging two eggs a day between three hens.
4. Hand over the treats
Chard is top of the list with grapes and sunflower seeds close behind. Sunflower seeds are the non-perishable bribe of choice for getting the girls back into their run.

Once a week
1. Clean the chicken house out.
Ours is a plastic Eglu which is super easy to keep clean. All we do is empty the removable poo tray, hose down the inside of the house and waft about PoultryShield and louse powder, both easily available and designed to keep the bugs at bay.
2. Catch each chicken in turn and dust them down with sweet-smelling louse powder

Are your chickens free range and how much space do they need?
Kathryn asked how much space chickens need.  Assuming that you can let them out to free range round the garden occasionally then the run that your chickens spend most of their time doesn’t need to be very big. We’ve got a nice routine going where the girls get let out of their run for an hour or so in the morning before we head off to work and again for an hour in the evening.  At the weekends they free range all day if we’re at home.

A run of about 2m by 1m is fine for up to four birds (we’re a soft touch so we bought a run extension to give them an extra metre in length so ours have a 3 x 1m run).  Most guidelines seem to suggest 3-4 square feet per bird.  With regard to having garden space to free range in, it seems to be quality rather than quantity that counts here. Our girls spend their outdoor time making dust baths in the soil, rootling about in leaves, trashing my vegetable bed and digging for worms rather than covering any great distance.

Urban foxes have been known to snatch chickens in broad daylight so we never let ours out of their run unless we’re at home to supervise. 

How do chickens and gardens mix?
Arwen asked how our chickens are treating our grass.  There’s no way round it - chickens are a destructive force in the garden. Their mission in life is to peck, scratch and eat everything that they can.  When chickens are out free-ranging the damage to your grass is suitably wide-spread not to be a problem. If your chooks are in a confined run for much of the day (as ours are) then they are much harder on your grass and you have to move them onto a new patch every week or so (and put down some seed to refresh any bald patches). Anything delicate new growth (spinach, chard and other edibles included) is also best protected from the hens.

A short post today about a couple of different things.

Seasonal eating for Autumn
Rather than re-posting it, I thought I'd just mention last year's Seasonal Fruit and Vegetable Guide for Autumn.  If you're after meal and snack ideas for seasonal eating, or fancy a pretty print-out of seasonal fruits and vegetables to stick on your fridge door then look no further.

Potential chicken-keepers - ask your questions here!
A couple of people have asked me what our day-to-day routine is with our backyard chickens so I've started to write a post about our daily and weekly routine. I've also included answers to the sorts of questions we had before we decided to get our girls, such as "can you leave them alone if you need to go away for the weekend".

It occurred to me that some of you guys might be more actively thinking about getting your own chickens and might have questions that you'd like to ask somebody who already has chooks. We're very much novices ourselves so don't worry about asking anything too daft - just post them in the comments and I'll answer if I can (you can even ask the one about whether you need a cockerel to get eggs).