Keep Chickens!: Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces (16 page)

Chickens lay their eggs at about the same time each day. Because chickens typically lay an egg every 25 hours, you would expect them to lay their next egg later each day. My Girls don’t do this. Lucy is the early riser, and I’ll find her hot egg between 8 and 10 a.m. each day. Zsa Zsa jumps into the nest box next and starts her celebratory egg squawk about an hour after Lucy. True to her laid-back form, when Whoopee bothers to lay an egg, it’s late in the afternoon, after I’ve already gathered the early eggs. Though Lucy and Zsa Zsa always lay eggs in their nest boxes, Whoopee sometimes can’t be troubled to waddle into the henhouse, and she will drop her egg just inside the coop door, where she was pacing and waiting to be let out.

Encourage your hens to lay in the nest boxes you’ve built for them. To do this, keep your hens cooped up until late in the afternoon, until you’re sure they all had a chance to lay. This way, the hens won’t get used to laying hidden eggs in the garden. Once your hens are accustomed to their laying routine, they can be let out in the yard, and when the urge to lay hits them, they’ll run right back to the nest box.

Sometimes a hen just won’t get it. Instead of laying an egg in those lovely nest boxes you’ve built her, she will lay on the henhouse floor (not the cleanest place to lay eggs, especially after a night of roosting) or dig a hole in the run and lay there. Show your hen to the nest box by planting a fake egg there. You can buy a fake egg at the feed store, but any egglike object will do. I’ve used those hollow plastic Easter eggs and golf balls. Both work well in luring the hen to the nest box to lay. Once a hen sees an “egg” in the nest box, she seems to say to herself, “Ooh, that looks like a good place to lay an egg! Someone has already laid there . . . guess I will lay there, too!” Voilà, egg in nest box.

Chickens need between 14 and 16 hours of light each day to lay. To keep your hens laying eggs consistently through the winter months, install a hanging light fixture with a 25- to 40-watt bulb set on a timer in the henhouse. Some folks install heat lamps for this purpose, but I think that they run the risk of making the henhouse too hot. Set the timer to turn on two hours before dawn and two hours after sunset. Small-wattage bulbs in the henhouse can make a big difference in the frequency and number of eggs laid throughout the winter months.

While artificial winter lighting for chickens is generally a good thing, I have one caveat. Extending natural daylight appears to play around with chickens’ internal clocks. They wake up before the sun comes up, and they stay awake in their henhouse long after the sun has set. The net effect can be to turn mere household hens into bona fide party chicks.

I gave the Girls lots of extra light last winter. I noticed that instead of going to bed at dusk, like most chickens, the Girls began hanging out later and later in the garden. I wasn’t sure how they were doing this, as chickens are notoriously night blind. Then I saw that they were using the shaft of light that shone through the open coop doors to find their way back home. One time, the coop and henhouse doors had somehow closed, and no light spilled out into the yard. On a moonless winter night, I looked out the back window and saw them standing together, fluffed out and huddled close in a group in the middle of the lawn. They had been so busy hunting bugs they didn’t notice it had become dark. The Girls couldn’t find their way back to the henhouse and figured they’d tough the night out unsheltered in a huddle in the yard.

In an ideal world, you would collect eggs promptly after they are laid. But because most folks aren’t stay-at-home chicken lovers, it’s more realistic to say that the eggs should be brought in no later than the end of each day. Eggs left in the nest box overnight or for several days will not be fresh. Also, eggs left too long in a nest box are prone to breakage, as the hens lay more eggs on top of preexisting eggs. Leaving eggs in the nest box may encourage bored or anxious hens to begin eating the eggs. This bad chicken habit is very hard to break once it’s begun, so prevent it by collecting eggs each day. This won’t be too hard to do, especially if you have kids. Kids love to race outside and get the fresh eggs. Who can blame them? Collecting fresh eggs from your own garden is really cool!

Bits of dirt or manure may adhere to the eggshell during the egg’s brief stay in the nest box. When you bring in the eggs, wipe them clean with a dry cloth or lightly scrub them with a coarse paper towel or very fine sandpaper. If you can avoid it, do not wash the egg with water. Eggshells have a natural outer coating that keeps bacteria out. This outer coating is water soluble; in other words, if you wash the egg, you also wash away its protective coating. If the egg is so dirty that you must wash it, use it right away.

If you can’t use a dirty egg right away, use a damp sponge with no detergent to rub off the dirt. Dry the eggshell thoroughly with a soft cloth, then rub a little cooking oil over the entire egg, wiping away the excess. The oil will help replace the natural coating on the shell that keeps bacteria and other unwanted organisms out of the shell’s precious contents. Personally, I don’t fuss around much with Ma Nature, and I recommend washing the egg only as a last resort. Usually a dry rub will do the job.

Store eggs in the refrigerator, where they’ll stay fresh for two to three weeks.

Do not hard boil eggs immediately upon collecting them. The whites and yolks of day-fresh eggs just don’t gel adequately. Also, the egg white sticks in large chunks to the eggshell when you try to peel a fresh hard-cooked egg. I recommend that, after collecting eggs, you dry them and put them in the fridge for a day or two to give their gelatinous contents a little time to settle down inside their shells.

Although I doubt you’ll have trouble giving away your fresh eggs, you just might have Super Hens that lay too many. Don’t let any precious eggs go to waste. You can always freeze eggs for later use. However, never freeze eggs in their shell unless you enjoy eggs exploding in your freezer. Crack the fresh, surplus eggs into a freezer-tolerant container, scramble them up with a little salt, and seal the container securely. This way, your extra eggs keep in the freezer up to six months.

If you and your family are eating all the eggs you want but don’t want to freeze the extras, you may want to share the surplus with those less fortunate than you and your family. Contact your nearest women’s or homeless shelter or any other charity that feeds hungry people to inquire whether it will receive your eggs.

What if you have more eggs than you can give away? Can you sell your surplus? The only thing you cannot readily do with your surplus eggs is sell them. Com-mercial egg producers are required to heed federal standards and industry guidelines for egg quality, so all eggs (presumably) are in-spected to ensure they comply. Unless you want to set yourself up as a commercial egg producer, complete with adherence to federal regulations, regular health inspections, and a lot of other red tape, you cannot sell your eggs. In fact, city law usually prohibits the unregulated sale of fresh eggs by residential chicken keepers. Exceptions to this type of law may permit you to sell the eggs privately at produce stands and community farmers’ markets. However, don’t sell a single egg until you check your city codes or town ordinances for the law.

Poultry Tribune,
circa 1940.

Many people associate chickens with filthy living conditions. It’s true that a chicken coop that’s not cleaned once or twice a week will get stinky. But we human keepers have certain responsibilities to our critters. The main commitment that we have to city chickens is to keep their coop clean. If the coop is well maintained, it won’t smell, and the birds will be both happy and healthy.

Large numbers of chickens are difficult to keep super clean. That’s why chicken farms are located on acreage, not on a city lot. Fortunately, a few chickens in a city yard are nothing like dozens of chickens on a small farm or hundreds of birds in a mass-production chicken environment. The advantage to a small flock of chickens in the city is that the birds are easy to keep clean. You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment, regular inspections from the USDA, or even more than a couple of hours of work every week. Cleanliness for a small two- to five-bird coop simply means removing and properly disposing of the manure in the coop and henhouse regularly.

Moisture is the enemy of a clean coop. Excessive moisture from chicken droppings or spilled drinking water leads to molds and bacteria, which can lead to allergies or infections in the chickens. Moisture unchecked eventually ferments and stinks, which leads to unhappy neighbors and a steady convention of blowflies in and around the coop.

Your chicken coop will stay fresh and dry if you place liberal portions of chopped straw and wood shavings (especially pine) on the floor of the run and the henhouse. It’s important that the straw be chopped; unchopped straw can contribute to moisture buildup and disease. Each week, spread 8 to 12 inches (20–31 cm) of chopped straw over the chicken run. It sounds like a lot, but it gets tamped down quickly with a busy flock of bell-bottomed chickens stomping about. Spread 1 to 2 inches (3–5 cm) of wood shavings over the floor of the henhouse, and put fresh chopped straw over that, in the same thickness as in the run. Fill each nest box with 6 to 8 inches (15–20 cm) of straw, tamping it down to provide a firm fit for the hen and her bottom. Hens like to lay their eggs in tidy places that are private and quiet.

You can buy bales of straw from your local feed store. Large bales of straw cost about $5 and will last for several coop cleanings. They should be stored in a dry place. I buy two bales at a time and store them behind the chicken coop, tucked beneath the deep roof eaves and covered by a rubber tarp. Don’t store your straw where the chickens have access to it. Chickens love to play in fresh straw. If you leave a bale where they can get to it, they will have the time of their lives kicking it apart.

At least once a week, remove thickly soiled sections of straw from the run and henhouse. Scoop up the debris with a pitchfork or rake it into a pile. If you don’t have a compost bin, now is the time to get one. Put the soiled straw into your compost bin, along with the usual organic composting materials. Chicken poop is a rich source of nitrogen, an essential active agent in the composting process. After you have scooped out most of the droppings in the coop, fluff up the remaining straw with a pitchfork or rake. Then, top it off generously with a layer of fresh straw 8 to 12 inches (20–31 cm) thick.

Straw is the best kind of litter for the chicken coop; it is absorbent and sweet smelling.

Composted chicken manure becomes rich garden soil.

If you don’t have enough space for more than one or two compost bins, you need to consider how and where to dispose of soiled straw. On trash collection day, you could put the soiled straw out in addition to other yard debris for the period. A better alternative is to offer it to your friends. I have friends and neighbors lining up for my manure-laced straw. They bring by their trash cans and wheelbarrows, and I fill them up with the soiled bedding from the coop. Friends leave my house with cars full of chicken poop and smiles on their faces. I’m never at a lack for takers on coop-cleaning day. Actually, I have a waiting list for every barrel of poop straw I don’t use in my own compost bin. Who would have guessed that chicken poop would make me so popular with my friends?

A note about composting: It takes time. Warmth, combined with regular air and moisture, hastens the composting process, regardless of what is in the compost bin. Don’t expect to toss mounds of chicken droppings into the compost bin and then to mix it into your garden soil a week later. The high acidity of the chicken manure in the immature compost can be too much for your garden plants. Putting large, concentrated quantities of chicken manure directly into a garden can “burn” your plants. Manure, together with the other compost ingredients (lawn clippings, fallen leaves, coffee grounds, vegetable discards — produce too wilted or rotten to feed to the chickens — and bits of clay soil) needs to break down over three to six months.