Living with Chickens

Living on a hobby farm has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is I have learned so much about chickens; one drawback; I know what it is like to have chickens. A couple of common misconceptions are when roosters crow  (cock-a-doodle-do), having male and female chickens, and overall noise.

It may be a Hollywood lie, but roosters do not crow once at sunrise. Instead, they crow throughout the day, and it is a way of communicating with the hens. So if you happen to be up in the middle of the night, you may hear a rooster crow.

Another thing that I have noticed is some people think it is necessary to have both a male and a female chicken to get eggs, which is not valid. A female will lay eggs with or without a male. The only difference the male makes is if the egg is fertilized or not, meaning does the egg have the ability to turn into a chicken or not. Either way, the egg comes out the same; it isn’t until much later that you notice any difference. The only reason you would need a male is if you want to have baby chicks running around or for the protection of your hens.

Lastly, I wanted to mention the noise. Even if you were to have all females, you would still have very noisy animals. This is because when a hen goes to lay an egg, it will start clucking (female version of crowing). Not only will they begin to do this very loudly, but the entire flock gets in on it, and soon they are all clucking at full volume. This is even noisier than when males crow because that is usually a one and done thing; this clucking can go on for over a minute.

I have thoroughly enjoyed living on a hobby farm, I have learned so much. There are quite a few things that I found out about chickens since first having them, and I have overall enjoyed them as pets, although they can be very messy and loud at times.