Keeping hens in your garden
Ranked #1,170 in Pets & Animals, #31,932 overall
Fresh eggs from your garden
Keeping hens in your back garden is easy. They don't need as much space as you might think, and you don't need to keep a rooster. Just provide them with shelter, food and fresh water and they'll make great pets and provide fresh eggs for the kitchen.
Chickens will even eat slugs and snails for you (and spiders and centipedes and all kinds of garden pests). They'll keep you company when you're working in the yard and chicken manure makes a great fertilizer for your plants, or a compost activator!
Chickens will even eat slugs and snails for you (and spiders and centipedes and all kinds of garden pests). They'll keep you company when you're working in the yard and chicken manure makes a great fertilizer for your plants, or a compost activator!
The low down on keeping hens
- Chicken forage
- City Chicks
- Hen Solo and Princess Layer
- Introducing our new chickens
- Hentertainment: Techno Chicken
- Choosing and Keeping Chickens
- Battery Hens - First Hours of Freedom
- Chickens love oatmeal
- Hens on the Alternative Kitchen Garden
- Eggs from the garden
- Chickens love: tomatoes
- Rehome a hen
- Chickens love: sweetcorn
- Grow your own chicken treats
- My hens
- Organic or not?
- Say hello!
- Big Green Chicken Blog
- Chicken linkin'
Chicken forage
Plants you can grow to feed your hens
Episode 93 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show looks at plants you can grow in your garden that your hens will love to eat, as well as some of the weeds they like that will grow without any effort! City Chicks
Keeping Micro-flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-reyclers, and Local Food Producers
The aim of City Chicks is to encourage a new generation of urban hen keepers. Rather than just thinking of hens as a source of eggs (or chicken dinners!), Patricia Foreman wants us to invite a micro-flock of chicken workers into our gardens and yards. She believes that their skill set solves a lot of our gardening and environmental problems.
But City Chicks isn't just an inspiring manifesto. Once it has you hooked on the idea of keeping a few hens then the book explains (very well, and in detail) how to look after them. There are chapters on feeding and housing chickens, picking them up and providing medical care, how to choose your breeds, introduce the hens to your children and even raise your own chicks. Several chapters cover gardening with hens - growing food for them, integrating them into your composting system and keeping them under control.
But City Chicks isn't just an inspiring manifesto. Once it has you hooked on the idea of keeping a few hens then the book explains (very well, and in detail) how to look after them. There are chapters on feeding and housing chickens, picking them up and providing medical care, how to choose your breeds, introduce the hens to your children and even raise your own chicks. Several chapters cover gardening with hens - growing food for them, integrating them into your composting system and keeping them under control.
City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-reyclers, and Local Food Producers
Amazon Price: $17.23 (as of 05/31/2012)
Hen Solo and Princess Layer
Hentertainment: Techno Chicken
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Choosing and Keeping Chickens
Choosing and Keeping Chickens
Amazon Price: $53.95 (as of 05/31/2012)
"Do you raise chickens as part of the family or as a livelihood? Are you looking for helpful information to provide the best care for your chickens? Or are you just curious to learn more about this popular animal?
Choosing and Keeping Chickens provides detailed information about the most prevalent types of chickens. Learn all about their appearance, key traits, general temperament, health concerns, and estimated life span. This book also describes characteristics of the eggs laid by each type of chicken as well as birds that best mix with each breed, so you can make better choices in setting up your coops. Seasonal guides detail the changing needs of chickens over the course of a year and reveal what every chicken keeper should look for as well as how to best arrange chicken housing during various climates.
Whether you seek help with your chicken keeping, or just want to know more about chickens, Choosing and Keeping Chickens can help you become more knowledgeable about this fascinating bird. "
Chickens love oatmeal
A warm treat on a frosty morning
It's a little messy, but on cold mornings your hens will love a bit of oatmeal for breakfast. Make it with water, and no sugar or salt, and let it cool down so it won't burn their beaks. You can mix in some of their other favorites if you're feeling generous! Hens on the Alternative Kitchen Garden
Hen Solo and Princess Layer are the stars of episode 62 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden - all about keeping chickens in your garden! Eggs from the garden
If you've never tasted a freshly laid egg, you're missing out
Hens make great pets, but most people keep them for the eggs. A hybrid hen, bred for egg laying, will lay an egg most days during the spring and summer. Egg production tails off as the days shorten, unless you have supplementary lighting.Eggs from hybrid hens are generally brown or tan. If you want fancy colored eggs then you need pure breed hens. You may find pure bred hens more attractive, but they don't lay as often.
Freshly laid eggs are very different from ones bought in a store. If your hens have access to green veggies or grass, then the yolks will be very yellow. The yolks are also very firm - if you're making scrambled eggs you'll have to break them with a fork before whisking. The main difference you'll notice, though, is that old fashioned egg flavor.
Chickens love: tomatoes
Like children, hens can be wary when you introduce new foods. When I first gave mine tomatoes, they ran away.The next time I tried it, I had made my tomatoes into juice (for me!) and gave them a plate of pulp. They loved it and now it's a treat for them in the summer.
Don't stand too close though - hens shake their heads a lot and you'll be covered in little drops of tomato juice!
Rehome a hen
Battery hens live short, unhappy lives - unless they find a new home
Even though awareness of the plight of battery hens (kept in cages so small they can't flap their wings) is rising, many people aren't aware that battery farm eggs are used in many processed food products. This means there's still a market for cheap battery farm eggs and hence millions of hens are kept in horrible conditions.The Battery Hen Welfare Trust is one charity that aims to make their lives better - once they've reached the end of their 'productive' life.
Hens only stay in battery farms for a year. After that their egg production drops off and they are replaced. The hens which are removed are sent for slaughter unless new homes can be found for them. The Battery Hen Welfare Trust collects hens that are being retired and rehomes them with families who will care for them properly.
Rehomed hens can go on to live happy lives and will still produce plenty of eggs for their owners.
Chickens love: sweetcorn
Chickens go nuts for sweetcorn. Mine recognize the sound of me opening a can, from the other end of the garden!Too much will make them fat, but it's perfect for an occasional treat.
If you grow sweetcorn in your garden then it's probably intended for human consumption, but if you get a few cobs that don't make the grade then your hens will happily polish them off for you. Pecking a corn cob can keep them entertained for hours!
Grow your own chicken treats
Chicken feeds are designed to provide all the nutrition that a laying hen needs However, providing fresh greens will give more yellow yolks, gives the hens something to do and makes you popular!Like us, chickens have differing tastes. Mine love lettuce and leaf beet or chard, both vegetables which are easy to grow in the garden. Chard has the advantage of being both very hardy and attractive.
Remember to fence your hens out of the veggie patch though - or they won't leave any for you!
For more details on growing chard and leaf beet, listen to episode 6 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast.
Organic or not?
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jed78
Apr 12, 2012 @ 8:00 pm | delete
- I have about 50 layers, I don't let them near my garden, they will decimate it in a matter of minutes!! They do get to free range in the back pasture though!
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cffutah
Sep 29, 2011 @ 9:37 am | delete
- liked the knowledge about gardens and hens in it ... this is why I love squidoo! If you like to browse lens too, mine has a great educational topic with poll questions for my readers to enjoy.
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Murphypig
Jul 8, 2011 @ 11:51 am | delete
- I finally got my own chickens now. They are fab. I got them from the Battery Hen welfare trust as well. A brilliant organisation! I'm glad you mention it here as well.
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naturegirl7 Feb 8, 2011 @ 8:48 am | delete
- Great information and written in an entertaining manner. Currently my garden is dormant, so I let the 3 hens out in it to weed and eat insects. Soon I will be moving their movable coop and adding on a better house, so that they will range outside the garden. Thanks for the good advice.
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JaguarJulie Dec 14, 2010 @ 3:04 pm | delete
- Wow, gives new meaning to being hen-pecked! ;) Never thought about keeping hens, but I am intrigued.
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Big Green Chicken Blog
Chicken linkin'
- Chicken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Chicken From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Breeds of Chicken
- Breeds of chicken from the dept of animal science at OSU
- Omlet UK | Keeping chickens and keeping rabbits
- Omlet provides you with everything you need to keep chickens delivered direct to your door!
- Battery Hens - The Battery Hen Welfare Trust
- The Battery Hen Welfare Trust aims to educate the public about the egg laying industry focussing on battery farming. We also re-home battery hens covering several Counties across the UK. Find out how you can make a real difference to laying hen welfare.
by EmmaCooper
I am the author of 'The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A to Z'. Check out my gardening blog, more gardening articles and the AKG podcast on my website:... more »
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