You don’t know how to go about caring for chickens. Heck, hardly anybody who’s been brought up in an urban environment knows how to take care of chickens.

That can be a problem if you’re trying to set up your own chicken coop for the family, or if you’re planning on putting up a small-sized hatchery business. But don’t worry. While it might not sound like an easy endeavor, setting up your own hatchery is actually pretty easy.

And once you’ve got your coop set up, taking care of your livestock isn’t as difficult as it sounds – in fact, chickens are rather easy to take care of.

Never ever leave your chickens alone for long periods of time. True, you can do this when you need to, but it’ll be on your conscience when one of your birds die from neglect.

But if you don’t know the basics, there’s a big chance that you’ll be faced with disappointments. If you want to avoid setting yourself up for failures in your endeavor, just take into consideration these things that you should never do when caring for chickens.

If you do have to leave them alone for a bit, never forget to leave enough food and water for all your birds. Take note of their feeding habits on a daily basis, then calculate how much feed you need to leave behind in light of the amount of time you’ll be spending away from your coop.

Never forget to check how your birds are doing every day. This is the best method of prevention – you can pinpoint the birds that aren’t feeling good at once, and bring them to the vet as soon as possible.

Don’t forget to check their coop for food that they shouldn’t eat. There are plenty – citrus fruits, bones, meat and chocolate are just some of the things that can be bad for your chicken.

Don’t forget to clean your chicken coop. Cleaning is part of caring for chickens. Whether you do it every day, every week, or every month, just make sure that you do it well enough so that your chickens will have a clean and happy environment to live in.

Just keep this list in mind when you start with your chicken coop, and you are guaranteed to have less problems with your chickens. Good luck!

Chad B. is an advocate for backyard chicken care and has been involved in raising chickens since he was little boy back in 1986. Find out more about caring for chickens and how you can get a free 10-lesson chicken raising mini-course by visiting Chad’s site RaisingChickenSecrets.com