Garden and daily care
Coop, run, feeding, behaviour: Elsanor's answers for your hens' daily life in the garden.
34 perguntas
The breeds we rate as very calm are Brahma, Faverolles Alemã GR, Galinha sedosa barbuda, Galinha sedosa de cabeça branca, Orpington. They are the ones that let you approach and handle them without struggling. Take care not to confuse calm with sluggish: a calm hen can be perfectly active and inquisitive, she is simply slower to take fright. Temperament is shown on each breed page, and the listing can be filtered by it.
The breed sets a tendency, the rearing does the rest. A chick handled gently from its first days will stay friendly all its life, even in a breed with a lively reputation; conversely a very calm hen bought as an adult and never handled will keep her distance. If you want hens that come to you, buy them young and spend time with them.
The breeds we rate as very lively are Janzé, Legbar Huppée, Livourne, Olivette, Sulmtaler. They explore, scratch a great deal and cope badly with confinement — excellent free-range hens, but they need space and often a serious fence. Liveliness also tends to go with a high flight height: check both criteria together.
The lively, hardy breeds manage best on their own: they find a good share of their own food, spot cover and react quickly to danger. That does not mean they can be left unsupervised — an independent hen is also a hen that wanders off, clears a fence and puts herself in danger. Independence is a temperament, not self-sufficiency.
Those with the lowest flight height: Cochin, Galinha sedosa barbuda, Galinha sedosa de cabeça branca. A low fence is enough to contain them, and they make no attempt to go over it. Conversely a breed rated at 2 m or more will clear ordinary wire without effort. It is the most decisive criterion if your garden is open at the top — well ahead of the size of the breed.
Yes, and among enthusiasts it is in fact the usual arrangement. The pecking order settles within a few days, with pecking that looks alarming but is normal. Two precautions: introduce newcomers together rather than one at a time, and provide enough space, feeders and drinkers for a subordinate hen always to be able to eat. Lasting conflict almost always comes from lack of room. One observation from our own runs: even when they get along, hens group themselves spontaneously by affinity — in a flock of several breeds some mix little with the others, and within one breed kept in two colours the birds naturally gather by colour.
It is possible, but it calls for vigilance. Size is not the problem — a lively bantam will dominate a placid giant perfectly well — it is the difference in temperament and access to feed. Watch the first few days and provide several feeding points. Take care with the cockerel too: a large cockerel treading bantam hens can injure them, which means separate runs for breeding.
As many as the space allows, so long as it is only a matter of keeping hens. Everything changes as soon as you want to breed: for purebred chicks you need one run per breed, or you work in rotation, allowing three weeks after a change of cockerel. It is that constraint, and not how the hens get along, that limits in practice the number of breeds in a flock.
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Most breeds do, provided the house is dry and free of draughts — it is damp, far more than cold, that gives hens trouble. Breeds with small combs and dense plumage come through winter most comfortably, while large single combs are the most exposed to frost. In summer shade and fresh water count for more than the breed itself.
We breed in Brittany, so the question is a familiar one. Damp on its own is not a problem provided the house stays dry; what wears hens down is permanently waterlogged ground. Two points deserve attention: feather-legged breeds, whose shank feathering picks up mud and freezes more readily, and large crests that stay wet. A drained run and regularly renewed bedding are worth more than any choice of breed.
A grower feed, lower in protein than the starter but still substantial, and then a layer feed at the point when the reproductive tract comes into action. Our range follows exactly that progression — starter, grower 1, grower 2, breeder — because that is how we feed our own birds. The point not to get wrong: do not move to a layer feed too early, as it is too high in calcium for a young kidney.
Yes, but neither at any moment nor in any manner. Wait until she is close to the adults in size: a pullet introduced too young gets knocked about with no way of defending herself. Introduce several rather than one on her own, preferably in the evening on the perch, and let them first see one another without contact for a few days.
Because the pecking order is renegotiated at every arrival: each hen has to place the newcomer in relation to herself. It is noisy, sometimes spectacular, and normal for a few days up to two weeks. What is not normal: blood, a hen that can no longer reach the feeder, or harassment continuing beyond two or three weeks. In that case separate them and start again more gradually.
Two at the very least — the hen is a flock animal and should never be left alone. But three is a better choice: with two, the loss of one leaves the other isolated, which does not suit her. A group of three to six hens works very well in an ordinary garden, with a stable pecking order and few conflicts. Beyond that, what matters above all is that space, feeders and nest boxes keep pace with numbers.
The rule stays the same whatever the number: 2 to 3 m² per bird for the house, and at least 15 to 20 m² per bird for the run. That works out at about 5 m² of housing and 35 m² of run for two hens, double that for four. If you want your garden to show no sign of their passing, reckon rather on 60 m² per bird. Where hens are out all day the house can be smaller, provided it is dry and sheltered from the wind.
Allow one nest box for every three or four hens, and certainly not one each: nearly all of them prefer the same nest, and you will regularly find two settled in it together. Fit them at a moderate height, away from the light, with clean bedding. A dark, quiet nest box greatly reduces floor eggs.
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Allow about 20 cm of perch per hen, which gives each of them room without jostling. Hens roost by instinct: with no perch they settle in the nest boxes, which they then soil. A removable perch makes cleaning far easier — and it is underneath it that red mite take up residence.
Between 40 and 80 cm for most breeds, and considerably lower for heavy or feather-legged breeds: a large fowl jumping down from a high perch can injure its legs on landing. Match it to your breeds rather than to a general rule, and provide a stepped access if the perch is high. The flight height given on each breed page is a useful guide.
The right height depends entirely on the breed: our breed pages rate flight height from 1 m to over 2 m. For the strongest fliers ordinary fencing will not do — an aviary or a covering net is needed. For those rated at 1 m, a low border is enough. The right reflex: check the flight height before buying the fencing, not afterwards.
It is not advisable. The hen is a flock animal: alone she grows bored, becomes timid or on the contrary noisy, and fares less well. If one is left on her own after losing her companions, give her company rather than leave things as they are — observing the usual precautions for introductions, which apply in this direction too.
Two or three days is feasible with a large-capacity drinker and feeder, a secure house and an enclosed run. Beyond that someone needs to look in. The risk is not hunger but the unforeseen: an upturned drinker, a predator, an injured hen, or eggs building up, eventually breaking and starting the habit of eating them.
A purebred hen does not have the same requirements as a hybrid layer: she grows more slowly and her laying is spread more evenly. We work with four successive feeds — starter, grower 1, grower 2, breeder — formulated for our own flock, and it is that same range we supply to associations, retailers and hobby breeders. The rest is common sense: grass, calcium available at will, clean water, and never an abrupt change of feed.
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A complete layer feed, higher in calcium, from the point when the hen comes into lay — not before, as it is too high in calcium for a young kidney. Add calcium available at will: each hen takes what she needs, and that settles most shell problems. The rest — grass, insects, greens — is a useful addition but no substitute for a balanced feed.
Rarely, if the base feed is complete and well chosen. Supplements have their place in specific situations: coming out of the moult, hot weather, convalescence, or an identified deficiency. As a matter of routine they cost more than they return. Calcium available at will is the exception: it is useful at all times for a layer, and nothing replaces it.
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With judgement. Vegetables, leftover rice or pasta, untreated peelings: no problem at all, in small quantities. To be avoided, on the other hand: anything salty, sugary, mouldy or spoiled. Above all, scraps must remain a supplement — a hen filled up on bread will not eat her balanced feed, and both laying and shell quality suffer for it.
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Wood shavings remain the reference: absorbent, easy to remove, and they limit the damp that is a henhouse's chief enemy. We supply them in our range — the same ones we use on our own holding. Avoid straw on its own, which packs down and goes mouldy, and hay, which holds damp. What matters is less the material than the renewal: simple, dry bedding is worth more than fine, dirty bedding.
The fox remains the main one, but the stone marten, birds of prey and sometimes a neighbourhood dog do just as much damage. Three measures are enough in most cases: shut the hens in at night in a genuinely secure house, bury or fold out the wire by some thirty centimetres to prevent digging, and check the state of the fencing regularly. Most losses happen through an opening that was thought to be closed.
Allow about 100 ml a day for an adult hen of average size, more in hot weather, and water available at all times. Quality counts as much as quantity, and that point is often overlooked: water changed regularly in a clean drinker spares the bird from constantly mobilising its immune system against the bacteria in dirty water. That cost is invisible, but it is paid for in laying, in fertility, and in the hen's ability to defend herself the day a real problem arises.
About 100 g of feed a day for an adult hen of average size. That figure drops as soon as the birds find something else: a grassy run, insects or kitchen scraps reduce consumption accordingly. It also varies with the size of the breed — a bantam eats appreciably less than a large fowl — and with the season. The useful guide is therefore not the amount put out but the condition of the birds: a hen with feed suited to her stage and calcium available eats what she needs.
A thorough clean once a year is the minimum, twice is better. The right frequency depends chiefly on four things: the type of house, the bedding used — wood shavings, for instance —, whether or not there is access to an outdoor run, and the number of birds relative to the volume. A lightly stocked house on sound bedding, with a run open all day, gets dirty far more slowly than a crowded house where the hens spend their days. Between two thorough cleans, what matters is renewing the bedding and maintaining perches and nest boxes, where parasites take hold.
Yes, and it is the single most effective measure against predators: almost all losses occur at night, at a house left open or poorly secured. Hens go in of their own accord at dusk; you need only close up behind them. An automatic pop-hole makes the job more reliable than good intentions, provided you check from time to time that it really closes and that no hen is left outside. Shutting up does not make up for a poorly secured house: a henhouse whose wire lifts will stop neither marten nor fox.
Because they are very sensitive to changes in light intensity. As soon as the light drops, instinct takes them back to the house for shelter, well before nightfall: it is a protective reflex, inherited from ancestors that spent the night perched out of reach. The hour therefore follows the light and not the clock — very early in December, late in June. It is also why there is no point trying to shut hens in: they go by themselves, and all that remains is to close up behind them.
No, and permanent light does them harm: hens need a genuine period of darkness in order to rest, and continuous night lighting disrupts their rhythm without gaining anything. That is quite different from the supplementary lighting used in breeding to extend the day in winter, which lengthens daylight at one end or the other but leaves the night whole. In a family garden the winter drop in laying is a natural rest: forcing it is neither necessary nor desirable.
In good conditions a hen copes with a wide range, of the order of −10 °C to +35 °C. What counts is not the thermometer but what she has available: well fed and properly watered, she stands the swings remarkably well. In winter what matters is a dry house, sheltered from wind, rain and snow — it is damp combined with draughts that gives hens trouble, far more than cold itself. In summer she needs shade open to ventilation: a house under a tree is worth more than a closed one in full sun, and fresh water becomes the priority.
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