8 Reasons Not to Keep Chickens

hi and welcome back to the chicken pen anyone who's a regular to the channel knows that i'm completely obsessed with our chickens there are some good reasons not to keep chickens though and today's video is about that it's so that if you're looking to keep chickens for the first time you can make an informed decision so let's get started hi my name is fiona and we're back in the chicken enclosure with these lovely young buffalo pingtans i've published a series of videos on this channel on chicken keeping for beginners but i realized the other day that i'm missing one important element and that's the downside of chicken key pain it's not all kittens and rainbows and i'm a big advocate of anyone who's going into chicken keeping knowing what they're letting themselves in for what i'm going to do today is take you through some of those reasons let's have a look at reason number one we keep our chickens in a very very large grassed enclosure and we get lots of compliments we also get lots and lots of questions to say how do we keep the grass looking so good and how do we stop the chickens from digging up all of the grass well the reason the grass looks so good is because we've got only a few chickens and a very very large space how we stop the chickens from pulling the grass out well we don't and here you can see cindy and gannett pulling grass out you'll notice in front of them there's two plastic grids and those are actually designed to to protect grass seed which is germinating from areas that they've already dug the grass up from and i've had to reseed but that's all we can do now it is a consideration if you are intending to let your chickens out into a pristine lawn or out into your garden and you don't want them to pull the grass out it may be worth preventing them having access to grass and just letting them have access to areas where they can dig for the worms and grubs that they're trying to get to without pulling any grass out digging is a related problem once your chickens have pulled the grass out what they can do is carry on going and you can see here two young cockrells who have actually created two hollows and they're sunken into them now and using them as sand baths it's not such a big deal for us because we've got a lot of space but in a grass lawn can be a bit of a problem and a bigger problem in a pretty garden if i pan to the right you'll notice you can just see the head of a little cockle there and he's sat in an even deeper hollow and that piece of ground used to be flat not anymore [Music] we have 10 of these chickens they're very young they're only six weeks old and their old english pheasant fell they're an absolute joy to keep but they do come with one big disadvantage like every other chicken they seem to produce lots and lots of poop so every night i have to come out with a child's fork pick up all this poop and put it into a bucket using that fork but this particular breed seemed to like sitting on the step of their coop too and that looks absolutely disgusting by the end of the day and every evening i scrape this step off and then wash it down and take all of that poop away but by the next evening it looks like this again it's one of those things there's only 10 of these chickens and remember they're only six weeks old and this is what they produce [Music] everybody knows that cockles are noisy most people have heard a story of neighbors who'd become very upset that the cockles are crowing not everybody knows though that hens are noisy too this is gannett and she's announcing that she's laid an egg now this will go on for a number of minutes and it's very very loud this is something that every hen is driven to do and it's part of their evolution because they're actually calling all the other hens in the flock to lay their eggs in the same place so the broody hen can sit on a clutch of eggs as soon as possible which incorporates all the eggs from all the hens in the floor this is something to consider if you're going to keep hens in a suburban environment with close neighbors whether you've got one hen or multiple hands they all do this [Music] the phrase the pecking order is used in everyday language and simply describes a hierarchical structure it might be applied to your workplace or your friendships to describe who is more or less important in the relationship the phrase comes from flock dynamics is a literal interpretation of what happens when a chicken wants to show that it is more senior a senior hen will simply peck a junior hen usually on the head to make the statement know your place here's garnett she's the most senior hen in our flock and she's telling off a junior hen that's eating the food that she thinks should be hers and hers alone there's no pain involved and no injury just a statement to wait their turn this is typical of an established flock however if you're introducing adult hands to each other for the first time they will fight to establish who is more senior and those fights can be quite violent so if you emerge in groups it's important that it's worth preparing for this fight it can't be avoided so it's very important to chickens to know who is in charge but it is difficult to watch there are other times when pecking orders can become quite fraught and brooding's one of those times this piece of film shows what happens when the senior chicken called sage pulled a junior hem called ginger off her clutch of eggs because she wanted to lay there she physically dragged ginger out using her beak and poor ginger is left crouching in the doorway looking very full on [Music] i really appreciate this is a weird angle to be filming at but there is a reason for it so bear with me because i want to talk about our next problem which is brooding most people don't want their chickens to brood which is great because the majority of modern breeds have had bootiness bred out of them that doesn't mean it won't happen though we had a cream leg bar this year called trouble who wanted to brood so we gave her some eggs and she hatched six chicks and she did a fantastic job with them we also have orpingtons and we do want them to brood but timing and location they never do what you want them to do so timing wise let me introduce you to frankie and frankie is actually on her second brood of the year and she's already raised one very large clutch for us so we didn't actually want her to have a second brood but she's determined to do it so at the moment we're letting her sit and place wise she selected this nest box in what we call the trailer coupe now the trailer cope is actually for our egg layers it's for the cream leg bars and a copper black morons they're not very happy about her being in here and she's not very happy about them being in the main cup either i've never seen these other chickens the cream leg bars and copper black morans crowd so close to the front door at night to get as far away from madame here as possible because she can be a little bit grumpy she wants the place all to herself so they're not always doing what you want them to and brooding is something which is fraught whether you want them to brewed or not brewed so it is another consideration [Music] chickens have evolved from birds that are not birds of prey but birds that are preyed upon so they are actually very nervous by nature some breeds are friendlier than others these are our old english specimen fowl now earlier today i cut the grass and they really don't like the sound of the lawnmower so they get very jumpy after the event so i'm just going to show you what happens if i walk down here and they all run away from me now by tomorrow they'll be running to me for treats and food because they'll be used to me again but it takes a lot of time to get chickens used to you because they have to trust you if you're not able to spend that time with the chickens they won't want to be with you they won't want to spend time with you so it's important that if you are going to keep chickens that you're able to invest at least some time to spend with them on a daily basis [Music] the next consideration may not seem like much of a problem but it can be and it's something to think about and that's that the chickens are completely reliant on us they need us to provide them with food water shelter everything to keep them healthy recently both you and myself fell ill at the same time it was nothing major it was just a virus but it did make us feel very very ill and quite frankly we didn't want to get out of bed but we had to to look after these guys we had no choice someone had to clean the coops out someone had to pick up the poop someone had to feed them someone had to give them water and one of us had to actually get out of our sick bed and do it it is just something to think about well there you have it i hope that helps you in your decision and whether you're going to start chicken keeping i love it but it's best you go into it with your eyes wide open now if you have enjoyed this content take a moment to give me a thumbs up below if you're not already a subscriber take a moment to join us and hit the notifications icon you'll get to know any new videos as soon as they become available if you've got any questions for me leave them in the comment section and i'll do my best to answer them as soon as possible thanks for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: English Country Life

Views: 22,731

Rating: 4.9137254 out of 5

Keywords: bufforpington, orpington, chickens, hens, poultry, smallholder, smallholding, thegoodlife, teamfloof, homestead, homesteading, chickenkeeping, hen, buff orpington, chicken, small holding, chicken keep, backyard chickens, beginners chickenkeeping

Id: BdQ8i73wuF0

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020