Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (36 page)

Lightly mist adult birds (never chicks; they can easily chill) when the temperature is high and humidity is low.

Mature chickens can adapt to temperature extremes through gradual exposure. A slow, steady shift in temperature therefore causes much less stress than a sudden change. When a chicken becomes acclimated to warm temperatures, it pants less readily and is less likely to die at what might otherwise be a lethal temperature. Likewise, a bird that’s used to warm weather is less tolerant of a sudden shift to cold weather. Breed also plays a role in weather tolerance.

Hot-weather intolerant.
Loosely feathered breeds like Orpingtons and heavily feathered breeds like the Asiatics (Brahma, Cochin, Langshan) and Americans (Plymouth Rock, New Hampshire, Rhode Island Red) suffer more in hot weather than lightly feathered breeds, and hens in lay suffer more than those not in production.

Cold-weather intolerant.
Cold weather affects lightly feathered breeds such as Hamburgs, Naked Necks, and the Mediterraneans (Buttercups, Leghorns, Minorcas); sparsely feathered breeds such as Shamo; and breeds with short, close feathers, such as Cornish and Modern Game. Not only are the latter two inadequately insulated against cold weather, but neither breed does well in winter confinement.

Crested varieties (Polish, Houdan, Crevecoeur) are vulnerable to freezing if their copious head feathers get wet. Single-comb breeds suffer more in cold weather than rose-comb breeds; large-comb breeds like Dorkings suffer more than birds with smaller combs. Cocks suffer more than hens, since they have larger combs and, unlike hens, usually don’t sleep with their heads tucked under a wing.

Cold-weather tolerant.
The Chantecler, created in Canada as a dual-purpose breed with small comb and wattles, lays well in winter and can withstand cold weather. The table called
Large Breeds
in
chapter 1
indicates each breed’s general weather adaptability.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness, filthiness is next to death,” said the hand-lettered sign tacked inside the henhouse of an old-timer I once visited. It was his daily reminder that safeguarding a flock’s health is dependent on good sanitation. Sloppy sanitation is the most common cause of failure when raising chickens.

Good sanitation includes frequently cleaning feeders and waterers, disinfecting reused housing or equipment, and regularly cleaning the house and yard. Unless a flock has experienced a health problem, a properly designed and maintained coop needs a completely thorough cleaning no more often than once a year. Even in the healthiest environment, disease-causing organisms
build up over time; a thorough annual cleaning will remove 95 percent of the contamination.

To minimize disease-causing organisms that flourish in the warm months of summer, schedule your major cleanup for spring. Choose a warm, dry, sunny day, and wear a dust mask so you won’t breathe the fine dust you’ll stir up, which otherwise may cause nasal irritation and coldlike symptoms. Lightly mist the walls and equipment to keep dust out of the air.

Remove all movable feeders, waterers, perches, and nests, and clear out the old bedding. My favorite tool for moving loose litter is a snow shovel, but a coal shovel works well, too. A pitchfork is more suitable for caked or packed areas. With a hoe, scrape manure from perches, walls, and nests.

Remove dust and cobwebs especially from corners and cracks, light fixtures, and window screens. Where electricity isn’t handy, an old broom makes a serviceable dust mop. I like a shop vac, because it captures more dust, but I lost several vacuums before learning the fine dust has to be frequently cleared from the filter to avoid burning out the vacuum; clean the filter whenever the vacuum stops drawing well or feels hot.

Mix 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of chlorine bleach per gallon (3.75 L) of boiling water and use the solution to disinfect all troughs, perches, and nests, and then scrub the inside of the coop. Leave the doors and windows open to hasten drying. While you’re waiting for the coop to dry, rake the yard and pick up any junk that might be lying around. Piles of scrap wood or discarded equipment keep out the sun’s healing rays and attract insects, snakes, and rodents.

Chicken manure is made up largely of undigested feed. For each 100 pounds (45 kg) of ration your chickens eat, expect 45 pounds (20 kg) of droppings, dry weight. Fresh droppings contain, in addition to feed residue, intestinal bacteria, digestive juices, mineral by-products from metabolic processes, and water. The white pasty stuff on top of a dropping is the chicken’s equivalent of urine, consisting mostly of nitrogenous waste and water. Water makes up about 85 percent of the total weight of fresh chicken droppings, and its evaporation contributes to henhouse humidity, not to mention odor.

A management decision you must make is whether to do one massive annual cleanup of manure or break that task up into smaller, more frequent cleanings. Manure left in one place over a period of time attracts both fly predators and fly parasites. When you remove the manure, you also remove the natural fly predators. With too few predators left to destroy them, fly eggs in the smallest clump of
manure that might be left behind will hatch into hundreds of flies. If you remove manure during the summer months, be prepared to either continue cleaning out the manure and bedding thoroughly at least once a week until fly season ends or institute some other fly-control measure.

Pasturing chickens in portable housing is one way to avoid a manure problem — simply move the shelter often enough to keep manure from accumulating. In stationary housing, litter absorbs much of manure’s moisture, minimizing both humidity and odor. Frequent manure removal also minimizes humidity and odor but introduces new problems: it’s labor intensive (who has time?); it requires a year-round system for dealing with the manure; it uses up more bedding; it leads to fly problems in warm weather.

Old-time farmers, notorious for being behind in their work, tossed a layer of fresh bedding on top of the old litter whenever the place seemed a little messy. When they needed spring fertilizer, they spread all the used litter on their fields and started over with fresh bedding.

During World War II, when feed for livestock became scarce and expensive, the Ohio State Agricultural Experimental Station began seeking ways to reduce the need for animal protein in chicken feed. They discovered that decomposing litter is rich in vitamin B12, a vitamin found only in animal protein and a promoter of health, growth, and reproduction. They learned that chickens housed on naturally composting litter don’t need this otherwise expensive nutrient in their rations because they got plenty of it scratching and pecking in the compost.

Any good bedding is suitable for composting litter. Lay down 4-inch (10 cm) of whatever clean bedding you’ve chosen in the spring, after you’ve done your annual cleaning, or when you first start out with an empty coop. Whenever
the surface gets packed or matted, break it up and stir in a little fresh bedding, enough to absorb prevailing moisture. The goal is to have the bedding 10 inches (25 cm) deep by the start of winter.

Keep adding fresh litter as needed to absorb the amount of manure your flock deposits. If your birds are not crowded, 12 to 15 inches (30 to 38 cm) of bedding should strike the right balance. Decomposing litter reduces in volume like a compost pile. Once the litter reaches enough volume to start actively composting, the amount of volume reduction will roughly equal the amount of new litter added.

Rather than becoming filthy, as you might expect, properly managed built-up litter gradually ferments, and after about 6 months the resulting compost develops sanitizing properties. Furthermore, the heat produced by fermentation keeps a flock warm during the cooler months, and flies are less of a problem in warmer months because accumulated dry manure attracts natural fly predators and parasites.

Managing composting litter involves raking or stirring the bedding as often as necessary to keep the surface from crusting over. Manure accumulating beneath perches may need to be removed or, better yet, collected in a droppings pit.

Adequate ventilation is needed to ensure the litter retains the right amount of moisture for good fermentation. To test litter moisture, pick up a handful and squeeze. If the moisture level is just right, the litter will stick slightly to your hand but will break up when you let go. If it’s too dry, it won’t stick to your hand; if it’s too wet, it will ball up and not break apart easily when you drop it.

If the bedding is either too damp or too dry, the environment becomes unpleasant and unhealthful for chickens and humans alike. Excessively dry litter not only fails to ferment properly (and therefore is not self-sanitizing) but also creates a dust problem. Dampen dry litter with an occasional light sprinkling of water, followed by stirring.

Excessive moisture is more often a problem than excessive dryness. Wet litter with a high manure content — perhaps the result of housing too many chickens in too small a space — can cause painful burns to hocks and footpads, which then become infected and cause lameness. Damp litter favors the growth of disease-causing molds and bacteria, and promotes the survival of viruses, parasitic worms, and protozoa (such as those causing coccidiosis). Damp litter also releases ammonia fumes that irritate avian (and human) eyes and respiratory tracts, opening the way to disease.

When litter is damp enough to emit ammonia, the first thing you’ll notice is the odor. If your eyes burn and your nose runs, the ammonia level has become high enough to increase your birds’ susceptibility to respiratory disease. If the
ammonia concentration gets so strong that birds’ eyes become inflamed and watery and the chickens develop jerky head movements, ammonia blindness may soon follow. To keep litter from getting too moist:

Remove any damp spots that develop around doorways and drinkers.

Adjust doorways, and fix dripping drinkers to eliminate persistent damp patches.