Читать книгу Hobby Farm Animals - Chris McLaughlin - Страница 44

If you’re new at chicken keeping, don’t overextend yourself. Start small and learn as you go. The downside to this advice is that adding new birds to an established flock upsets its pecking order and spawns stress. Overall, though, it’s better for your birds to hatch out a new hierarchy than for you to bite off more than you can chew.

By the same token, if you’re experienced or you’re certain about how many you want to keep, you’ll save your chickens a lot of stressful infighting—and possibly disease—by buying all the birds you need up front and then maintaining a closed flock (meaning that you don’t add new adult chickens to an established flock) until you start back at square one again.

Unless you can spend a lot of quality time with a pet chicken (as you might with a house chicken), buy at least two. Chickens are sociable birds; a solitary cock or hen will be lonely.

You should also buy at least one layer hen per family member—or more if your family eats a lot of eggs or if you choose a dual-purpose breed. If you plan to maintain a closed flock, you should allow for several years’ flock mortality. To do this, purchase 10–20 percent more chicks than you initially think you’ll need, but don’t buy more birds than you can properly house.