If you’re fortunate enough to experience the love, affection, and gratification of keeping backyard chickens, you know how busy they can keep you! Not only are they voracious eaters cleaning up anything that moves with assassin-like precision, but they can also be vocal when they need you, so how much time does it take to keep chickens?
Taking care of your chickens can take between 1-2 hours or up to 6 hours a day, depending on the number of chickens you keep. The daily tasks are much less if you have 5 to 10 chickens, but more than 50 chickens will greatly multiply your work. Tending to chickens is a full-time, all-year exercise.
Now that doesn’t mean you can’t leave them alone for a few hours or a day, but caring for chickens is a lot of work, especially if you live in very hot or very cold regions. Greater care and time must be invested to ensure happy, healthy chickens, so let’s investigate how much time you can expect to spend keeping chickens.
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How Long Does It Take To Take Care Of Chickens?
The length of your chicken’s life can depend on many different things. From the breed of your chicken to how your chicken is raised and the climate of where you live, all will determine the length of your chicken’s life. Chickens have feelings just like humans.
They experience negative and positive emotions like happiness, comfort, love, and fear. As an owner of chickens, you should know how to take care of them daily, monthly, and annually to keep them healthy and happy. Here’s how to keep them happy:
Daily Care For Your Chickens
Give them a constant supply of water. For chickens, well-being and general health, water is necessary. So, ensure they have access to clean water at all times. Chickens don’t enjoy drinking dirty water. Keep the water full and clean. If there is any slime or debris in the container, replace the water.
You wouldn’t want your chickens to be dehydrated even for a short time. They can become very ill or die, especially in summer, since they cannot sweat. They need water to produce healthy eggs, regulate body heat, and for digestion.
Feeding Your Chickens
There isn’t a specific number of times a day you should feed your chickens as long as they have enough food to eat during the day. A chicken will usually consume 120 grams of food a day. If they leave too much food when the night hits, give them a bit less food.
As a guideline, chickens 90% of the diet should be formulated feed to ensure they get all the nutrients they need. You can also accidentally overfeed your chickens with vegetables, fruits, and other leftovers they can eat to provide variety and supplement their diet.
Collecting Eggs
Collecting eggs should be around 2-3 times a day, once in the morning and evening. When it’s extremely hot, collect the eggs more frequently. Collecting eggs more frequently prevents dirty eggs and stops them from cracking due to hen traffic. It can also discourage your hens from eating their eggs.
Chickens will also get broody when the eggs aren’t removed. Because the eggs aren’t fertilized, a broody chicken will sit on the egg indefinitely and expect it to hatch. Broody chickens become hungry and dehydrated since they refuse to leave their eggs. When a chicken becomes broody, take care of it immediately.
Observe Your Chickens
Take time out of your day to spend time with your chickens and ensure their health is good. Observing them is better done when they are calm and relaxed. Those are positive signs if your chickens are active, have bright eyes, smooth feathers, and are alert. It’s a positive sign that they are healthy.
How To Take Care Of Chickens?
When caring for chickens, you need to ensure you have all the right stuff and sufficient space for them to roam and stay happy and healthy. Here are several tips on how to take care of your chickens and ensure they are happy and healthy:
Make Sure You Can Take Care Of Your Chickens On Your Property
Before getting chickens, you’ll want to ensure you have everything they need to keep them healthy and happy. Start by considering the space you have available for them.
- Know where you’ll put the coop and that the chickens have enough outdoor space to roam around. Each normal-sized chicken should have around 10 square feet (0.93 m2) of space outdoors.
- Your municipality will probably require your chickens to be kept a certain distance from your property line, so check on that.
Save Money For Chicken Care Costs
Chickens are not cheap to care for since you need to buy them food for as long as they live. You’ll also need to provide clean and fresh bedding, a good coop, and other necessities. If you lack a big budget, you can keep bantams instead of normal-sized chickens. They are cheaper to take care of, eat less than normal-sized chickens, and take up less space.
- Costs can vary widely. Expect to spend around $500 in total costs, especially when buying a coop, and about $25 to take care of 3-4 chickens per month.
Make Sure You Have Enough Time For Chickens
Chickens aren’t zero-maintenance animals and will require some of your time every day. You have to refill their water containers, feed them daily, collect their eggs, clean their coops, and check on them often, especially if the area you stay in has a lot of predators.
- Spend about 1-2 hours daily caring for your chickens.
Decide On The Purpose And Age Of Your Chickens
Chickens can be used for meat or eggs, for pets, and for show. Whatever purpose you choose, there are many breeds for that specific purpose.
- You can buy fertilized eggs, chicks, pullets, or laying hens. If you’re new to owning chickens, getting young or laying hens is recommended instead of fertilized eggs or chicks. Even though incubating your eggs can be an experience.
- Keep at least two chickens. Chickens are very social birds and will get depressed, lonely, and bored if they don’t have a friend to socialize with.
- Don’t keep more than one rooster in one enclosure because they will fight each other and cause serious injuries.
Choose A Chicken Breed That’ll Suit Your Purpose
Some breeds are better egg layers than others and lay eggs longer. Other breeds are best used for meat because the chickens mature quickly. You can also get more colorful and unique chickens, which can be used for the show. Bantams can be kept as pets.
- You can get Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, or Leghorn breeds if you’d like good layers. These chickens tend to lay for longer and more eggs.
- If you’d like chickens for meat Brahma or Faverolles would be best.
- If you want show breeds, get colorful chickens; generally, they make the best show chickens.
- If you’d just like a pet chicken, bantam-sized chickens are considered the best pet chickens since they are smaller and often friendlier than a regular chicken.
How Long Do Chickens Live?
Generally, wild chicken breeds can enjoy a lifespan between three and seven years, sometimes longer. Despite the challenges of being in the wild, including predators, these chicken breeds have a longer lifespan than most.
It is common for a backyard chicken to live five to ten years, and on rare occasions, 16 years, like the little English game hen named Matilda, backyard chickens have been recorded to reach the ripe age of 20.
Conclusion
Having a small flock of backyard chickens for self-sustainability or as part of the ecosystem should be a fun and fulfilling experience. It should not take up your whole day, and it’s best if you divide your day, keeping the workload to 30 to 40 minutes, twice or three times per day.
Shorter times spent working in the coop, feeding, or watering means more time spent enjoying the company of your chooks!
