Once the decision was made to become a chicken keeper some research and investigations were required, my chicken knowledge was basic to say the least. I took myself off to Amazon (figuratively speaking) and a whole pile of books later, I quickly started to find out what I didn’t know about chickens.
My prior knowledge of chickens from watching films like Chicken Run (one for the kids) and City of God (one for the adults) came down to some simple mathematics:
Chicken + Corn = Eggs
Apparently this is not the entire story!
As I read actual questions about what I needed to know about keeping chickens started to materialise like:
What do my chickens need?
This question quickly split into several more questions:
1. What do my chickens need for housing?
2. Where will my chickens eat and drink?
3. Will my chickens need nest boxes?
4. Do my chickens need perches
5. What bedding should my chickens use?
I had a lot of questions and a pile of books to answer them. For each of these questions I started to write down some answers, paying close attention to matching the questions with the correct answer (nest boxes cannot be used for eating and drinking) and cross referencing between each of my books.