In our slightly mad modern life keeping backyard chickens can give us simple pleasures with the added benefits of home grown eggs and useful manure.
For many people, the gentle clucking and scratching of chooks at home is domestic bliss.
Chooks are also a great way to teach children about caring for animals, after all who can forget collecting warm eggs for breakfast?
Some important things
Chickens are quite easy to keep naturally healthy, but an urban backyard poses a few special challenges, so here are a few tips:
Shelter
- A key issue for keeping backyard chooks is creating the space they actually need. If you get this right, you are well on the way to having healthy chooks and delicious eggs without much effort.
- Chooks need a safe place away from dogs, cats, eagles and foxes and they need to stay out of the veggie patch! So they do need a good shelter at night and a small, enclosed yard which offers both shade and sunshine during the day.
- They don’t need a lot of room, we allow 1 sq. metre of perch space per 4 chooks plus (at least) an extra 2 sq. metres per 4 chooks for their outside day run. The day run also needs a place they can dig and bathe in the dust.
- If you build a shelter, leave enough room to get in and harvest eggs or better still be able to collect eggs from the outside.
Food
- Chooks won’t drink warm water so make sure their fresh water is in the shade all day. Drop frozen bottles of water into their drinking water on stinking hot days.
- It’s also important you allow enough room in your garden to grow fresh ‘green pick’ for the chooks to have each day (e.g. fresh grass, green vegetables or even home sprouted grains).
- To make sprouted grains just soak a half a bucket of wheat or barley in a bucket overnight. Then drain and rinse at least once a day for three to four days until they start to sprout. Give generously.
- Sprouted grains are soft, digestible and give the chooks living food to enjoy.
- Chooks love protein which can include mealworms, meat scraps, garden worms, maggots and insects under logs or stones.
Summary
These basic things for a lovely chook space – good shelter with cool water, fresh pick and high protein food at the right time will provide you with a devoted flock – dedicated to giving you fresh healthy eggs almost every day of the year.
Treat your chickens well.
They’ll love you for it.
Super Mash
Oh and keep Super Mash up to your chooks!
Super Mash is a monthly treatment to help keep chickens healthy. It’s a natural antiparasitic that contains ACV, nutrients and probiotics to boost and re-vitalise your chickens in a natural way.
Find out more, order online and check for a stockist near you at https://naturalchickenhealth.com.au/
Natural Chicken Health – Super Mash is a natural feed supplement to help keep your chooks healthy all year round.