Re: Congratulations this is wonderful...C/Z can use. Akinori Ito has developed a portable machine

You sure can have a moveable chicken yard, they like to scratch and dig, and they like to eat lots of greens, as well as kitchen scraps. They can be given vegetable scraps, even egg shells, as they eat them for the calcium, the things you shouldn't give them are, avocado skins or seeds, any citrus peelings, and definitely do not give them potato peels. I also feed my chickens some wheat, and sometimes layer pellets. They like pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, snails, worms, bugs, anything really.

You will need to have a small house for them to sleep in at night. My chickens never use their house in the day time, but they go into their house every night to sleep. This should be well ventilated, dry and in a warm position. Their bedding needs to be changed weekly, you can use hay, or even shredded newspaper, (put this into your compost or garden when you replace it).

There are lots of websites and a great many books on how to build a chicken house, it just depends on what sort of house you want :)

It takes about six months for them to start laying, when they are young, (called pullets), they lay smaller eggs, when they get older they lay bigger eggs.

You can also rescue chickens from battery farms, its nice to rescue chickens that have been caged, and give them a new home and much better life.

I haven't had many problems with my chickens getting sick, if you care for them properly they rarely get sick. I have lost 2 of my girls to snakes. I have had some girls die of old age, but they go very peacefully in their sleep when they get old.

This is a good website about keeping chickens,

http://www.aussieslivingsimply.com.au/readarticle.php?article_id=8


I hope you get some chickens Tomato, they are a lot of fun, and very useful gardeners. My Grandkids love the chickens, and play with them and pet them all the time.

spud