Do you have a back yard? Are there chickens in it? Then this community is for you!

I made the mistake of buying my wife “just four chickens” for mother’s day a few years ago. That became 8. Then 20. Then 300. DON’T DO IT! IT’S A TRAP!

If you’ve already fallen into that trap and have questions, come on over. If you’ve been keeping chickens for years, come on over. If someone else’s chickens are in your back yard and you don’t know what to do, COME ON OVER!

We’ll talk about chickens, we’ll talk about eggs, we won’t talk about which came first, we’ll talk about feed, and care, and everything that goes along with keeping chickens. There will be pictures. There will be recipes. There will be…well…that probably just about covers it.

Anyway…

Backyard Chickens

!backyardchickens@lemmy.ca

Backyard Chickens

You may also be interested in !homestead

EDIT

There have been a couple of questions, “What about my ducks?” and “What about my parrots?”

The Fediverse is small. There probably aren’t enough people interested in each type of bird to start their own communities. For now, everyone is welcome. Turkeys, geese, quail, Guineas, fucking Emus. Come on in. Pet birds, too. We’ll take everyone. The community will be focused on chickens but everyone is welcome. As the sub-communities grow they will naturally migrate (heh) to their own communities but we will have given them care and comfort while that happened.

  • howrar@lemmy.caEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    I don’t own chickens, nor do I plan to in the future, but I’ll subscribe anyway to see updates on how your chickens are doing and for all the egg photos.

      • tryingnottobefat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        A lot of the psittacine medical knowledge base is actually from poultry research. They’re surprisingly similar anatomically!

        One big difference is that hens lay eggs every day, that still blows my mind. A parrot risks death if they lay more than twice a year because they can’t recover enough dietary calcium quickly enough.

        • MapleEngineer@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I updated the New Communities post, sidebar, and title of the group to welcome other types of birds while their own communities gather. We’re happy to provide care and comfort for those communities until they do.

  • LogLurker @mander.xyzEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I don’t have chooks anymore but joining to get my chicken fix vicariously, until I move and get some again of course!

  • irkli@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Yar, cool. We live in Los Angeles, Echo Park area, where everything grows on the water we stole from elsewhere in the state. We’ve got three at the moment, this past winter we had two murdered by a coyote (we forgot to lock the coop that night; I almost caught and strangled the coyote (I like them, but umm not in the coop (but I digress))), will get another pair this summer. We’ve had chickens for 10 years now. Survived disease plagues, murder, chickencide (years ago the flock decided they didn’t like a particular runty one, and that was the end of her)…

    We have a store-bought coop (had homemade ones, will again) which is very nice, and about 140 sq feet of fenced yard, containing a couple rugged trees and plants that survive the peck peck peck assault/hunt for bugs.

    Our biggest problem is yard rats. Little things, not the scary New York subway kind. Population explosion every summer, our dogs like to observe them (they killed one once, studied it…).

    They’re pretty rugged and tolerant beings. Chicken culture is interesting. Recently one of ours has appointed herself rooster, pecks me when I come in to feed them etc – draws blood if I’m not careful – another one flattens out to be petted, they’re all odd. One runs to the far corner when I come in, since the coyote event. They recycle all of our table scraps that dogs can’t eat (onions, whatever) what they don’t eat they scratch

    We’ve moved their coop twice now, they turned a hard yellow clay soil fro, which an ancient asphalt topping was removed +15 years ago, into pretty loamy actual soil with worms etc. The previous area is now our garden.

    We get an erratic dozen eggs a week, I want to increase that as we’re in a small fenced compound with two families, not quite enough eggs right now. I tried threatening them with tales of beatings and deprivation, but they never listen. Kidding, kidding. I do make fun of them for not having hands.

    We recently upped our dog count from three to five, the new boys are young and very active, and seem to keep the hawk(s) away, which helped deal with the rats. Hawks are flatly uninterested in seeing dogs or people.

    Hard to imagine now NOT having chickens. They’re completely ridiculous and great animals to have around.

    • MapleEngineer@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      We had a deep drought a few years ago. 15 foot deep ponds ran completely dry. The brown forest rats moved into the farms looking for food and water. They were EVERYWHERE. They got into the walls of our buildings, chewed through into the animal houses, and got into the feed. That same year we had an explosion in red squirrels and chipmunks. Then…they were gone. Not one to be seen.

      I was walking toward the brooding house one day and a huge rat (for a brown forest rat) came charging out toward me, ran into my boots, turned and continued. Right behind it came a mink in hot pursuit. The mink had moved in and cleared out the red squirrels, the chipmunks, and the brown forest rats. I told it that it could stay as long as it left the birds alone.

      That worked out well for us.

      Another year our daughter went out to open up and found a row of 9 ducklings with their heads pulled out under the door. A mink had gotten in and killed one and not being able to pull it out under the door went back for another. It worked its way through all of our ducklings before giving up.

      I caught that one. It’s pelt is in my workshop.

      I have a live and let live policy as long as they don’t touch our animals.