Garden poultry and flock size

Keeping garden poultry can be most rewarding. However, one of the most common mistakes made by novice chicken owners is getting too many birds too fast. An extreme example is a young couple who had the noble idea of setting up a chicken zoo where they would display every known breed. Before their facilities were ready, they went around buying chickens and crowding them together in a holding pen. The exciting venture soured when, within a few months, most of the chickens got sick and died.

Decide how many birds you want or need, build your facilities accordingly (or a little larger, in case you catch ‘chicken fever and wish to expand), acquire the number of birds you planned on, and keep your flock that size. When you buy chicks, get at least 25 percent more than you want to end up with to allow for natural deaths and for culling (elimination of undesirable birds).

If you’re starting a laying flock, decide how many eggs you want and size your flock accordingly. As a rough average, you can expect one/two eggs a day for each three females in your flock. Since females don’t lay at a steady rate year-round, you may sometimes have more eggs than you can use, and at other times, too few.

If you plan to breed show birds, a mature trio or quartet will give you a nice start. A trio consists of one male and two females; a quartet is one male and three females.

Unless you’re raising males for meat or feathers, most of the chickens in your flock should be females. If you have too many males, they’ll fight. If you don’t need fertilised eggs for hatching, or if the local authority doesn’t allow males, you don’t need males at all – but you’ll miss out on their amusing antics.

If you are interested in finding out more about garden poultry you should consider subscribing to The Poultry Journal.

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Poultry Photos and Books

The Poultry Photos website is an excellent collection of photos of most poultry breeds photographed by the renowned poultry photographer, the late Arthur Rice. Prints and montages of these poultry breeds are available, along with poultry books by Ian Kay and others.

Poultry Mad

Poultry Mad offers an extensive range of Exhibition and Rare Breeds of Poultry and quality built, housing for poultry and waterfowl which is available ready assembled or flat - packed.

Blue Laced & Friends Forum

Got a poultry keeping question? Want to join a friendly and popular online poultry community? Then join the Blue Laced & Friends web forum. Easy to use and full of informative posts from poultry keepers of all levels of experience- this is the place to come for quick and friendly poultry advice. It's free to join.