Raising chickens is easier than it looks
By Marissa Hermanson

The urban-meets-agriculture movement is becoming more and more prominent, and people with little to no agricultural experience are starting to raise hens in their backyards. About a year ago, Boulder resident Ellie Goldberg and her husband, Ben Kamark, started raising chickens and now care for three hens at their home in Martin Acres. Goldberg worked at the kids’ camp at Cure Organic Farm and became familiar with chickens; she then realized that raising chickens in her backyard was doable.

Goldberg says that raising chickens isn’t just for people with an agricultural background. She works part-time at Cultiva and is a beginning gardener who is new to the agricultural scene. Hens don’t take very much maintenance — you just have to be handy to build the coop, be informed and do some research.

“I think there’s a lot of work up front with building the coop, because there are lots of predators around,” says Goldberg. “You need to have a pretty secure area for them to be in. We have a little wooden house that they can go into, but they also have a huge cage.”

Goldberg and her husband built a chicken coop out of salvaged materials. The coop has three levels of security: a coop, an enclosed eight-foot tall, 10×10-foot cage over the coop and a six-foot fence encircling it. Half of the yard is encompassed in the six-foot fence so that the chickens can have free reign of the yard without flying over the fence. At night she cages them for protection from predators.

Goldberg says that people should do research before buying chicks — reading up on how to house them and on their possible health problems.

“You have to be prepared to raise them, if you’re buying them as chicks,” says Goldberg. “You have to set up a place for them to be until they are old enough to go outside — basically, when all their feathers are in and when it’s warm outside. Ours didn’t go out until April or May.”

Goldberg and her husband bought six chicks from Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply in Longmont last February. They kept them in a large Tupperware container with shavings and a heat lamp. When they got bigger, Goldberg kept them in a baby pool in the basement. And finally, when the weather warmed up, she and her husband moved them out to the coop.

Goldberg now has three of the six chickens.

One went missing (Goldberg suspects a predator), one died from shock, and another died from hemorrhaging from a burst blood vessel.

Goldberg says that chickens are prone to respiratory diseases. If your chicken is sick, she suggests that you isolate it to prevent spreading the disease to other chickens. Take it to a specialist, like Dr. Greg Hayes of Arapahoe Animal Hospital, who treats chickens, as well as exotic birds and falcons.

“When they are chicks, they can get different diseases, and it’s a product of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, [like] not changing their bedding,” says Goldberg. “For the home chicken raiser, it’s not a big issue.”

Goldberg says she and her husband did a little research beforehand to be familiar with chickens and certain issues that come along with raising them. “Most of the research we’ve done as things have come up,” she says. For instance, at one point, a raspy sound began coming from one hen’s throat.

When Goldberg lets her chickens have the run of the yard, she says they typically forage for seeds and bugs.

“And greens, they love. I work at the gardens, so all summer I was bringing them radicchio, arugula — anything that wasn’t fit to sell. They really love bitter greens. They’ll eat anything,” she says, laughing. “They eat mice. So gross. They’ll swallow them whole.”

Goldberg feeds them greens a couple times a day. They also like sour dairy like cream and yogurt, or any dairy that has gone bad. Goldberg feeds and waters her chickens twice a day. Chickens need constant access to clean water, so she fills large metal water dispensing pails. During the winter you have to check to make sure that their water doesn’t freeze.

Also in the winter, you sometimes have to provide heat for them, unless they’re a hearty breed. Goldberg’s three hens are a Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington and Black Sex Link, which all survived the winter with no artificial heat and are good egg layers to boot.

Goldberg says each hen started consistently laying an egg a day at around 6 months old. The hens continued laying that frequently until early fall, and then, as the temperature dropped, their laying slowed. Goldberg’s chickens stop laying in the winter since she doesn’t give them artificial light. Now, as warmer weeks approach, she is getting about an egg or two a week out of all three of her hens. Chickens typically lay eggs consistently for three to four years, according to Goldberg.

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