This question was sent in by Mads of Melbourne:

Dear Trev,
Should I get chickens?
I have a small suburban backyard that I am sure would sustain 2 to 3 hens, happily.
People keep telling me horror stories.
The food will attract vermin. The chooks will destroy your garden. They’ll go off the lay in a few years and you’ll just have a few freeloaders in the yard. Foxes will massacre the chickens. Disease will destroy your birds. And so on and so forth.
Please help me refute these ghastly claims.
Yours in good faith,
Small, not really that angry anymore, Mads.

Dear Mads,

I will be addressing this issue on a larger scale in the upcoming weeks in the Hobby Farming section of this fine site but in the meantime let me quickly address your concerns.

*First off – these people are fools!  Don’t listen to these naysayers!  You can easily maintain 2 to 3 hens in a small backyard and here is how to deal with the issues people have raised:

The food will attract vermin: Depends on the food you give them.  Bread scraps and anything meaty most certainly will.  However a small chook feeder that you fill with scratch mix (you should be able to pick up both at any large pet store) will provide them with the sustenance they need as well as stopping the food spreading everywhere.

The chooks will destroy your garden: Depends on your breed of chicken.  In a small suburban backyard you should be going for a small breed anyway (I recommend Frizzles myself – lovely temperament, soft plumage and friendly) and smaller chooks will do less damage.  However you can either keep your chickens contained away from the gardens by keeping them fenced in or put some decorative wire over the gardens you want them to keep away from.  Bear in mind chooks are great for digging up a vege patch after you have finished with it, they will root out every weed and leave it ready for your next planting!

They’ll go off the lay in a few years and you’ll just have a few freeloaders in the yard:  Once again, depends on the type of chicken you buy.  Some lay for many years, others for a few.  You can always get a rooster who when amorously engaged with your chooks will provide you with new chicks who will one day take over the laying duties.  However I recommend getting your chookies some laying pellets and a feeder.  Not only does it extend the variety of their diet, but will help them lay for longer, more often and have harder egg shells.

Disease will destroy your birds: Drop a couple of fresh garlic cloves in your chickens water container, you will be surprised how many diseases that wards off!  If they don’t have much contact with other birds there should be little reason for them to develop diseases.  If they should develop something such as a mite infestation there are little tubes of drops you can get from any vet that will clear that right up.

Foxes will massacre the chickens: This can happen, even in a big city like Melbourne.  However the trick is to use solid chicken wire to construct their enclosure and make sure the wire is dug at least one foot into the ground the entire way around the pen, even the pen walls.  In Melbourne you do have foxes that climb fences and jump in so you can either make a cube shape with your chicken wire (high enough you don’t have to duck when entering) or else do as I do and have a little hutch within the larger pen (see the photo below) that you can lock them up in of a night.  With multiple redundancies most foxes will bugger off to find easier game.  And of course you can always get a dog to keep the foxes as bay.

I heartily recommend getting chooks.  They are great little friends, you know the eggs have been humanely grown and are wonderful when kids drop by.  Good luck Mads!