Interesting Question about chooks

[Tarrel]

Great idea Devonian, I'll try that for ours.

Don't underestimate the amount of land required for a chicken to free-range without any supplementary feed input. It's a lot more than your average garden.

At the moment it is illegal under DEFRA regulations to feed chickens anything that has passed through your domestic kitchen (e.g. food scraps). We feed ours proprietary Layers' Pellets, although they have 600 sq metres of woodland floor to roam over, which we move every month or so. However, post-SHTF, they'll be getting stuff from the kitchen, make no mistake!

[NorthernRaider]

I believe that was the point being made by the original preppers comment on other forum, The average sized British garden is now pretty small, would the standard 30 by 30 ft garden sustain a cluster of chooks without suppliments?


Tarrel Offline
" Don't underestimate the amount of land required for a chicken to free-range without any supplementary feed input. It's a lot more than your average garden. "

[Devonian]

(1 September 2014, 07:46)NorthernRaider Wrote: The average sized British garden is now pretty small, would the standard 30 by 30 ft garden sustain a cluster of chooks without suppliments?

Simple answer is NO.

Also how many is a cluster?

Either way 30ft x 30ft is tiny.

[Devonian]

Edit.....

You may want to look up the Balfour Method of keeping chickens in a small space.

[Scythe13]

If you have chickens, you have rats. If you have rats, you should have snares. You end up with dead rats and maggots. That'll be a part of the food sorted. That aside, you'd need to have lots of corn! Soya is a massive staple of current chicken feed.

[Mortblanc]

Corn is not a recommended staple feed for chickens. It puts too much weight on them and causes problems with laying. Cracked corn has always been a treat, added to the regular diet and that leads some to believe chickens are fed corn.

Rats and chickens are most definitely NOT associated with each other. In fact, there is not a rat around that would survive around my chicken house. Those little veloco-raptors would chase them down and eat them. I let mine have access to beneath the house just to keep it bug, rat and mouse free.

[Devonian]

(2 September 2014, 22:15)Scythe13 Wrote: If you have chickens, you have rats. If you have rats, you should have snares. You end up with dead rats and maggots. That'll be a part of the food sorted. That aside, you'd need to have lots of corn! Soya is a massive staple of current chicken feed.

Chickens are woodland animals and naturally they scratch around for grubs, insects, green shoots and seed as their natural diet. Corn or any other chicken feed is not a requirement of keeping chickens and is only really used to enable chickens to be farmed more intensively or in a smaller area. We tended not to give them any additional feed other than the occasional handful of corn to encourage them in for the night, far better for them to scratch around and find their own food.

Keeping chickens definitely increasing the likelihood of rats, as they will be drawn in by any food that is put out for them and also by fecal matter which rats also eat. But you can greatly reduce the risk of rats through moving the chickens around, rather than keeping them in one place; keeping them in open areas, rather than alongside hedges or embankments and by having chicken houses than do not provide nesting areas beneath them!

[Skean Dhude]

I have several bags of food for them. More than enough to see them through well beyond when my food runs out. They free range, albeit in my garden, and use a scoop or so of food a day and food scraps.

My biggest issue is to keep them alive as they are so noisy everyone knows I have them in my street. So I could end up on chicken feed myself.

I don't see an issue with feeding the chickens after all, after an event and the die off they will be allowed to roam further as well.