It was worth doing.
They turned out to be more articulate, intelligent little creatures that I gave them credit for before I started and they had a lot of personality.
I built a nice PVC coop that used a doghouse as sleeping area.
Advice:
Find out about chicken diseases, supplements and chicken doctoring before you start.
Downsides:
Chicks are cute. The whole laying eggs and hatching them is educational for the kids, but a lot of them grow up to be roosters. Roosters don’t live together peacefully and the fighting can get vicious. For us getting rid of the extras turned out to be difficult.
Chicken females have a strict hierarchy and the bottom one gets hen-pecked - it’s unfair and a bit upsetting and there’s not much you can do about it.
With the kids they turned out to be “death with training wheels”. We buried quite a few of them, so it was a good opportunity to practice and discuss death and the rituals that we have around it in a simpler context.
There are a lot of good websites and books aimed at keeping chickens at home, but they tend to have rose coloured glasses on for the most part.
But for millenia, for most, it has not been difficult.
You start with chickens, maybe for chicken tractors. Then you have roosters. And then you realize your agrarian fantasy is generating too much vegetative "waste". So you get a pig. In order to make it "self sustaining", you need a male. And now, you have to learn how to process whole pigs.
I'd do it, and have, in bits and pieces, but the part I really don't like is: no vacations.
We recently introduced a bantam rooster to our flock- he’s great and he’s really helped with the pecking order issues, but now we have to pull the eggs every 2 days at most (to avoid creating balut[0]).
And neighbors to check in in the past, although now I have camera systems I can view live, and just ask my neighbor to stop by if something is amiss.
Overall it makes it relatively easy to leave as-needed. For me, one neighbor stop is typically going to mean I can be gone a couple of weeks, with likely no issues.
Then combine that with little nipped feeders, and at least for water they can be good for a long time.
I can imagine a situation where the chickens are entirely confined. Ok, we never did that. For us, the roosters flew to the high branches of the quite large grapefruit trees. There they were mostly safe, and were of course expendable anyway. The hens (sometimes ducks) were locked up nightly in a rather carefully built hen house completely enclosed in a chickewire box. Maybe 20'x10'x10'. You could walk around in it no problem, along with the 10 or so chickens and the roost box.
This was on the edge of the Everglades in S. Florida. We had a variety of varmints. The varmints occasionally breached the defences. Repairs were occasionally required. Losses happened. That's what I wonder about entirely confined chickens, while granting varmints more or less unlimited time to work on the problem. What's the difference?
And there's that "recently" word lurking in my parent... we'll see what the spillover effects are.
I'm going to add that I've had a box turtle for 27 years, and my last cat lasted 16 years. And we have traveled multiple weeks multiple times a year for decades.
I am all in favor of personal enslavement to an agrarian fantasy. For many years my wife the master gardener has besieged me (the cook) with the fruit of her 5 raised beds. It took us about 4 tries to get through a summer (in AZ at 5500') without having to monitor/water the garden semi daily. We fixed that, with occasional failure. However, you have to concede significant losses if you travel around harvest season: stuff really wants to leap off the plants in a timely manner.
So... all I am saying is that this is not a simple game if it lasts for a significant part of your lifetime, if you want to travel.
Chickens don't really attract rats, the food you feed them that does. So don't feed them more than they'll eat in a few hours and let them out to scratch in your yard.
I've seen chickens chase mice and swallow them whole. And they'd do the same with a small rat. And I mean the whole flock chasing them until it's caught and consumed.
Roosters can be an issue when you have neighbors close by. They'll crow all day and even in the middle of the night, and always at the crack of dawn. And they get "cocky". They grow spurs in a few years and they will use them on you, and your kids.
My advice is you buy a few hens, year olds are a good start. If you buy chicks make sure they're sexed and know you might still get a rooster.
And, yeah, the eggs are better than store bought, and often a lot better.
I was lucky for a few years until my most recent rooster. He's been the only one that was aggressive with the family.
I used to go out armed with a trash can lid as a shield. He wouldn't attack that, but he'd look for weaknesses in my defense.
I've never actually caught a spur, but it sure doesn't look fun.
If you do, the chickens will actively seek you out to hang out with you.
Thier coop will need regular cleaning and everything will try to eat them so you really need a coop.
I'm not sure rats will be a problem if you keep their food in a metal container. Your biggest urban threat is likely raccoons.
Couple of things to keep in mind. You likely need to get at least 6 chicks to start as most stores will not sell in smaller quantities.
Additionally, you really don't want to end up with more than a single male. To that end DO NOT get a "straight run" of unsexed chicks. If you do, expect a bloodbath.
Straight runs tend to be what is left after the chicks that could be sexed as female have already been removed.
My daughter tends to the chickens here and they follow her and come running when they hear and see her. They adore her. It's pretty awesome to witness that.
They are funny creatures. They are basically little dinosaurs, with different behavior than other home animals. They are super efficient, rarely get food poisoning, and can eat almost everything. They are interesting creatures just to look at. I would always recommend taking chickens, but please keep in mind the following:
* They do make noise. The rooster is loud. But the hens make many funny sounds as well. When they laid an egg they make (loud) cackling noises. I don't mind this, but make sure your neighbors don't mind as well.
* Roosters don't like each other. They will kill each other if they have the chance! If you buy them as chicks, be prepared that you have to get rid of the roosters if you have more than one.
* Roosters also don't like me. I usually get attacked by my rooster when I enter the chicken area. I don't mind (I'm steeling his eggs, so I understand), but some people might get scared by this behavior.
* Chickens are social animals. Always keep at least two chickens together.
* Chicken feces smell. You must clean the area often.
* Hens don't always lay eggs. They get broody now and then. During the broody they only want to sit on the eggs, and don't have much interest in anything else.
* Hens and roosters have a hate/love relation. Roosters want to fertilize the hens all day long (which they don't like). But they also take care of the hens. A rooster will take care the hens stay together, he makes sure the hens eat first, he supports the broody hens, gather all hens together during nighttime.
* In the first two years they lay eggs almost every day. But when they get older they lay fewer eggs. After a year or five they stop laying eggs.
* I suggest to buy a food-o-matic (or similar) device for feeding. These devices make sure that rats and mice cannot get to the feed.
Predators are our biggest issue. We've lost one to a coyote and have to be pretty vigilant when they are out because of the hawks in our area.
Snakes, raccoons, coyotes, bobcats, and hawks all visit us here and take their toll.
My daughter has grown up with "critters" and she still has a hard time loosing a chicken.
Some breeds are better with humans, while others rather be left alone, so if that's important, I'd recommend seeing how they are when you pick them up.
The main challenge is keeping them safe from predators, and it's a bit of stress when you're at home and think you hear them squawking and have to run out to check that they're safe.
Side note, if we weren't avid egg eaters, I would have gotten silkies as they are more petlike and lay a lot less. The bantam versions are good for smaller spaces but that does open up more predators that can target them. I feel comfortable with my larger hens as they can defend against most small attackers like rats (who live in fear of the ladies now), small hawks, and house cats. I agree with most of the other recommendations on getting just hens preferably all the same breed and same age as it limits the bullying among them. There are a ton of great resources out there on raising and caring for chickens. The big ones are know what predators are in your area and build/buy a coop accordingly, free range is great if you have a protector type animal (rooster, livestock dog, some goats even), otherwise plan to have a covered run or moveable run, and you will get so many eggs so planning ahead on how to deal with them is a good idea. I scramble the extras and they get fed to the dogs and back to the chickens. You can crush the eggshells in the cooked eggs for the chickens to help them recoop the calcium.
Free eggs are nice but you'll have to clean after them, and they're pretty messy (probably not an issue when you only have like 5 hens).
You'll probably want to get rid of any roosters unless you want violence in the coop and eggs with some, uh, extra protein.
#1 take-away: Raising chickens is the art and science of chicken shit management.
If you can manage the shit (literally and emotionally) then it's a blast.
They poop. Everywhere. All the time.
A piece of advice people seem to not know or not think about - rats will actively attack chickens. When making somewhere for them to sleep at night make sure you take rats in to account. They will dig under pen walls and get in to the hutch if given half a chance.
You'll definitely experience attrition - whether through dogs, varmints or old age. Case in point - our dog at the time (a wonderful, sweet Lab) thought he was supposed to kill them. Our youngest son caught him in the act one day and "gave him a lecture" and he never killed again. Still, we had one taken by a hawk, another one mauled (and ultimately killed) by a 'possum. They also attracted other critters like racoons, although to my knowledge, they never killed any of our chickens.
TL;DR - IMO, it's actually great for the kids, and you'll never want to go back to eating industrial chicken farm eggs again.
Lots of online plans, e.g.
https://morningchores.com/chicken-coop-plans/#free-plans
Ours was something like this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180118072607/http://www.freshe...
A wood frame base. A PVC frame on top of it. Plastic netting covering it all.
Sleeping quarters inside was a small wooden doghouse (with liftable roof) that had comfortable roosting beams attached inside.
Newspaper on floor of doghouse to replace every once in a while to clean.
(Edit: but this one is already a bit correlated with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31059524)
(Edit 2: also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31058636. Is this Chicken Day?)
In some cultures, yes. Children re-enact the traditional Great Unhatched Chicken Hunt, etc.
If you want a pet, get a puppy.
If you want eggs, go to the supermarket.