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Caring for a chicken
ceres
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
I am not planning to eat the chicken.
A friend of mine has a bunch of chickens for laying, but one (a silky) they keep inside, and she's pretty much become an indoor pet. She's a beautiful, soft, sociable bird, and the farm and feed store where we get our cat food has just got in a bunch of silky chicks, and I have decided that I want one for a pet.
Now, my friend lives eight hours away and is terribly busy, so while I do plan to email her and ask, she doesn't really have time to go over with me the finer points of chick-raising. I know that we will need to have a coop, and I know where I would like to keep that coop. I also know that she feeds her chickens damn near anything that is essentially unprocessed, and that they have four cats who all leave the chickens alone.
I was basically wondering if there was anyone around who has experience with keeping a chicken (will have to be female) as a pet. Are they very difficult or expensive to keep fed and cared for? My friend's doesn't seem to require tons of attention or tons of space to stay happy. She would be kept in my office space (and separate from the cat).
A friend of mine has a bunch of chickens for laying, but one (a silky) they keep inside, and she's pretty much become an indoor pet. She's a beautiful, soft, sociable bird, and the farm and feed store where we get our cat food has just got in a bunch of silky chicks, and I have decided that I want one for a pet.
Now, my friend lives eight hours away and is terribly busy, so while I do plan to email her and ask, she doesn't really have time to go over with me the finer points of chick-raising. I know that we will need to have a coop, and I know where I would like to keep that coop. I also know that she feeds her chickens damn near anything that is essentially unprocessed, and that they have four cats who all leave the chickens alone.
I was basically wondering if there was anyone around who has experience with keeping a chicken (will have to be female) as a pet. Are they very difficult or expensive to keep fed and cared for? My friend's doesn't seem to require tons of attention or tons of space to stay happy. She would be kept in my office space (and separate from the cat).
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
ceres on
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Check out the local laws in your area regarding chicken ownership. Some urban areas expressly forbid it, some have number limitations, some disallow only roosters.
Learn how to pick up the chicken properly. This involves grasping her from behind, around the wings, and not placing any pressure on her front. It is disturbingly easily to harm a chicken by picking her up incorrectly as they don't have the same rib cage protection around their trachea that we enjoy.
Chicken diet is pretty easy, your best bet is to buy regular chicken feed and give her access to outdoor areas where she can pick off bugs at her leisure. She will need a warm place to sleep at night but this is easily satisfied by a coop and nesting box.
I've never tried to keep a chicken indoors and given the nature of their fecal emissions I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.
She'll need a place to roost that is off the ground and a box to nest in.
Chickens will peck at any shiny object they happen to catch a glance of and can be destructive in that respect.
Before acquiring your chicken I would recommend you locate the nearest exotic veterinarian so that you have that settled in advance.
Do some research on the signs and symptoms of various skin and feather disorders, as well as other common afflictions such as egg binding.
Enjoy your fresh eggs!
On the whole though, caring for a chicken is not hard. Be gentle, give them time outside on an un-pesticided and un-fertilized lawn or garden, spend time to socialize them when they're young, and they'll be good (and usually pretty inexpensive) pet friends. If you are somewhere where you are allowed to have more than one, I'd reccomend building a coop that could house a small colony - some breeds (like the banty) have a lot of personality, and it's really fun to watch and get to know a bunch of birds. Plus, that increases your likelihood of getting a really smart one who will learn tricks quickly, go for walks with you, sit in your lap or on your shoulder, and generally be more interesting that the average bird.
At one point, my parents and I had a rescue operation that housed 150 chickens (of various breeds) that were either born on our farm or were given to us by farmers and other people who couldn't take care of them anymore or didn't want them. For what it's worth, I can't recall a single chicken who didn't die from natural predators (hawks and/or foxes), die in old age, or die from some other form of accidental external trauma. I can't guarantee that none of my hens ever got egg-bound, but from my experience I have to assume that it is relatively rare. We had some other minor diseases and ailments in our chickens, and got them checked out, but never a case of a chicken in her prime getting egg-bound.
Can't speak for chickens, but fish in general are WAY more prone to this than land animals. It's usually because of pH, alkalinity, and hardness. Most have little trouble living in stable parameters far from their natural levels, but breeding can be more sensitive. It's worse in anything that moves between hard, soft, marine, and brackish habitats. It's hard to mimic those transitions in captivity without risking pH shock.
Labs are a bit better equipped in general, but in the aquarium trade, a lot of euryhaline species are pretty much doomed to eventually becoming eggbound.
For chickens: All this talk about taking them outdoors... does that mean it's cruel to keep an indoor chicken or that they have to get outdoors once every X days, even if the diet is otherwise good? Because this would probably be a completely indoor chicken, and I don't want to do that if it's really bad for them. I know the aforementioned friend's chicken was indoors the entire week+ I was staying with them because she was too young to stay in the coop with the other hens, and they liked having her inside so much they were considering keeping her in, but I didn't even know she was there until day 7 or so; they fed her but she was otherwise alone in her little room. This was in the dead of winter, mind. All of those factors together mean that my observations on whether a silky can be a good house pet are admittedly probably a bit skewed.
I'd like for her to be more of a pet than theirs was, but she would still largely be an indoor chicken. My impression is that they are really not very expensive or difficult to keep as well.
Keep in mind that the chicken won't be that much different from you, in that it will probably feel better if it gets some fresh air, natural light, and an opportunity to be in natural spaces every once and a while. Whether that's half an hour every day in warm weather or half a day once a week, it would be good to try different arrangements, and see what your chicken likes best - maybe it will not really like going outside much. They're all different.
Keep in mind as well, that if you are going to have an almost exclusively indoor chicken, you are going to have to spend more time providing stimulation than if the chicken was in a natural environment. Man-made interior environments are rather sterile, from a sensory perspective, compared to outdoor spaces. Your chicken will develop more personality, be more intelligent, and be more attached to you if you spend lots of time holding and stroking it, feeding it a variety of interesting foods, giving it a wide variety of surfaces and geographies to explore, and giving it the oportunity to exercise its instincts (like scratching in dirt or sand for food).
Also, on the egg-bound topic, I know that some land-living reptiles are particularly sensitive, and likely to become eggbound, such as chameleons (of which I've had a couple). But, again, I've never herd of any avians that are particularly sensitive in that way.
a) That's pretty sweet, I imagine you work in a genetics lab, and yeah those fish are all clones and super delicate. The mice in the lab I worked at all died because one of the air conditioner fans made a funny noise one night for a few hours.
b) my dad is a certified urban chicken vet, since Vancouver went pro-poultry last year. They are easy to look after and really cool animals. Silkies are positively adorable and easily confined by baby gates. I'd get a pair of girls because otherwise they'd get lonely, and keep them confined to a hard-floored area, but they're not filthy and they don't stink nearly as bad as the skunk my dad had.
They cast a shadow like a sundial in the morning light. It was half past 10.
I really, really want the chickens, and I would happily have two females. I'm worried if we end up with males, though, they'll crow. I just don't live in a place where my neighbors will take kindly to that, so I have a feeling I'll have to wait.
If I got one or two that were old enough to be sexed properly, I'm worried that maybe they wouldn't be as well socialized as if I'd had them from small chicks. Is that a reasonable concern, or wouldn't it matter much?
Worst case scenario is that you'll make sure that two nice roosters are cared for well as chicks, and then get to live out their lives on a farm. A good deed by any measure.
I can't see it mattering a great deal. My aunt keeps chickens, so I've looked after them whenever I've been housesitting. And they were perfectly sociable and happy despite half of them being ex-battery.
And yes, males with crow all the damn time and it's annoying, so you want to avoid that.
Chickens are lovely little animals, but they are also filthy. You'll be merrily stroking one when it will flap it's wings a bit and the stuff that is tossed into the air is utterly vile.
That said, the poop issue people have brought up is legitimate, and ours tend to get sick easily from being mishandled or even changes in weather. Look at getting some exotic game bird diet, and some finch food, and then maybe supplements like osteoform and oyster shells to keep up their calcium. (especially if they are going to be indoor)
You already said this may be a lost cause but they are such neat birds you should doooo ittttt!
Other people have more info about caring for them in terms of food/space but since I have chickens(5) and a cat i'll give my 2 cents.
My cat(a very predatory one) doesn't even consider going near the chickens, they are pretty big birds, and if they start to move near him he leaves pretty quick. The only predators we have to be worried about are foxes-though if you're keeping it indoors I doubt that'll be a problem.
And yeah, our cat isn't much of a hunter.