Need to keep your hens a little more quiet so Karen next door doesn’t complain to the HOA? Want actionable ways to legally keep chickens with low visibility and minimal impact on your neighbors? Here are tips on how to hide backyard chickens, minimize their noise and maintain zero smell.
How to Hide Backyard Chickens
I wish no one would need to do an internet search for this topic and that clean backyard chickens were as common as backyard tomatoes. As a law-abiding citizen, I do not write this article for those who are seeking to break the law. This advice is intended for those whose local laws enable them to keep laying hens but are encountering neighbors or HOA boards dead-set on impeding their rights, which has necessitated keeping a quiet, unobtrusive flock that is not visible from the curb as a compromise. Many of these ideas will also help new suburban chicken keepers avoid future problems by deliberately managing their hens to be exceptionally clean and quiet.
Follow State Laws
Chickens are a livestock animal but you will discover that you love them as pets. They know the voice of their keeper and will run to greet you. You will quickly learn their different calls and clucks. They will be as beloved as any bird you ever owned and maybe more because they give you eggs. Having to surrender your flock is upsetting because a pet is being forcibly removed. If keeping chickens is illegal where you live, do not put yourself through the heartbreak. Once you are forced to give up your hens, you will be angry enough to move. If you have thought of moving, first complete your move to an area that allows chickens and then get hens. (I have done this myself, waiting for years to own chickens legally until I moved to the country. I promise it is absolutely worth the wait!) If moving is impossible but you want completely legal backyard egg production right now, you will LOVE Jumbo Coturnix Quail!
For Chickens, Start with a Cute, Squat Coop
Love this little coop? We purchased the plans from Etsy but they require intermediate building skills. (We also found some errors in the cut list and you end up needing 1 more 2×4 than the plans call for.)
To Avoid the Majority of Future Issues:
Have your chicken coop sit below your fence line and be unobservable from the street. There are always going to be people who believe themselves inconvenienced because you own chickens. This nonsense can be remedied by ensuring your coop is out of sight from the very beginning.
Appearance Matters
Use natural colored exterior paint or stain to make your coop visually appealing. Shades of green and some gray tones will be difficult to see through fence gaps. Shingle roofing that does not reflect sunlight the way metal roofing does may be desirable. Your coop will be visible to immediate neighbors (so please do follow your local chicken laws) but it is likely to be mistaken for a storage shed, a dog house or overlooked entirely by passers-by. A darling coop that is not an eyesore tends to charm neighbors who will be less likely to object to the presence of your hens.
Free Chicken Coop Plans Can Be Found Here!
What About Smells?
Thanks to mass-scale modern farming, people are afraid of stinky livestock smells and rightfully so because factory farms tend to be gross. What they don’t realize is that the industrial barns crowd twenty thousand hens inside each one. The droppings from twenty thousand of any creature is going to stink! They may also be familiar with bags of chicken manure fertilizer, which has a really strong smell, but they do not realize it is the accumulated droppings of around 500 hens. A small backyard flock of 4 to 6 hens produces almost no noticeable smell. With the most minimal care, you won’t be able to smell chicken poops even when inside the coop.
Keep the Smell to Zero Using Horse Stall Refresher
Chicken poops contain ammonia, which does have a little smell. The scent from a few droppings is unnoticeable unless you let the poops – and thus the odor – greatly build up. My secret weapon is sprinkling the droppings with Sweet PDZ which absorbs the ammonia and reduces the smell to zero. Some flock keepers pour bags of Sweet PDZ on the coop floor and clean up droppings with a cat litter scoop. Because Sweet PDZ is zeolite, a naturally occurring mineral, it is garden-safe. You can safely compost chicken poops sprinkled with Sweet PDZ for the garden. Sweet PDZ Horse Stall Refresher can be purchased from Tractor Supply or any local feed store. (Not an affiliate link.)
Are Some Hens Better than Others?
Choosing Chicken Breeds Wisely
There is great wisdom in opting for medium size birds in brown, gray or black feather colors. Even better are birds with pea combs and muffs/beards which mean they have extremely little bright red combs or wattles on their faces.
Consider Pea or Rose Combed Breeds
One of the best breeds for suburban backyard keeping is Americanas, which are also called Easter Eggers. They come in a range of feather colors, have small pea combs and lay enormous numbers of blue, green, olive, brown, cream or peach colored eggs. Hens tend to be medium-bodied and feather patterning is so diverse, they enjoy natural camouflage from predators, which makes them difficult for people to see through the fence slats, too.
Breeds with Small Pea or Rose Combs:
Americanas/Easter Eggers, Olive Eggers, purebred (true) Ameraucanas, Dominique, Buckeye, Brahma, Wyandotte, Hamburg, Chantecler, Prairie Bluebell, Whiting True Blue and others.
Be Careful With Chick Colors
When selecting any breed of chick, skip the gold and bright yellow ones. These chicks grow up to be highly-visible buff or white colored hens. Opt instead for the chipmunk looking chicks which will feather out in shades of brown. Blue (gray) and lavender (light gray) chicks are also a great choice, as are black chicks.
Consider Breeds with Smaller Combs and Wattles
Why should you care about visible red combs (the fleshy mohawk on a chicken’s head) and wattles (the skin flaps below the chin)? Any chicken with a big red comb is usually mistaken for a rooster by suburbanites. Smaller combs makes it easier for even the most novice city slicker to correctly identify a hen, which reduces your chance of being reported for having “roosters” (misidentified hen breeds with large combs).
Dual Purpose Breeds or No?
Huge, fluffy heritage and dual purpose breed hens may not be the best option for the low-key poultry keeper. If you simply must have a dual purpose breed, only keep multiples of that one breed. Mixing dual purpose birds with slightly smaller breeds results in the biggest bird being flock leader and most dual purpose flock leaders are LOUD. Likewise, getting all your chicks at once and raising them together tends to produce the quietest flock because they negotiate their pecking order as little chicks instead of having frequent, feather-flinging kerfuffles in your back yard for everyone to hear.
What Breeds to Skip
Easily startled, flighty, shrieking, fence-jumping Leghorns should be at the top of your skip list, especially the high-visibility white ones. Many Barred Rocks are bossy, which often results in them being a bit loud unless the entire flock is Barred Rocks. Likewise, big yellow Buff Orpingtons tend to make a bit of a racket in a mixed flock yet a trio of only Buffs with plenty of food is surprisingly quiet. One of the loudest hens in my flock is a Welsummer named Honker but her sister, Cinnamon, is nearly silent. I’ve seen Seabright bantam hens learn to crow for attention and other bantam breeds that have muted clucks.
Within each breed there will be individual birds who are overly loud or unusually quiet. It is the luck of the draw and you may have to re-home obnoxious hens and adopt others if you need an especially quiet flock. The dominant hen will always be the loudest in every flock because she does all the scolding and warning-calling if she sees a hawk fly over. This cannot be avoided.
What Breeds to Possibly Consider
Americana/Easter Eggers and their cousins the Olive Egger, will always top my list because they produce so many eggs and enjoy hybrid vigor, meaning their mixed breed genetics make them more robust, likely to avoid or overcome illnesses easier. They are also known for being sweet and not prone to loudness. Golden Lace Wyandottes have been a remarkably quiet, dual purpose breed for me and friends who own them. Rhode Island Reds tend to be good layers who are not overly loud when kept with just their breed. If you don’t mind getting USDA medium sized eggs, Crested Cream Legbars are wonderfully friendly, gentle and quiet. Silkies, a type of Asian fluffy-feathered chicken, are usually known for being quieter than most American heritage breeds.
Leghorn Crosses are Awesome!
While Leghorns top my no-thank-you list, Leghorn crosses tend to be wonderful. A cross is made by mating a Leghorn with another breed to produce hybrid offspring that lays a lot of eggs. My Prairie Bluebells have pea combs, fluffy faces with no visible wattles, medium bodies and are not very loud. They lay around 300 blue eggs each per year and the solid black hens are so sleek looking, visitors have mistaken them for crows at a glance. Whiting True Blues have Leghorn cross ancestry and lay a vibrant blue egg. They, too, come in every imaginable feather color including barred and the solid black hens also look similar to crows.
Keep the Coop Less Crowded
A crowded coop produces irritable birds who will voice their displeasure. Unfortunately most manufactured coops flat-out lie about the number of full size, adult hens that they can accommodate and instead list the number of bantams it can house. The best way to calculate the actual number of hens a coop can sleep is to take the length of the roost bar and divide it by 10 inches per bird. If the coop has a 36 inch roost bar, it will comfortably sleep 4 adult hens. An airy coop with enough space is a much quieter coop because there is no need for the hens to noisily squabble over the best sleeping spot.
Expect the Daily Noise of Egg Song
After a hen lays an egg, she sings what is euphemistically called an egg song. It is the loud, classic BAWK-BAWK-BA-GAWK chicken noise we were all taught as toddlers. The hen, who has unburdened herself of the weight and heat of a fresh egg, clucks for several minutes with this loud, unmistakably chicken-like squawking. This alone is why it is nearly impossible to truly hide laying hens. You cannot stop egg song from happening every single day, multiple times per day as each hen lays an egg. Most of the time a friend or two will join in the singing and really cause a ruckus. Ideally your coop will be placed somewhere that neighbors cannot hear it in their house and they will understand it means the hen has laid an egg and she will soon stop the ridiculous noise.
Have Ample Egg Box Room
In my coop an outcry begins around 9 am when some of the dominant hens want to lay an egg and find their favorite nest box occupied by a lesser ranking hen. They then begin a half-hour long session of objecting that can range from false egg song to a horrible, raspy honking sound that is intended to tell the lesser hen to hurry it up. Most coops come with divided nest boxes which I believe appeal to humans because we enjoy private bathroom stalls. Chickens are less modest and prefer to all use the same nesting box at the same time. If possible, build your coop with large nesting areas that accommodate up to three hens at once. There will be less noise if there is plenty of room for everyone to pile in together to lay their eggs.
Give the Neighbors Free Eggs
This section contains an affiliate link to a product I personally use.
Purchasing small pulp or clear plastic egg cartons and giving free eggs to the neighbors may be one of the best investments you make. You’ll only have to purchase the cartons once because folks will gladly return them for free refills. Neighbors who enjoy fresh eggs never seem to find the time to complain. Being generous with eggs usually results in neighbors being generous with their patience.
If you’d like a cute label to go on your blank egg carton, you can download one here for free. If you adore how stamped egg cartons look, head over to my Etsy shop to have one made!
Wisely Time the Giving of Treats
Every morning I feed my flock a fresh mixture of layer pellets, scratch, sunflower seeds and meal worms. Because of this, my chickens will mount a racket as soon as the sun is up, demanding those meal worms. If I was living in the suburbs I would have created a problem for myself, training my hens that if they call their heads off at sunrise, they get treats. A better option is to feed commercial chicken feed that is always available in a gravity feeder and to only give treats or kitchen scraps in the early evening when many households are so busy, the bit of noise your hens make is easily overlooked. Also ensure the hen’s water is kept refreshed and full because an empty waterer can cause a mid-day cacophony that will draw a lot of attention.
Do not Shout for your chickens
There is no better way to advertise that you have chickens than for you – or worse, the kids – to be shouting the actual word. Instead, train your flock to come to “Here, Girl”, a whistle, or something that any passerby would assume was a call to your dog or cat.
How To Train Your Chickens to Come to a Subtle Call
Use a red Solo cup that contains a treat such as meal worms, blueberries, Rice Krispies Cereal or raisins. Shake the cup so the treats rattle and call “Here, Girl”. The chicks that come get one treat and the others do not. Repeat twice per hour for four hours. Within a day all the chicks will come running to little more than the appearance of the red cup.
Encourage family members to use the generic call you selected together. If your children never hear you calling “chick-chick”, they won’t echo it in unison at the top of their lungs…or teach their friends to screech it when they are over to play.
Clip Her Wings
Medium size birds can often jump much higher than her heavier-bodied heritage breed friends. Clipping one wing can stop her from clearing the backyard fence and visiting the neighbor’s dog for the first (and last) time. Clipping is done by opening the wing and using scissors to snip off the top half of the flight feathers along the middle of her wing. Because you leave the long wingtip feathers untouched, when she closes her wing, it still looks normal. The clipping will last until she molts in the fall and re-grows new feathers. It does not hurt her at all and is similar to a haircut. I wing clip all my Leghorn crosses (Prairie Bluebells & Whiting True Blues) as well as any Americana/Easter Eggers that show particular athleticism. Dual purpose breeds almost never need wing clipping.
Do Not Keep Roosters
This is obvious because roosters are noisy. The problem arises when you purchase sexed pullet chicks but one turns out to be a male. Cockerel chicks are the sweetest, most affectionate little birds. You will be absolutely in love with him when his comb suddenly enlarges and pinky-red wattles begin to grow under his chin around three weeks old. The time to part with him is now, when he is still young and you could immediately replace him with a female chick that is close in age to your current pullets. That way your hens are all being raised together and will get along quietly as adults.
If you end up with a cockerel chick, this is difficult advice to take but you must re-home him quickly. He will begin to crow at a shockingly young age and he could cause you to lose all of your chickens if a neighbor complains even once.
How to Identify a Cockerel Chick
At 1 week old females of many breeds will be developing little tail feathers and the cockerels will still have fluffy nubs. While this can be an early indicator, it is not 100% accurate for every breed.
Cockerels (baby roosters) have combs that will quickly grow taller or larger looking than their female hatch mates. At 3 weeks old the skin under a male’s chin flushes a popsicle pink color and begins to develop wattles. Each week the wattles grow pinker and more pendulous.
Even more pictures and sexing help is available here should you need it!
How to Re-Home an Accidental Rooster
Re-home any roo for free using the MeWe app by finding your state or city’s local chicken or poultry group. Because MeWe allows the selling of livestock, many chicken breeders frequent it and your roo will enjoy a life of pleasure out in the country. If you purchased him from a breeder that guaranteed you were buying all females, she should let you return the cockerel chick and ideally offer you a refund.
Warning: Do NOT Buy Straight Run Chicks
Do not ever buy chicks straight run if you can only own a few hens. Straight run chicks will be at least 50% male. It is worth investing $100 to purchase a small number of sexed hens shipped from a reputable hatchery like MyPetChicken.com than it is to get $2 straight run chicks that all turn out to be roosters. If purchasing from local breeders is your only option, try to buy started pullets that are 4 weeks old, when the chances of you ending up with a male are lessened. (Remember most males will have combs that are flushed with pink color by this age.)
Lastly, Landscape Your Yard for Visual Appeal
A manicured yard with attractive looking shrubbery, flowering perennials, pretty annuals and perhaps some strategically placed greenery that make it impossible to spot the coop can only help. If your yard looks nice, the coop is painted, the hens look healthy and there are no smells, anyone who wants to complain knows they will sound petty. Be aware that residential noise and smell complaints will likely result in an inspection, even if the complaint is false. A yard that is clearly cared for hints that your chickens are probably cared for, too, and if you are the victim of an unfair investigation, managing impressions goes a long way. Be aware that because chickens are about the size of an adult cat and six cats is typically considered excessive, more than six chickens in a regular sized suburban back yard may be viewed similarly.
TIP:
Since most people are uneducated about how chickens scratch, peck and moonscape a patch of grass to the consistency of fine garden soil, it can look unkempt to the amateur eye. Covering the scratched-bare area with straw, natural wood chip mulch or clean play sand will give the run an idyllic look for a day or two if you have visitors coming. Naturally, the chickens will destroy it later but a few dollars spent on regular upkeep of visual appeal can spare a little flock. Undyed mulch and play sand can be purchased at your nearest Home Improvement store. One bag for every 6 to 8 square feet will give a nice, thick amount of coverage. One bale of straw or hay will cover 50 to 70 square feet.
If All Else Fails
If the HOA is making it impossible to keep chickens or they simply are not allowed, don’t despair completely. Local Farmer’s Markets usually have multiple egg sellers and many offer various blue, green or dark chocolate tinted eggs. This would give you a chance to see the various egg shell shades and begin to determine if there is a breed you would one day like to keep. If you enjoy traveling without worrying about hiring a chicken-sitter, the farmer’s market option might give you the best of both worlds.
Quail are a Wonderful, Legal Alternative, Too!
If your neighborhood will never allow chickens, you can look into keeping Coturnix (Japanese) Quail. They are allowed by HOA’s all over the United States and the hens are no louder than a small cricket.
Should you find yourself desiring to move, read the deed restrictions carefully to ensure laying hens will be allowed. If the property is listed as unrestricted, you are free to keep roosters as well. The wait to live in an area where you can legally own poultry is worth it and then you will never again need to worry about how to hide backyard chickens!
Update: This has been such a popular page that we’ve added even more ideas on How to Better Hide Backyard Chickens
Sue F Winey says
Love this post!!!! I am so glad I came across your blog!
Martin says
Loved it! Thank you, much appreciated!
Buddy says
Hi there,
Would you be willing to share what the inside of the small chicken coop looks like?
Thanks!