<p>Are you keeping chickens in a city or suburb? A special breed? Aside from eggs, do you have another reason like using feathers in fly-tying?</p>
<p>I hate backyard roosters. They’re very noisy! Do your neighbors a favor and don’t get one.</p>
<p>Our neighbors have chickens. BUT NO ROOSTER. They asked everyone on the street if this would be OK before they got them. Every single family said fine as long as there was NOT a rooster.</p>
<p>P.S. We live in a rural area on two acre lots. MOST suburbs and cities have specific ordinances AGAINST raising farm animals. Check first before you get them. And it doesn’t matter the size of your lot…if it’s zoned residential, the chickens might be prohibited by your zoning laws.</p>
<p>Roosters are mean, as well as noisy. They sex the chicks so it’s easy to buy hens.</p>
<p>I have chickens and love them. I live in a suburb that has no ordinances about having them but I advise checking into this before purchasing. As to sexing chickens, most places guarantee to be 90% accurate. We bought six chicks and within two months, it was apparent one was a rooster. We are stuck with Mr. Bud. He is noisy and, to date, I have not found a home for him. I don’t eat meat so having him for dinner is not an option. I think chickens live about 5-6 years on the average…sigh…</p>
<p>In terms of care-predators are a concern. We have a fenced area that they stay in when no one is home. At night they roost in a small yardbarn that we close after they have put themselves to bed. It is fun to watch them line up at dusk and head to their barn. We bought the yardbarn from Lowe’s and built a nesting center in it. </p>
<p>My favorite chickens are the miniature ones called bantams. They are cute, friendly and not too much trouble to care for. Their eggs are smaller; two are the rough equivalent of a large egg. We have had chickens for two years now and I wish I had gotten them sooner. They are fun to observe and produce great fertilizer for my flowerbeds (need to let it sit for a while before using-acidic.</p>
<p>Hens, not roosters. It is legal in Chicago. Evanston issues permits.</p>
<p>Ever get a double yolked egg? Would two chicks hatch? I know, I know, not without a rooster.</p>
<p>I love hearing a rooster crow. But I grew up in the country. Still, I find it to be a comforting sound.</p>
<p>I had a backyard neighbor that decided to raise chickens. I was talking over the fence one day, and she was lamenting the fact that she got the “wrong kind” and I thought she was going to tell a story about having to care for useless chickens. Her younger daughter loved them, and named one after herself. She goes on to tell me one day after dinner, she says to her daughter “oh, we just ate ****”. </p>
<p>I do realize where my chicken comes from, but once it’s a pet you shouldn’t eat it. The daughter had a lot of problems.</p>
<p>I’ve had chickens for about 7 years. The most I had was 19, now I’m down to 4 survivors. Mine are Aracaunas, officially, but in reality I think they are what one would call Easter Eggers, a mixture of Aracauna and something else. They lay blue, green, or pinkish eggs in various shades. </p>
<p>I love the hens. I trained them to come when I call using bird seed. Most of the time they were free range, with a secure chicken house they return to at night. A few years ago some foxes moved into the woods behind our house, and ate three hens in two days. Since then they have been mostly in a large pen, but they don’t like it and neither do I. That plus the fact that there are no longer any neighbor kids to take care of them if we go away has kept me from getting more.</p>
<p>I had an accidental rooster at one point, and I hated him. He crowed all day long, and he attacked me and most other people when we came anywhere near the flock. I had to keep a stick or broom on the back porch to keep him away with, and another in my car so that I could get out without being attacked. One day he attacked me from behind as I was going up the steps and drew blood. The next day I called an Asian guy who had put up a card in the local feed store offering to take away unwanted poultry for eating. Frankly, I don’t care if he used that bloody rooster for cockfighting: that’s what he wanted to do. But hens are great.</p>
<p>We would never eat our laying hens. I had a friend in college who had, with some neighbor kids, pet rabbits. One day their fathers slaughtered all of them for meat!</p>
<p>Consolation-- Now that you bring it up, I remember the combative roosters. It made me laugh (now that I don’t have to contend with it). When you have to live with the little b@$+@~&s they are not so funny.</p>
<p>Our geese used to try to kill me too. Ouch!</p>
<p>Laying hens are tough meat…only good for Campbell’s soup. Oh yes, geese are violent.</p>
<p>Country kids eventually learn it is best to have a slight sense of detachment from pets…</p>
<p>Where they’re permitted, some CT suburbanites like to keep chickens for tick control. Unfortunately (for the chickens) CT has lots of coyotes and foxes. My neighbor was losing one per day … until “the word” got around and then more predators showed up!</p>
<p>Guineas fowl are great for tick control but can be really noisy. We have three that hang with the chickens during the day but roost in a flower box in a second floor window of our home when it gets dark. What a noise though when they get wound up. My neighbors are wonderfully tolerant; I buy their silence with eggs and tick management!</p>
<p>Suburbs here–a couple of my friends have chickens. Eggs and bug control were the main reasons, but they have become pets (“the ladies”). Breed was Buff Orpington.</p>
<p>Our Seattle suburb now allows hens, but no roosters. We bought 6 chicks last year, raised them in a guinea pig cage in the bathroom until they got their feathers. One turned out to be a rooster and was handed to a local farm family.</p>
<p>I converted the kids’ playhouse into a henhouse, cut a hole in the side and fenced in a 10x10 scratch area. It’s covered with netting to keep out the raptors. I built a roosting ladder and a shelf with 2 nesting boxes. The backyard is fenced and they get to roam the yard during the day. I buried an extension cord out to the henhouse so they don’t get all broody during the winter.</p>
<p>We have an assortment of breeds to find our favorites: Jersey Giant, Buff Orpington, Wyandotte (she’s a good layer but kind of noisy), Plymouth Rock, and a Welsummer. The Welsummer and the Buff Orpington have the nicest looking feathers. We get about 4 fresh eggs/day. My wife finds them calming and therapeutic. They do not require much work but you will have to protect anything you don’t want eaten or pooped on.</p>
<p>Most of fly tying requires special-bred hackle roosters raised for about 2 years. Do NOT get roosters. It is cheaper and way less annoying to buy the skins already prepared.</p>
<p>I had chickens when we lived in a rural area. I brought home thirteen chicks and after they had grown up into chickens I put them outside in a pen. That night I went out to put them in their henhouse for the night and there were only 12 in the pen. The next day there were 11. The next day, 10. That was the day H saw a hawk sitting in a tree deciding who would be lunch. I could not let them roam and eat ticks, which was the main reason I wanted them. They had to be kept in a completely closed up (including the top) pen. They were sent to a neighbor who had a heated henhouse for the winter but a fox got in and killed everything. I decided chickens were a lot of bother. Mine were Black Rosecombs.</p>
<p>What surprises me is that raising chickens in your back yard is popular enough that there are several magazines devoted to it, e.g. Backyard Poultry:</p>
<p>[Backyard</a> Poultry magazine. Dedicated to more and better small-flock poultry.](<a href=“Backyard Poultry -”>http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/)</p>
<p>And, apropos of nothing, this story amuses the heck out of me for some reason:</p>
<p>[Mike’s</a> Story](<a href=“http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php]Mike’s”>http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php)</p>
<p>I had a neighbor with a rooster growing up in Queens, NYC.</p>
<p>I live near a “free range” chicken place in NCal, but am now way to aware of the “circle of life” to get intimately involved. About one a week there is some dead animal that I hope gets taken away in the night. Tonight, I think it’s a quail that flew into my window. Wednsday, there was a turkey. It might have been looking for an egg I saw at the bottom of the pool.</p>
<p>For those of you who want your chickens to “roam” to eat ticks, etc. but want to protect them from predators, consider a chicken tractor instead of a chicken coop.</p>
<p>We had chickens for a while. They were H’s project, but we kept them out next to the horse barn. So who ended up caring for them most of the time since we were down there to care for the horses already? Yep, D and I did. We did not dislike them, it just added more work. They have to have plenty of clean, fresh water at all times (and boy can they get their water dirty in a hurry). We had to make sure the heater was working at all times in the winter to keep the water in a liquid state. Nesting boxes need to be kept clean. They are messy and smelly.</p>
<p>We too had the problem of predators, either foxes or raccoons, getting the chickens. At that point, we let them in the main part of the horse barn which did seem to protect them, but again, what a mess! We would go to grab hay for the horses and end up with chicken poop on our hands. They would roost in the horses’ feed tubs. And we did get attached to those we had left. </p>
<p>As others have said, you can’t be sure you don’t get roosters when you buy chicks. We bought 24 chicks and 2 were roosters. We kept them, but the one was a terror. D and I could not go in the chicken area without a pitch fork to keep that rooster away. And you better know where he was at all times - don’t turn your back on him. Yet S, who was about 4 or 5 yo at the time was fearless and would go right in, pick up Zeke, put him under his arm and walk around with him. He and Zeke had some sort of understanding! These were Rhode Island Reds, so he was a pretty big bird.</p>
<p>Much as it would be nice to have fresh eggs again, I really have no desire to have chickens.</p>