How long does daily chicken chores take you?

Personally, I love spending time with my chickens but a lot of that time is just being among them.

How much time do you spend, in a day, doing the things that need to be done for your chickens?

I will collect eggs daily as well as checking in on the water level/feed level.

I say five or less minutes. My setup is pretty hands off.

One day a week it might be fifteen minutes as I clean and fill food/water/supplement containers.

Currently we don't have chickens though when we did I would say I might have spent 15 minutes checking on, feeding or gathering eggs three times a day.

I feel it depends on how many chickens a person has ...

How often does one clean the chicken coop?  How long does that chore take?

The minimum time I spend would be 15 minutes to empty the water bowls - there are three old pyrex dishes, that i give a quick scrub before filling with fresh water, check if the feeders need topping up.

I clean the poop out of their coop daily and transfer to old feed bags for use in the garden. Their laying area is not segregated so gets poopy otherwise.

If I am.not.short of time, there are two old tyres that we throw kitchen scraps into and I like to fork it over to allow the chickens tl scratch around for worms.

Again, time permitting, I will top up the wood chip mulch in their run and rake over all the holes that they've dug and collect overgrown greens to hang up for them to peck.

There are lots of brassicas, comfrey, chickweed, sorrel and other assorted vegetables growing in the community garden where our chickens are so they get plenty of supplementary food.

In winter, they get trays of sprouted wheat that we germinate in the tunnel house and friends give me the bones after they butcher wild game - deer, goats etc that get boiled up and fed to the chickens to peck clean of meat.

When the fruit start ripening, there are also windfall apricots, peaches, plums and apples so the 15 minutes can easily stretch to an hour or more!

Timothy Norton wrote:Personally, I love spending time with my chickens but a lot of that time is just being among them.

How much time do you spend, in a day, doing the things that need to be done for your chickens?

I will collect eggs daily as well as checking in on the water level/feed level.

I say five or less minutes. My setup is pretty hands off.

One day a week it might be fifteen minutes as I clean and fill food/water/supplement containers.

Very similar - although it's more like 10 minutes just because our coop is a little walk from the house.

I've been having trouble remembering about how long it took. I had a mobile coop and pen, which I moved every other day. I also had to walk a little ways, depending on where in the field the pen was at the time. I would guess it took me on average 25 minutes. With some days being only 10, while others were probably 40 minutes. The long day would be hauling water and food, moving the fence, moving the coop, moving the waterer. Filling waterer. Spreading food, checking for eggs, refilling nesting box material, etc.

Daily essentials?
Letting them out of the coop in the morning & refilling their water takes about 5-10 mins, including the walk out there with a branch to clear spiderwebs.
Closing their coop behind them at night and putting their food up so rats cant get it takes about 5-10 minutes.

However, I also spend 30 mins to an hour every day or every other day, hanging out in the coop to watch the birds, for entertainment and to evaluate their health and behaviors.
I bring treats to coax them onto my arm or lap.
I scoop them up to rub the back of their head and touch their body and legs to make sure they’re not hiding any injuries from me.
It helps keep them socialized and calm - something I think is important, because Sumatra chickens are naturally flighty and anxious birds.

A couple of minutes in the summer. In the winter, they need water several times a day as it tends to freeze. And when it's frosty, they get warm meals. So about 15 mins a day for chores.

Entirely another question is how much time I spend just observing them!

I’d say I spend maybe half an hour to 45 minutes a day doing bird herd chores. I have two small flocks I have to blend when they get closer in size (a month a part in age), have sand in coop and run and poop scoop twice a day, feed and water refill.
I spend more time hanging out with them. First time chicken owner, I’m in it for the birds.