Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (7 page)

If you’re establishing a laying flock, you can be sure to get the number of hens you need by buying sexed pullets, but starting with chicks means you’ll have to wait several months before gathering your first eggs. You do not need a rooster to get eggs, and roosters can sometimes be rough on the hens, although many people feel that including at least one cock in the flock doubles the enjoyment of having chickens.

For a dual-purpose flock, you might start out with a batch of straight-run chicks and raise the surplus cockerels for the freezer. If your poultry project is strictly for meat, you can save money on chicks and grow out the birds faster by getting all cockerels.

If you wish to compete with your birds at shows, the downside to starting with chicks is you won’t know if you have a potential winner or quality breeder until the chicks mature. And regardless of your purpose, chicks require more care at the outset than started or mature birds.

Started birds, when you can find them, are partially grown and make a good deal if you don’t want the bother of brooding chicks. For a laying flock,
started pullets
have two advantages: you won’t spend much time feeding unproductive birds, since they’ll soon begin laying; and because the birds are just coming into lay, you’ll have them for the longest possible productive life compared to full-grown hens.

Started birds are also a good option if you plan to show. They’re less expensive than proven show birds, but also less likely to have serious faults than chicks, since birds with serious faults are culled early. Just be sure you are not acquiring the culls.

Full-grown birds are the most expensive but offer the fewest surprises, since you see exactly what you’re getting. Two unpleasant surprises you can get unwittingly are disease and excessive age. The older a bird gets, the longer it is exposed to potential diseases and the more likely it is to carry one. That goes double if the bird has been traveling the show circuit.

Excessive age can be a serious problem if you’re buying mature birds for laying or breeding. Eggeries commonly sell spent hens to unsuspecting people wishing to start their own backyard laying flocks. These unwary folks believe they’re getting the best hens from a commercial operation specializing in egg production.
If you think about it, though, a commercial farm isn’t likely to sell its best layers. The most you can hope for from a place like that is cheap stewing hens, but even then they’d have little meat on their bones.

To avoid getting stuck with chickens that are unhealthy or past their prime, learn to recognize a healthy chicken and to tell the difference between a young one and an old one. Although most sellers won’t try to palm off unhealthy birds, and most will freely tell you how old their birds are, the occasional unscrupulous seller sees the wonderstruck novice buyer as an opportunity to turn unwanted birds into cash.

When you buy grown chickens, look for bright eyes; smooth, shiny feathers; smooth, clean legs; and full, bright combs. When you buy chicks, make sure they are bright eyed and perky. If they come by mail, open the box in front of the mail carrier to verify your refund or replacement claim in case any have died.

FEATURES OF A HEALTHY CHICKEN

A well-kept bird of any age is parasite free. You can check for parasites by peeking under the wings and around the vent — external parasites may be visible; internal parasites often cause diarrhea that sticks to vent feathers.

If you visit the seller in person, listen for coughing or sneezing in the flock — when a few chickens catch cold, chances are good the whole flock is coming down with it. Old-time poultry keepers whistle whenever they near a flock; the birds quiet down and listen to see what’s making the whistling sound, and any coughs and sneezes are easier to hear.

One way to be sure you are getting healthy birds is to purchase from a flock that’s enrolled in the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP), which certifies flocks to be free of several serious diseases. As part of their biosecurity agreement, NPIP members will not allow you to visit their flocks. And you may not find an NPIP member who has the kind of birds you want, because a lot of poultry breeders don’t want to get tied up in government bureaucracy, although that does not automatically mean their chickens are unhealthy.

To make sure you aren’t getting an old, worn-out bird, carefully look it over. You can never be certain of a chicken’s exact age (you can hardly, for example, check its teeth as you would a horse), but you can always tell a young bird from an old one.

Cockerels and pullets tend to look like gangly teenagers compared to the more rounded, finished look of a cock or hen of the same breed. Cockerels and pullets have smooth legs. Older birds have rough scales on their legs. Some pullets and all cockerels have little nubs where their spurs will grow. Cocks, and some hens, have long spurs; the longer the spur, the older the bird.

To confirm your findings, pick up the bird and examine it by feel. The breastbone is fairly flexible in a young bird, quite rigid in an older bird. The muscle is soft in a young bird, firm in an older bird. The skin is papery thin and somewhat translucent in a young bird, thick and tough in an older bird. A young bird will, in general, feel light compared to the solid, heavy feel of an older bird.

The best place to buy birds depends on what you want. If it’s a commercial hybrid strain, your only choice is a hatchery. Unfortunately, some hatcheries churn out large numbers of low-quality chicks. The same can be true of chick brokers — feed stores and mail-order houses that market chickens from outside sources, often with little knowledge of or concern for the birds’ condition or bloodlines.

Some hatcheries specialize in exhibition breeds, but rarely do they sell prizewinning strains. If you want quality purebreds, look for a serious breeder who keeps records on breeding, production, and growth. If possible, make a personal visit so you can ask questions, examine records, and see the conditions under which the birds live.

Your county Extension agent should know who keeps chickens in your area, and may know a 4-H member with chicks or chickens for sale. The county fair poultry show is a good place to meet people who own chickens; if you don’t see what you want there, perhaps one of the exhibitors knows someone who has that breed. Many parts of the country have a regional poultry club whose members can be helpful in getting you started.

If you can’t find someone local who has the birds you want, seek a reputable seller willing to ship. Many breeds have a national association whose members are dedicated to their chosen breed and a directory of members with birds for sale. The Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities publishes a membership directory. The American Bantam Association Web site maintains a list of links to members’ Web sites. Several Web sites have a place where sellers list chickens for sale.

The bimonthly magazine
Backyard Poultry
has a breeders’ directory. The newspaper
Poultry Press
offers monthly commentary on who’s winning at shows and who has birds for sale. Canada has a similar paper called
Feather Fancier
. Ask exhibitors and judges at poultry shows for tips on who to deal with and, just as important, who to stay away from.

If you’re looking for a classic production strain, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy or Rare Breeds Canada can help you find a producer. Seek one who specializes in the specific chickens you want, has worked with the same flock for a long time, and has taken the trouble to trace the flock’s history to verify that it is an original strain.

A good time to visit poultry breeders and examine their flocks is late November or early December, when young birds are nearly grown and old birds have finished molting. A good time to raise chicks is March or April, when the weather is turning warm but is still cool enough to discourage diseases.

Large breeds started in December and bantams started in March will feather out in time for fall exhibitions. Spring pullets will start laying in the fall and will continue laying throughout the winter.

One of the most common mistakes made by novice chicken owners is getting too many birds too fast. An extreme example is a young couple I knew who had the noble idea of setting up a chicken zoo where they would display every known breed. Before their facilities were ready, they went around buying chickens and crowding them together in a holding pen. The exciting venture soured when, within a few months, most of the chickens had sickened and died.

Decide how many birds you want or need, build your facilities accordingly (or a little larger, in case you catch Chicken Fever and have to expand), acquire the number of birds you planned on, and keep your flock that size. When you buy chicks, get at least 25 percent more than you want to end up with to allow for natural deaths and the elimination of any that turn out to be undesirable as they grow.

If you’re starting a laying flock, decide how many eggs you want and size your flock accordingly. As a rough average, you can expect two eggs a day for each three hens in your flock. Since hens don’t lay at a steady rate year-round, you may sometimes have more eggs than you can use, and at other times too few.

If you plan to breed show birds, a mature trio or quartet of birds will give you a nice start. A trio consists of one cock and two hens; a quartet is one cock and three hens.

Unless you’re raising cockerels for meat or feathers, most of the chickens in your flock should be hens; a good average is one cock per 12 to 20 hens. If you have an excess of roosters, they’ll fight. If you don’t need fertilized eggs for hatching, or if the local zoning ordinance doesn’t allow roosters, you don’t need cocks at all — but you’ll miss out on their amusing antics.

AS SOON AS YOU GET YOUR CHICKENS HOME,
you will begin to notice several things you may find surprising:

Each chicken has a distinct personality.

Your chickens communicate with each other, and with you, using sounds that have specific meanings.