Last weekend I made four presentations to the Florida Parent Educators Association in Orlando and the last one was titled  simply “Backyard Chickens.”  Imagine my surprise when several hundred people showed up to that late-in-the-day final session.

            The high energy group listened intently as I gave some basic principles but then Q&A and the informal afterward discussions yielded a painful reality:  almost nobody had a functional chicken coop.  I don’t know how many folks showed me pictures of their coops, prefacing their photos with “now I know it’s all wrong, but here’s my coop.”

            I kept on my game face and enjoyed all the interaction, but it was wearing.  People are cultishly fixated on free-range chickens.  Virtually everyone had a story about predators, from hawks to neighbors’ dogs, attacking and eating these free range birds.  Chickens are not fighters.  And every carnivore and omnivore likes chickens; they’re easy targets and apparently delicious.  And just about the right size for a meal, as opposed to a pig or cow.

            While chickens free ranging on your 1-acre homestead are pretty, seeing the carnage after a predator attack is not.  A handful of chickens scratching around a 1-acre place is one of the most vulnerable, high risk things you can imagine.  That is why I advise no open ranging under flocks of 200.  Until then, use either portable shelters moved daily or stationary shelters with deep bedding—at least 12 inches and preferably 16-24 inches deep.  Yes, including any outdoor run.

            The most unsanitary condition you can offer is a dirt run.  If you have an outdoor run, cover it with deep wood chips.  Add your kitchen scraps, garden weeds, blemished produce, ashes, bureaucrats and whatever.  The chickens will eat most of it and scratch the rest into the carbonaceous diaper, making the best compost you could ever want.

            This means that if you have a stationary coop, it needs a 24-inch non-rotting containment base to accommodate the carbonaceous diaper.  A skiff will not offer a habitat thick enough to encourage robust microbial communities.  

            The way to get chicken benefits, like eliminating ticks and garden bugs, is to hybridize these two protocols with strategic free roaming ONLY when you’re nearby.  If you’re doing yard work or working in the garden, let the chickens out.  They’ll cover the acre in a couple of hours and your presence and awareness will deter predation.  Keep an eye on them—maybe this is a good evening to do a back porch cook-out—until dark.  They’ll go back into their coop and you can close them up until it suits again to let them out.

            You can have your cake and eat it too, but you must must be strategic or your backyard chicken experience will cycle from tragedy to tragedy.  Hatchery outfits must revel in this free roaming cult because it assures them constant customers for replacements.  But a weekly romp in the backyard is plenty to stay abreast of the critters you want the chickens to control.  Otherwise, they can stay happy and protected in their fortress and you don’t have to worry.

            I’d love every family to have backyard chickens, but I struggle to smile through the heartbreaking stories of predator wipe-outs.  It makes me want to scream “your chickens will not hate you if you enclose them protectively on a carbonaceous diaper with plenty of room.”  Think of it as like an infant’s playpen for your chickens.  

            Be honest, do you enjoy your backyard chickens as much as your pet dog or cat?