- It's been one year now since we've had our chickens
and so I wanted to make this video today to talk
about everything related to chicken care,
what it's like to own chickens,
and what are the kind of things that you're expected
or need to do on a daily, weekly, or monthly,
or even yearly basis if you wanna own chickens.
So, one of the first major things that everyone
as a chicken owner needs to do
on a daily basis is check for eggs.
So let's start with that by going into the coop right now.
(gentle country music)
So let's go ahead and take a look inside
and see if we have any eggs today.
The way we secure our actual egg hutch is
by having a carabiner that locks.
So it's nice.
It's just an extra little security feature.
You always want a hasp and latch 'cause that'll make sure
that it's raccoon proof.
But I'm gonna pop it open.
That's the sound of Chirp.
Doesn't like me coming in here getting her eggs I guess.
And we actually do have two eggs in here.
So, yep.
It's really funny.
If you have two egg hutches,
they'll still end up mostly using just one.
So you wanna make sure that you have at least
two egg hutches even though
they're only gonna probably use one, but occasionally,
we actually do see that they use both.
So these eggs here,
this one is Chirps, so that is the Buff Orpington,
and then this one here is from Peep,
which is the Easter Egger.
In terms of eating quality,
I like Peep's eggs the most because they are the largest.
They have really large yolks and they taste really good.
All of the eggs are really fantastic.
They're definitely better
than anything you could get at the store.
On a normal egg laying schedule,
we're getting an average of probably three a day.
And I'm saying normal because things
like malting, changing their feathers out,
or going broody will actually affect how many eggs you get.
So let's talk about the next tip,
which is feeding and making sure your chickens have water.
So now we're inside the enclosed run of the chicken coop.
This is an area that can be fully enclosed
and the chickens are 100% safe from anything.
Now, I wanted to talk about the feeders,
which are inside here.
And this is actually the old feeding system that we had
up until literally two days ago
and it's worked actually pretty well and it's very cheap.
You just get these little attachments,
I'll put a link into the description,
fill this with food, and then they can get inside,
peck their food and that just works great.
But we originally had four chickens and we now have seven.
When you introduce new chickens to your flock,
you wanna make sure that they're not going to compete
over something that they already know.
So all the older chickens know about this feeder
and they know they have a preferred spot to eat from,
which is why what we decided to do
was actually upgrade to this CoopWorx feeder.
So the nice thing about this guy is
that it has two feed ports on every single face,
which I believe totals to eight different feeding ports.
So there's now way more opportunity
for the chickens to choose different ports.
None of them have used this before up until now,
so it's uncharted territory essentially.
There's no pecking order when it comes to feeding from this.
The other cool thing about this one is
that you could fit two whole bags
of food in here no problem.
So if I fill this up,
I probably don't have to fill it up again for months.
So that's really fantastic.
The other thing when it comes
to feeding your chickens is you
wanna have have a source of calcium.
This is oyster shell,
so this is giving them a source of calcium.
The last thing that you really wanna make sure
you're providing your chickens is grit.
In this case,
they probably get a lot of grit naturally
from just pecking around outside,
but this is just basically crushed granite
and helps them digest things like greens.
Now, when it comes to the actual watering system,
we still need to work on that.
We're probably going to change it a little bit,
but what we have right now is just a five gallon bucket
with four nipples on it.
And the way this works is they tap
on it and water comes out,
they peck at that and they get their water.
I want to get something bigger
because this can go pretty fast in the hot months,
but for now,
it's working great and all the chickens
know how to use this type of watering system.
So now let's move on to the next topic,
which will be out there.
One of the things that you really wanna
consider when you decide to get chickens is
that they really like having a lot of space.
Most of the suggestions you see online say
that they don't need that much space.
So our coop, for example,
the enclosed run is somewhere in the eight by 10 range,
so eight by 10 feet,
and that's fine for four chickens if they spend some
of their time in there, but not all their time.
So we wanted to give them a nice big area
that they could explore and hang out in during the daytime.
Gives them a lot of different benefits.
The first is that they get to forage,
they get their grit naturally by digging around,
they get to eat things
like insects and bugs that they find out here.
So it's really nice for them.
And they also get access to sun when they want it,
and very importantly, shade.
So chickens can overheat very easily.
So one of the things that's really important when it comes
to owning chickens is having areas that are
constantly shaded so that they always have that option.
So that's why we have these trees over here.
We also have this umbrella setup back here
so they could also come down here.
It's both shade for us and the chickens, and actually,
one of the things that maybe is a little bit understated
is that you wanna make sure
that your chickens actually have space to dig around.
So chickens like to do dust bathes,
and especially when it's hot,
they'll sort of dig down until they get
to the cooler soil and nestle themselves in there.
So you wanna make sure they have enough space,
you wanna make sure they have open ground,
and that they have plenty of shade.
If your chickens are panting with their mouth open,
like literal panting,
that means that they're overheating
and you wanna make sure that they have access to water.
The other thing you can do is give them frozen treats.
That's kind of like the gist of giving them plenty
of outdoor space and making sure they have shade.
The next thing we wanna talk about
is how to deal with a broody chicken.
Every chicken owner at some point
will experience a broody hen.
So a broody hen is one that really wants to
actually hatch an egg.
And so what you'll see is that your chicken will go
in their nesting box and they'll sit in there all day,
they won't lay any eggs,
and they'll probably puff themselves up
and start making really funny sounds.
That's when you have a broody chicken.
So the broody chicken will kind of block the nesting box
from other chickens.
They'll generally be in a more of a bad mood I guess
and they won't lay any eggs.
So you wanna kind of kick them out of this broody cycle.
The easiest way by far that we found to
end a broody chicken cycle is getting a dog crate
or something similar and keeping the chicken in there
with food and water,
isolated from the other chickens
and isolated from the nesting box.
The whole idea is that if they're sitting and nestled
in something like a nesting box,
they'll stay nice and warm
and that keeps their broodiness going,
but by isolating them and giving them
nowhere to roost or nest,
then they can't really remain broody for as long.
So grab yourself a crate, throw it in somewhere safe,
and make sure they have food and water,
and hopefully two to three days,
they'll end their broody cycle.
And you wanna make sure you stay
on top of that 'cause every time we waited
for it to naturally happen, it's taken weeks.
So, dog crate, broody chicken,
something you're gonna have to deal with in the future.
One of the biggest major things
that you're gonna have to deal with
when you have chickens is actually maintaining
and cleaning up after them.
So, in the indoor run,
what we do is we throw these wood shavings out
and every two months or so when it starts smelling
or we see a lot of flies,
we'll come in, rake it all up,
and throw that in their compost.
And then we'll just throw in some new pine shavings
and kind of refresh the whole area.
But the bigger aspect of clean-out
is the actual deep litter inside the coop.
So let's go ahead and take a deep dive
into how to actually clean your deep litter coop.
So here's what the litter pile looks like up close.
I'm gonna just kind of scoop some out with the stick.
You could see that some parts are quite wet.
So, for instance,
right here is the primary roosting bar
that all the chickens sleep on at night
and so that's where the most action is, so to speak.
And so in this exact area,
it is the worst in terms of how wet it is,
but a lot of it is actually probably fairly dry.
But at this point, it's just a good time to refresh it.
So that's kind of what it looks
like at the moment right now.
The tools that we're going to be using to clean this
out are a wheelbarrow,
probably also a large concrete mixing tub,
a snow shovel to get out some
of the finer bits at the bottom,
we have a couple different rakes
we're gonna probably end up using,
and then I'm using the manure fork,
which is aptly named for this job.
The other thing I wanna mention is
that it's a really good idea, actually,
probably I should say it's mandatory,
that when you're getting inside this kind
of situation with all the dust
and all the debris from the chickens,
you wanna be wearing a good mask.
So I'm gonna be wearing this the whole time
and I'll probably also put on some safety goggles
and be wearing gloves while I'm working.
So, with that said,
let's go ahead and start scooping this out.
So you could see why you definitely wanna be wearing a mask.
It's quite a bit of dust here.
So we've decided we're gonna probably fill this black bin,
transfer that into the wheelbarrow or just carry it over,
it's not that heavy,
and we're actually going to be composting this
for a few years.
Before I add this next dump of litter into this compost bin,
I'm actually gonna water this on the center setting
because I wanna make sure this gets really well hydrated
so it could properly rot and break down in the pile.
(gentle country music)
We've now moved most of the chicken litter
over here into this compost bin.
And so right now this is essentially 95% chicken litter,
so this should be quite hot.
And this is going to be the current active pile at my place.
So any new clippings or cuttings I take from the garden,
I'm going to be adding to this.
I'm going to let that mature all
throughout this whole entire year
because it is chicken manure.
You wanna let it compost a bit longer.
I might talk about that more in a future video,
but for now, I'm gonna throw this top little board on.
Wow.
So this is steaming hot, very active compost.
So I'm gonna pop that right into the center here
and then cover it back in.
And hopefully some of those bacteria that are
already present in there will now colonize this pile
and start heating it up very quickly.
And then the last thing I'm gonna do is take a small scoop,
this is probably about a gallon's worth,
of finished compost that I've been purchasing
and this is a manure-based compost,
so I'm hoping that this will have some other microbes maybe
that will help break down this manure a little faster, even.
And that's all there is to it.
I'm going to water this in pretty deeply right now
and then we're gonna go back over
to chicken coop and check it out.
So the chicken coop is fully emptied out,
but you'll notice we actually saved one bucket
of the litter down here.
So a deep litter system is actually
essentially a compost pile.
So when you're adding a new layer of litter,
or in this case, an entirely new batch of litter,
you wanna save some of the old litter that you
were using before to help kickstart that composting process
in your new deep litter.
So that's why we've saved this.
We're going to be adding it in.
I'm not sure if we're gonna add it in
at the base level or mix it in with the new litter,
but we're definitely going to be adding that in.
But for now,
I wanna show you inside the coop
and talk a little bit about what I see
and I'm actually really happy with what I see.
There's a little bit of water damage on the back there,
but that's mostly a seam that needs to get just
basically caulked.
None of the damage is from the chicken litter itself
and it looks really nice inside.
So let's go ahead and take a look at the inside of the coop.
All right, so let's go ahead and take a look inside here,
see what we find.
And what we find is that the floor that we put
in is holding up really, really well.
So this floor was just basic plywood,
but we did I believe four layers of water-based urethane
and that's what's basically keeping it looking so
fresh right now.
It looks like there's zero damage on anywhere over there,
the floor is totally solid.
So this is the only thing that we're going to
need to deal with,
but it turns out that right
behind that beam right there is actually a seam
on the other side of the wall that's kind of open.
So we're gonna just run a bead
of caulk along that and that should fix that problem.
But other than that, the coop is looking really nice.
So we're not gonna have to do any deep cleaning, really.
We're just gonna go ahead and add some new litter in.
Just wanna mention one thing
before we move on is that you might've noticed
that this litter is really quite dry
and that's not necessarily bad, but it's not ideal.
Generally, when you're doing the deep litter method,
it should be actually composting,
so it should be becoming more crumbly and broken down.
But the deal is,
is that we built our coop in mind with expansion.
So we only had four chickens in here,
but we built it for somewhere
in the order of eight chickens.
And so by having a large coop
and having the same amount of litter,
it just never really got wet enough on its own
so it never really broke down and composted very well.
We probably could've added some moisture to help speed it
up or added less litter and mixed it
to help break it up more,
but this is what it is right now.
I think with the fact that we're adding three new chickens,
it's going to definitely be adding a lot more moisture
and should break down faster
and properly compost in the future.
So that's just a little mention.
This is probably not what most
people's deep litter is gonna look like
and it's probably not what it should look like.
So like I mentioned previously,
we saved this for a reason
and I'm going to be adding it back into the coop right now
and then we're gonna add the new litter on top.
So this is going to serve as our base coat
that's essentially inoculating the new litter pile.
And I guess I should mention
at this point why we decided to switch to hemp bedding.
Hemp bedding is very low dust
and it breaks down very rapidly.
It also does a very good job of absorbing moisture.
So volume per volume of this versus the other wood shavings
that we used previously,
this is going to last longer,
hold more moisture, and reduce the odor in the long run.
And this is an industrial hemp bedding.
You could buy it from someone
like Carolina Coops and that's a trusted source.
That's what it looks like.
Looks kind of funny,
kind of woody like the inside
of like a sunflower, for example.
That's kind of what that material looks like.
But this is a very absorbent,
very easy to break down material
so it's perfect for a chicken coop deep litter system.
Here's what it looks like with that litter
that we saved with one bag of hemp litter on top of it.
So you could see we have roughly six inches here,
which is where you wanna start
when you're doing a deep litter system.
The idea is that as they're pooping
and peeing and doing all that,
you just keep throwing in more litter right on top
and that's going to be what creates that deep litter system.
Now, the other thing we're probably going to do this year,
which we kind of stopped last year,
is probably stir it more often.
Now that we saw the old litter wasn't very well composted,
we wanna make sure that since we're in an arid climate,
we're going to be stirring it up more often
and make sure that the moisture gets distributed.
So that should make this deep litter very fruitful
and especially since we're gonna be adding three
new chickens in this coop.
The last thing I wanted end with is to actually
remind you to spend time with your chickens.
So here's Midnight.
She's a Black Copper Marans
and what I have in my hand is a bunch of dried grubs.
Chickens really, really love these grubs.
And spending time with them lets them know
that you're their friend and that they can trust you,
so it makes it really easy to pick them up
when you need to or if you have a problem to solve.
And if you need to find your chickens,
getting 'em used to grubs is really great
because then you shake the tub
and they will come running.
So, that's the last thing I wanted to end.
Hanging out with your chickens is great
for your mental health.
It's also great for your chickens
because then they become more bonded with you.
So that's what it's like to have chickens
and a couple of the things that you might encounter
if you decide to own chickens.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
(gentle country music)