Cool! I'm trying to convince my husband to let me have chickens, but he's standing fast. I guess I can only be so disappointed, since he's agreed that we can have alpacas once we get a few other projects completed, button up the fencing, and build the run-in. I love chickens.

Connie

Connie,

Keep working on the chickens...they are incredible.

Robert

Very interesting! Some day I'd like to try my hand at either chickens, guinea hens, or pea fowl. Unfortunately, we have plenty of resident predators, from coyote and fox to three different raptors and owls. Pea fowl would probably have the best odds. Do you know if hens also knock down the tick population? Ticks are the bane of our dogs' existence.

One neighbor has maintained, co-existed with chickens and not lost them to coyotes and I don't think he has a hen house, just a chicken population left behind by his MIL when she turned the house over to him. With enough cover, the hawks here prefer fields to his place with large trees.
But another friend who keeps chickens much as sunnysideuphill does, lost her flock of five overnight to somecritter that burrowed under the henhouse enclosure. She only found the tunnel the next day.
To keep hens, try to get some free range eggs and if your DH is an egg eater, the taste might just convince him.

I don't know about ticks - but my two outdoor cats usually come home with several, in spite of my using the scary flea/tick stuff, and come to think of it I can't remember the last time they did. So maybe.....
I live just below a ridge with a large population of hawks, there is a fox that regularly visits up and down the street, and who knows what we don't see. I have lost just one hen - I found a scrap of skin with feathers attached down the street, where the shoulder drops off into a long gully with a seasonal stream.
I don't let them out until the sun is well up, and I always call them in before dusk.
The hen yard has a chicken wire "ceiling" - not just to keep out the hawks, but to avoid becoming the favored pitstop for migrating birds (The Conn River valley is a major flyway).
I have only seen one mouse in the barn, so I think the two outdoor cats do a good job of patrolling that front. Of course there are all the mice they I haven't seen, but I haven't found any nests or droppings, and quite frankly I would not want to be a mouse in the open if those old girls spotted me.
My big concern is that leaving the door to the yard open - so they can go into the barn and lay eggs - may mean that some night I call them home and there will be a Bad Guy waiting inside for them....

I'd love to have chickens.
I'd love to have a few ducks, which keep snails down.

A neighbor keeps chickens, but they have to be kept penned, and shut up at night --
The problems here are coyotes, but also raccoons and I think the possums also kill chix.
The coyotes, in recent years, have come right down out of the hills (where they have always been)
and hunted right through backyards and orchards.
You really begin to understand, when you find the left rear quarter of a kitty
in your rose garden.

Jeri

Guinea fowl will eat insects and ticks without harming the plants and will not scratch in the soil the way hens do. They also lay eggs, of course, and two guinea eggs are equal to one hen egg in size. There are on line sites that go into detail on raising these birds and their needs.

Ingrid

Jeri, I've had cats in the country for years who have lived cheek by jowl with coyotes. My mantra was: always kept inside at night, only outside after dark with a human, and even during the day kept inside unless someone was home to supervise outside excursions. My cats have always been adopted adults and they quickly came to understand the dangers when they hear and smell coyotes in the vicinity. I do tend to blame careless owners who let their cats range at will, especially kittens who don't have the knowledge and wisdom of older cats. After all, would you leave your baby or toddler outside unsupervised?

Ingrid

Sunnyside-i'm suprised to hear your hens leave your mulched areas be. My hens loved to scratch and could rearrange a newly mulced bed in under an hour. Even so, i really miss my hens. Had 4 Araucanas and 2 Plymouth Rocks. Real sweeties, not much trouble and good centipede control. can just picture the commotion when you tossed those beetles in the henyard :)

Mongeese are the big predators here. Introduced in the 1880s to help control the rat population in the cane fields. Did a great job with the rats but then moved on to the native bird population which was not such a good thing.

It was the dogs who got ours tho'. They warmed right up to our cats when they moved in but never the hens. The gate didn't latch properly one day and well-you know the rest.

My mulch is still being rearranged, courtesy of the wild chickens and quail who sometimes drop by for a visit. Wild chickens are far too wily for a mongoose to catch but Max prevails occasionally.

I think a chicken would eat a tick if they came across it, but the way guineas feed makes them more likely to find and eat them (when I've seen ticks, they hang out at the ends of grass leaves or whatever near pathways). Guineas love grass seeds, so they grab the low end of a seed head and pull, stripping off all the seeds (and ticks).

I don't think you have to worry about hawks with grown chickens, but they will try for babies. However, great horned owls are another thing, they killed nearly every chicken I had in Texas. So, it's best to have a place to lock them up at night. My grandfather always put wire under the chicken house so nothing could dig under and get them. Just about everything will kill a chicken given the chance, dogs, opossums, raccoons, coyotes, (cats will kill the babies, or bantams if they're a small enough variety).

Do not get peafowl and expect to have a lot of flowers, they're notorious for destroying flowers. In fact, most pheasants can be pretty destructive. I had Silver Pheasants at my place in Texas. They were stunningly beautiful, but they had a knack for finding every single crocus bulb, and apparently nearly all pheasants love bulbs generally (not daffodils, though). Still, pheasants are very thorough snail/slug eaters, as are ducks.

I've had lots of experience with chickens, and I enjoy them the most. I'd have guineas here, except that they love to roam quite long distances, and with people treating the road out front as the Indy 500 I'd end up with all of them being road kill (what is it with people who think it's OK to run over animals?). Ducks are pretty great too, but if you have a pond with waterlilies, you'll soon have a pond without waterlilies.

--Ron

My chickens love digging in the woodchip mulch... Fortunately, they stay on the side yard where there are only a few things planted. The turkeys, however, go everywhere in the garden and are fairly good about not digging. They do occasionally trample small plants - one patch of shasta daisys is flattened, and they LOVE eating the garlic chives and mint! Once or twice a day they will make a trip all the way around and through each bed eating bugs. Sure beats spraying or pulling my hair out about the grasshopper damage... And smoked turkey is delicious. :-)

Ingrid, that's exactly the rules my cats live by, even here. I started that regime in Santa Fe: Coyotes, Gt horned owls; loose dogs, drunk drivers.

Chickens are scheduled for day two after I after retire. I had a few that I kept in the house when they were chicks and they imprinted on the cats. When they grew up, they flung themselves on the french doors and if I let them in, they'd follow the cats everywhere. Then after the wildlife got two, I gave the rest away. So they will have to wait until I have more time to supervise. But yes, they are the best debuggers.