5 Mistakes to Avoid When Raising Chickens

For two years, my husband nudged that we should get chickens. I had a 10-month-old I was still nursing, and the thought of raising chickens, something I had never done, seemed too much at the time while I was still chasing a 2-year-old.

Another year passed, and my husband brought up chickens again. As my kids grew and learned more about our food system from watching documentaries, I knew I wanted to have our eggs.

We were in the town, so we had restrictions—eggs we could do. I entertained the idea. The thought of being able to have chickens was so exciting because I felt the door was slowly opening a crack to my vision of farm animals all over.

Then the realization that we lived on .75 acres opened the door just a crack. That’s the secret, my friend. I never shut the door entirely.

Once my second daughter was done nursing, I committed to getting six chicks. We have learned so much, from starting in a town to living out in the country with over 30 chickens at one point.

Let me share some common chicken-raising mistakes if you are starting, whether you live on .75 acres or 20. I know many others have to when raising chickens. But, if you want to start with chickens and not look like an amateur, be sure NOT to make these common chicken-raising mistakes.

Related: 

Common Chicken-Raising Mistakes that Make You Look Like an Amateur

 

  Thinking Your Hens will Loving Accept Your New Baby Chicks. 

My husband and I research a lot. I am so thankful for the free resources we have at our fingertips. I knew there would; it could be a little hiccup. 🙂 I am hyper. I like to see what happens.

So we introduced our baby chicks too soon, and my lovingly first set of chickens, called the “big girls,” did not think these chicks were cute. So they went full-on attack mode.

When our first chickens were only a few months old, they killed a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. So the pecking order is profound. Your best bet to introduce the flock is to wait until they are much closer in size to one another.

Not making Your Coop Big Enough

We were only allowed six hens in the town we started raising chickens. So we ended up building our coop to accommodate just that. Yet even when they got bigger, it wasn’t the lifestyle I wanted them to live.

The technical space that chickens need is probably not as much as you think- but if you are planning on having more chickens later on- and you probably will, they are addicting, then why not build your coop a bit bigger.

 

Talking With Your Neighbors about Keeping Chickens 

We started to free-range our chickens on our 0.75 acres on a super busy road in a town. We didn’t have a house on one side of us, but places all around us were going in the other direction.

Although there wasn’t a defined line in free-range your birds in the town- where a store plaza was just off our back yard through a small shrub of trees, our chickens did NOT stay in our yard.

They traveled over to the neighbors quite frequently. And it’s never good when she comes over and says, I don’t mind them, but they are tearing up my mulch.

So, check with your neighbors, depending on where you live, when you get chickens. I couldn’t get over keeping our chickens in this too-small coop, yet I had to respect those around us.

So then we moved out to the country- where you sign a contract saying noise, dust, and smell are common.

If you are planning on raising chickens and want to start off organized and make it even easier for someone else to take off your flock, you need to grab my Ultimate Chicken planner; use the code Tiktok for 50% OFF! ( It’s a deal!)

Lining up a Chicken Sitter 

That’s right. You may have forgotten that you will need someone to come and grab those eggs if you plan to leave for a few days. Or you can go on vacation like we do and have a setup like this.

The best part of asking a neighbor to care for your chickens is to have farm-fresh eggs each morning you are away. Yet, it is one of those things that you may forget about.

When I have younger chickens, I don’t like to leave them in the coop with their eggs for a long. I have seen some peck them; some fall out of the box, and so forth. A chicken eating its eggs is a problem you want to avoid.

If you don’t have someone near you, try asking your local 4H Office if they have any kids who would be willing to come to watch your chickens; sometimes, they will do it for free and earn volunteer hours.

 

Thinking Predators Won’t Come

Here we are, just moved into our new farmhouse with LAND! A local woman down the road from us has baby chicks for sale.

We were in the daze of having land and the high of having more chickens if we wanted, and we ended up going from six chickens to 33. (That included meat birds) When we chatted with this woman and told her we were free-range, her response was- wait, you will lose one.

Coming from the town and only seeing woodchucks and rabbits, I was naive. Very Naive. It wasn’t long before I met many predators here and lost one.

We also lost one to it getting hit by a car. Yet something inside me wants my chickens to live the way they were meant to.

Yes, they are chickens, but they are here for a purpose. First, they provide us with food, and happy chickens mean delicious eggs and meat, right?

For me, the price of having free-range chickens is part of farm life, even when one is lost to a predator. Of course, there are many measures you can take to prevent this. We have our coops tightly secured for those pesky night predators.

Sometimes though, you do everything possible, and death still occurs. You quickly learn that death is a real and difficult part of farm life.

So I hope you will consider these tips when deciding to raise chickens or even if you just purchased chickens. They are so much fun to watch. And they provide you with FOOD! 🙂

It would help if you didn’t look like an amateur or anything 😉

Take care, friends!