Chicken Chores...A Piece of Cake! Having a Chicken Farm is Fun and Easy!

Some people have told me that they would love to have chickens, but they don't feel like they have the time to take care of them and the work might be too hard. But, I like to tell them, chickens are a piece of cake especially if their coop is set up correctly. A nicely strategized coop on a chicken farm means a lot less work for the person who takes care of the chickens aka the "Chicken Tender".

Before my husband and I built our coop a couple years ago, we did a bunch of research to find ways of simplifying every day chores for the chickens. We found several great ideas from other coops we saw online or from friends with chickens. Because of my highly efficient coop, morning and evening chicken chores hardly take ten minutes to do....making chicken raising super quick and easy!

Here are several things we've done at Kelly's Fluffy Butt Hut to make our chores easy peasy:

The Chicken Door is open in this picture, but at night, a blue door slides down blocking the opening from predators.

Number One: Automatic Chicken Door

Having a chicken door with a morning and evening timer allows the chickens to come and go from the coop freely during the day and locks them securely up at 9:15 in the evening before the owls, racoons, and skunks go hunting. I love having the automatic chicken door, especially when I'm away from home. The door protects the hens from predators during the night time hours, and gives them freedom during the day without me having to manually open the door. The chicken door is also very tiny, as you can see from the picture, which "helps" to keep daytime predators from finding a way inside the coop. Of course, break-ins still happen occasionally, which happened in my post called Hawk Attack.

Rain Barrel

Number Two: Rain Barrel

Watering the hens is important, especially during the heat of the summer. My husband installed a rain barrel right outside my coop by attaching it to one of the gutters on our barn. The gutters constantly dump gallons of water into the barrel so it rarely gets empty, it has a huge holding tank. I have a water spigot in the front to water plants and wash my hands. We have a pvc pipe running from the rain barrel to the inside of the chicken run to provide fresh water to the girls.

The pvc pipe has several watering bowls for the girls to grab a quick drink. Whenever I'm inside the coop, they love to show off their drinking fountain by drinking together in large groups.

Attached to the pvc pipe, the chickens have several water bowls that constantly fill up from the rain water. The rain barrel has been a wonderful way to recycle water, and I no longer have to carry five gallon buckets of water to the coop to fill up the chickens' water every day. During the winter, we have a different set-up, but for the rest of the year, watering the girls does not take a minute of my time.

Trash Bin Feeder

Number Three: Trash Can Feeder

Last year we changed trash companies for trash pickup at our house. The original trash company never picked up their huge trash bin, so I decided to convert their old bin to a large chicken feeder...and boy does it do a wonderful job!

I ordered a kit from Amazon which included the drill bit to cut out holes at the bottom of the trash bin and also included the inserts for the chickens to stick their heads inside to grab a bite to eat. I fill up the trash bin only once a month with 250 pounds of chicken feed. Filling a trash bin that feeds 70 chickens once a month is a very good deal in my books, because I used to fill up tiny chicken feeders once a day or once every other day. This is a huge time savings! Plus, several of my girls like to perch on top of the trash bin at night to sleep, so they love this set-up too.

Nesting Boxes

Number Four: Nice Nesting Boxes

Having nice nesting boxes that are located off the ground, and that are in a clean, not poopy, part of the coop guarantees nice looking eggs without a lot of "gunk" on them. Chickens love a nice nesting area, and if it's clean and quiet, they will lay their eggs in the correct spot instead of all over the coop. Egg collection is my longest chore of the day, but I do have three dozen eggs to collect, so it takes about five minutes...which is still not too bad especially since egg collecting doesn't seem like a chore to me. It's my daily Easter egg hunt that I love, with lots of hens walking on my muck boots telling me about their day with their sweet clucking sounds while I carefully place their eggs inside my basket.

So, everyone definitely should get chickens....it's a piece of cake!

Thanks for reading my Country Squawk,

Kelly