Got chicken questions? Here are common questions and answers about backyard chickens.

Want to start raising chickens? Wondering how to get started? Here are a few chicken questions and answers to help you decide.

Chickens are a fantastic addition to your backyard or homestead. Backyard chicken eggs taste so much better than store bought, especially if your chickens are able to free range outside their coop.

If your city doesn’t yet allow backyard chickens, consider getting involved in the growing movement to change council’s mind.

While I can understand urban areas not allowing roosters, I am definitely in favor of allowing a certain number of hens per household.

Chicken Questions and Answers

Here’s some information about keeping hens in your backyard to lay eggs that you may be wondering about. If you want to know about raising baby chicks for meat or for egg production, please head here to How to Get Ready for Day Old Chicks. 

You can also read about how we raise chicks for meat in only 8 weeks – we do this every summer here!

Chicken Terms to Know

Pullet – is a young female chicken who should start laying eggs around 20 weeks. If you ONLY want eggs (and not baby chicks) you can buy only females (pullets).

Hen – female chicken 12 months or older.

Cockerel – a young rooster 12 months or younger.

Rooster – male chicken over 1 year. Roosters will develop wattles and combs.

Chick starter – This is special starter feed for day old chicks that is mashed as opposed to crumbles

Pets – pretty much any chicken you bring home!

Chicken Lady – Well this is me and it could become you, if you’re not careful. Chicken keepers are notorious for adding to their flock, talking to their hens and making them warm oatmeal on a very cold winter morning!

 

Breed of Chicken

There are many different chicken breeds, including commercial meat birds (Cornish Cross or Giants and White Leghorn).

Heritage chicken breeds include:

• Buff Orpingtons
• Rhode Island Reds

There are many great reasons to have a heritage flock of chickens!

If you want easter eggers (pretty colors of eggs), white eggs, green eggs or brown eggs, look to the breed of chicken to determine the egg color.

The color of the chicken does not determine the color of the egg! That comes from the breed.

You can learn more about them here at Raising Heritage Chickens.

How do you get chicks used to you so they won’t run or get scared when you come around?

When chicks are brand new, enter the brooder area slowly and softly. What we actually do is start humming or talking in a low voice outside the brooder room.

This helps alert the chicks that you are close by. When you go in the room, do it gently. Don’t go rushing in freaking them out!

Have your feed can in your hand and give it a few shakes. Very soon, they will relate that sound to “Oh, good, here comes the food!” 

Very soon you will find that they will start coming to you.

Remember, they are like little babies. We don’t go around freaking out little babies, so we don’t do it to little chicks either.

Read here to find out how we built our brooders and got everything ready for the chicks to arrive.

If you would rather buy a chick brooder, there are many available on Amazon. These Brinsea chick brooders have great reviews.

 

When you put them into your garden area, what keeps them from eating all your good plants?

You can’t. The ONLY time our chickens are allowed in the garden is after the veggies are harvested.

Some people say to keep the chickens out until the veggie plants are well established, then they won’t hurt the plants.

I am a skeptic when it comes to this. I have seen my hens get into my flowerbeds, and before I know it, there are uprooted plants lying on top of the soil.

What we do is build temporary fencing using T posts and wire fencing. It’s easy to set up, easy to move and easy to remove. 

All you need is a few of these T posts and wire. Run it up to a building or a fence post, etc., so you can reduce the number of T posts needed. Check out this post for more information on temporary fencing.

I like to give my girls a large amount of room to run around and forage for plants and bugs. However, I want to keep them away from my flower beds and veggie gardens.

So, we give them as much free range as possible, but with limitations….hmmm, kinda like raising teenagers!

 

More Chicken Questions

I want them to free range, but how do I get them back into the chicken coop?

 

 

I bet 98% of chickens will return to their hen house on their own, once dusk comes. Chickens don’t like being out in the dark!

They want to feel safe at home, locked in their chicken coop, away from predators.

If you have trouble getting them to come home, shake that ol’ feed can for them, while calling them. “Here, chicka, chicka, shake shake shake” goes a long ways!

 

 

Also, if you bring home grown chickens, take them out of the carrying cage INSIDE the coop.

Then leave them locked inside the chicken coop for a few days. This will reinforce to them that the coop is home.

After a few days, open up a door to their outside run. Leave that door open so they are free to go in and out.

Don’t let them out of the run for several more days. This will further reinforce to them that the coop and run are home.

 

 

How do I catch one of my chickens if I need to?

If you need to get hold of one of your chickens for any reason, wait till dark. Once they are in their coop, you simply pick them up off their roost.

When it happened here for the first time, I groaned thinking about all the other times I had tried to pin one down.

If you need to catch one for emergency purposes during the day, use one of these chicken catchers.

Otherwise, a fish net or one of these works great. Works on piglets too! I’m unsure whether it works on teenagers.

 

 

What will keep them from flying away or into the neighbors yards?

A good pair of scissors does a lot. Cut the flight feathers off ONE side only.

This prevents them from flying and if they do get off the ground, they will go in circles, ha!

A 42 inch fence should hold them in, IF the flight feathers are cut off. Don’t cut the feathers of both wings, just one.

If the feathers are not cut, I think they could get over that height of fence.

Even More Chicken Questions

Can I add new chickens to my existing flock?

Yes, it is possible to add new chickens to your backyard poultry flock. There are several things to keep in mind, if you do this:

Chickens have a pecking order; that is, there is always a leader, even amongst hens. There’s a “top dog” and then other chickens are below that, usually in a certain order. 

When you bring new layers home, for example, don’t just add them to your existing coop right away. It will work best if you can have the new chickens right next to the existing ones.

That is, if possible run another outdoor run right alongside the existing one. This way, during the day, they can see each other and get used to each other.

Ideally, at night the new layers will have their own coop. It doesn’t need to be anything special, just something they can be in for a couple of weeks before being put in with the others.

We have used a truck canopy set on bales of straw for this (inside a run). Anything you can work up that is predator proof will do.

What do chickens need on a daily basis?

A chicken coop or other kind of chicken house needs to be secure from predators. Make sure entry points can be completely sealed and chicken runs or outdoors spaces tightly and securely fenced.

A family of raccoons or a fox can make quick work of a flock of chickens!

Inside the coop, chickens need:

• nesting box
• feeder with 16% protein feed, preferably with oyster shell mixed in to provide calcium (needed for egg production)
• grit – necessary once chickens have access to other feed (eg. bugs) to help with their gizzard in digesting food
• ​Buy a bag of scratch to provide a treat for your chickens!
• hay  or straw for floor of coop, which they can also fluff up to make themselves a nest

 

Got more chicken questions? Need more answers?

Here’s Part 2 –  having chickens on your homestead

Included in Part 2:

• What should you NOT feed chickens?
• Are chickens any good at controlling ticks around the yard?
• Why do chickens peck feathers of other chickens?
• Can chickens be taken by hawks, owls and other predators during the day?
• Does a rooster really protect his chickens?
• Molting and growing new feathers

Want to know how to tell the difference between roosters and hens? Check it out.

My Top 10 things I just LOVE about chickens

Perfect gifts for chicken lovers!

More information on having chickens!

 

Want to read about how we raise out meat birds to 8 pounds in 8 weeks? It’s a great way to fill your freezer fast!

 

originally published 2016; updated June 2022

Chickens are often the first “livestock” people get when they are starting to become more self sufficient. There are a lot of benefits of raising chickens. They are easy to raise and are a low cost way to feed your family wonderfully fresh eggs. We wrote a book all about raising chicks.

It’s all about how we raise meat birds and called 8 Pounds in 8 Weeks: Raising Day Old Chicks for the Dinner Table. Use the information for raising laying hens from chicks too!

 Top 10 Benefits of Having chickens

 

1. They lay eggs almost every single day. Healthy nutritious eggs – if I add flax seed to their feed ration, they become Omega 3 farm fresh eggs!

 

 

2. They don’t have a smelly house. I make sure to completely clean out the coop twice a year. At all other times I make sure there is a good layer of hay being thrown on top of the bedding. This way the chicken coop will not smell.

 

 

3. If I have a rooster and a broody hen, chances are that I could get baby chicks at no extra cost – Having our hens hatch out their own chicks is much cheaper than buying chicks. 

 

 

4. Chickens taste pretty darn good – older laying hens can be stewed for a delicious meal. Young meat birds are fantastic roasters and can reach 6 pounds easily.

 

 

More Benefits of Having Chickens:

6. Chickens eat weeds – Instead of throwing our weeds on the compost, we throw them to the chickens. They love them and the greens are really healthy for them.

 

 

7. Chickens love to work – Put some temporary fencing around any area in your yard that needs to be worked over. Chickens will do that for you and they will let you know how happy they are by laying some nice eggs for you.

 

 

 

Need a temporary chicken coop or just an alternate spot to park a few birds? Here’s some cheap and easy chicken coop ideas.

When you have chickens in the backyard, there may be times when you actually need another place to house come of them. Or, if you haven’t had the chance to actually build a coop before they arrive, you have to have some place to put them.

Here’s how we build a temporary chicken coop on our small farm. All it takes is some type of easy housing, some T posts and wire.

We were fortunate enough to have a tiny wooden frame building we used, when we had to separate our flock. But, read on for other things you can use for a portable chicken coop. You will find an idea or two for inspiration!

This is an old goat house that was on the property when we bought it. We used it first for our main chicken coop. We started with 4 chickens as I wasn’t sure whether I would like having them.

I had zero experience with raising poultry and starting with small numbers would allow me, as a beginner, to ease into raising farm animals.

Turns out, we loved having chickens and every year we kept getting more and more.

originally published 2012, latest update March 2026

Not long ago, I put up a post with Chicken Questions and Answers – take a look if you are thinking of raising chickens for the first time.

Here’s a follow up post with more questions and answers. If you’ve got questions, just leave a comment on this post and I’ll get an answer for you.

 

More Chicken Questions and Answers

 

 

 

Are chickens any good at tick control?

Yes they are. Chickens are great for any type of pests, like mosquitoes, flies, and grubs.

However, for ticks, you may want to look into guineas. Those are supposed to be extremely effective against ticks. We have never had guineas, so I don’t know much about them.

 

 

If you want to reduce the number of pests inside your vegetable garden, you can build your chicken coop right outside the garden. Then, build the run around the entire garden. You will find that the number of bugs goes way down. Raising chickens is a proven way to have a lot less bugs around!

It’s like building a moat around your food garden – I saw pictures of one setup a fellow did and it was really fantastic. He said he had hardly any bugs inside the garden at all.

Even if you have your chicken coop close to your garden, you should see the benefit of less pests in there. After harvesting, you could let your chickens free range inside the garden. They’ll find the grubs that are there and enjoy eating them.

However, they will also eat every single worm they find, so it is a trade off. I like to have our worms stay in the garden soil to give some aeration.

In general, having chickens around free ranging will definitely help to keep the bug and tick population somewhat under control. We have a lot of bugs here in the spring. If we are raising chickens, there are definitely fewer bugs. And that’s a good thing.

Why do chickens peck the feathers off each others’ backs?

 

 

This could be happening for a few different reasons. Chickens get bored if they are not kept busy.

Boredom can lead them to picking on each other (both literally and figuratively). Keep your chickens busy by having a large enough grassy area for them to look for bugs and weeds to eat.

Try to not keep them confined all the time. We use some temporary fencing to set up an area that they can hang out in. You can move the fencing from time to time so that the chickens are placed in a new area.

Don’t we all remember long car rides when we were kids with our siblings and having fights breaking out? Yes, same thing…too much of a confined space is not a good thing.

It’s the same thing when raising chickens. Chickens will also peck each others feathers if they are missing something in their diet.

I think this is usually protein, but it could also be some mineral deficiency. Make sure they are getting a well rounded diet, usually including laying pellets that you can buy at the feed store.

Feeding them weeds and table scraps are fantastic for chickens, but if you aren’t feeding them any scraps with protein, they aren’t getting all they need to remain healthy.

Think about how difficult it must be for them to lay an egg a day on an inadequate diet.

There is protein in the bugs and worms they eat, but is it enough? I’d rather feed them the lay pellets every day and then supplement that with the foods they find while free ranging.

Do chickens get taken by hawks or other predators during the day at all?

 

 

Absolutely. Predators can get very brave during the day. They are braver at night, but they’ll scope out your chicken coop during the day. Here’s an owl sitting on one of our fence posts. She’s looking for field mice and voles.

If no humans are around, predators could snatch a hen or two in broad daylight. Hawks, owls and other birds of prey will definitely go after small chicks. Sometimes here in the Valley, Mama could raise 12 chicks and have 11 of them taken by the ravens.

Birds of prey are merciless and they are usually far more patient than us humans. They will wait us out and as soon as we turn our backs, here they come.

Screening in the top of your chicken run so that no birds can swoop down into it will help a lot. Make sure the holes in the screens are quite small, as you won’t want a hawk getting caught in the holes of the netting or screening.

Does a rooster protect his hens in any way?

 

 

Yes, he does protect his hens and a rooster will usually do a good job. However, a rooster is no match for a hawk or owl. When the rooster senses danger, his call will alert the hens who will go running for cover.

He’s kind of like the captain of a ship that is going down. He will put himself in danger to save all his ladies and their children. Roosters can be really mean and I have seen some that are incredible fighters.

Want to know how to tell the difference between hens and roosters?

Is there anything you absolutely should not feed chicken in terms of leftover food and what not?

 

 

There are a few things I know chickens should not eat. Green potatoes for one. Be sure no part of a green potato peel gets cooked up for them.

Potato leaves, tomato leaves, eggplant leaves are also no no’s, as they are members of the nightshade family. They don’t like citrus fruits and I am not sure if its just the taste they don’t like or if they don’t eat them because they know somehow they shouldn’t.

You will find that it is pretty simple. If the chickens don’t like something or it isn’t good for them, they just won’t eat it.

If you are going to feed their eggs back to them, be sure to cook them thoroughly first. You never want them to taste raw eggs or they may start pecking at their own eggs to get at the inside.

 

 

More about Raising Chickens

Have more Chicken Questions? Have you read this article about raising chickens yet?

Ordered chicks? Here’s what Must be ready BEFORE your chicks arrive

Your chicks are home? Here’s what you need to do once your chicks have arrived