As a backyard chicken enthusiast, you play a vital role in meeting all the needs of your feathery friends. This includes supplying them with wholesome meals, maintaining a pristine habitat, ensuring a constant supply of fresh water, delivering top-notch healthcare, and safeguarding them from any potential harm.
Now if you are absent for some days and leave your chicken alone, obviously, they won’t get all these. So the obvious question that comes to mind is, can chickens be left alone for a week?
The answer is contradictory. Some said you could leave your chicken alone for a week or a few more days. But before leaving them alone, you must ensure all their basic requirements.
You must ensure they have sufficient food and water, enough space within the coop, and are safe from predators. It’s better to take help from your friends, family, or neighbor to take care of your chicken when you aren’t home.
However, some backyard chicken owners provide a contrary statement also. According to them, you shouldn’t leave your flock alone for a week. For a few days, your chicken may do well without you. But one week is too long, and without your care for this long time, anything can happen to them.
Do Your Chickens Rely On You To Live?
Yes! Like all other domestic animals, your domestic chickens depend on you for a living. Your birds depend largely on you for food, water, care, and safety from predators. Your birds need you to provide them with sufficient food, water, protection, and good shelter.
Also, your chickens depend on you for their healthcare. If they become injured or sick, they can’t care for themselves like a human. So they are obviously dependent on you for treatment and everything else.
Can Chickens Be Left Alone For A Week?
Giving a straightforward answer to this question is quite challenging as the chicken keepers provide different comments.
Some backyard coop owners said yes, you can. For a week, you can surely leave your birds alone. But before leaving them alone, you must ensure they have enough food, water, security from predators, and space in the coop.
But some chicken raisers disagree with this statement and say that your chicken depends on you for everything. Without your attention and care for a few days, like 2-3 days, your flock will go well. But a whole week without care is too much, and it can cause harm to them. Especially if your chickens aren’t adolescents, you shouldn’t leave them alone.
However, leaving them for a week is possible if you can make special preparations for your chicken. By using any automatic chicken feeder or Waterer, things can go wrong. Therefore the best option is to ask someone to inspect your chicken before leaving for a long time.
Give explicit instructions to the person who is completely trustworthy to you. Provide necessary instructions regarding how to check your chicken’s food and water and notice if the chickens are sick. Also, teach them to inspect the run and coop for damage or break-in attempts.
Another big things is the caretaker of your chicken must remove your chicken’s waste and dirty bedding. Ideally, leave a person to take care of your flock who has practical experience in dealing with the birds. So if you can ensure all these, you can certainly leave your chicken alone for a week.
What Do You Need To Provide If You Leave Your Chicken Alone?
Compared to any other animals, your chickens are highly sufficient birds. So if they get their basic needs within the coop, they can care for themselves. But still, they are dependent on you to a large extent.
However, if you are planning to go outside for a week and leave your flock alone, then you must ensure the following things for them:
1. Ensure Enough Food & Water For Them
Food and water are the most basic needs of your chicken. Without food and water, your birds won’t live longer. They can even die from starving. Therefore if you decide to go for a tour by leaving them alone on the coop, you must provide sufficient food and water to them.
Leave their feeder full of food and Waterer full of water. However, leaving your birds with plenty of food creates another problem. Your chicken will mostly scratch their over-tuned feeder or Waterer full of shavings.
So while providing food, don’t leave it in plenty of amounts because it will do them no good. Rather provide food and water in sufficient amounts only.
2. Make Sure Your Chicken Has Enough Space Within Coop
Usually, while you are away, you will keep your chicken shut inside a small coop. So they won’t get their normal ranging time outside. Therefore while closing them in a coop, ensure they have enough space to move freely here and there.
If the coop is small and they don’t have enough space, it can create hazardous situations among them. For example, they can begin eating the eggs that they lay or can fight with each other. Leave your chicken in a large coop and keep them occupied.
You can add a few distractions to your coop to keep your chicken busy. For example, you can add treat balls, a host of chicken toys, and snack racks to your coop.
3. Ensure Your Chickens Are Secure From Predators
You can’t ignore that if you leave your chicken alone in the coop for a few days, the predators can attack them. Sometimes you may think it’s a matter for 2 or 3 nights so nothing will happen. But anything can happen, and predators can attack your chicken anytime.
There is a point of confusion regarding this issue; maybe or not the predator can attack. But why take the risk when you aren’t at home? After coming from the tour, you may find that a raccoon has attacked your entire flock and left them dead.
It’s not something that you will expect. So be careful because only one night, your entire flock can be slaughtered by a raccoon’s midnight raid. Before leaving your chicken alone, make sure you leave your coop close. It will reduce the possibility of predator attacks.
Also, for the insecure outdoor space, you must leave your chicken locked in their coop if you leave them alone for a few days.
4. To Gather Eggs Arrange for Someone
If you leave your egg-laying chicken alone, you must also arrange for someone to collect the eggs on your behalf. Every day your hen will lay eggs. Now if you leave your flock alone and don’t collect the eggs, there is the possibility that they will eat their eggs.
So to reduce this risk, ask help from your other family members, neighbors, or friends to collect the eggs in your absence. Also, you can offer them to keep the egg that they collect. Your offer will encourage them to gather eggs happily.
Can You Leave Baby Chicks Alone?
So our discussion is all about “can chickens be left alone for a week?” Now if you ask what about the baby chick, we will come up with different explanations. Leaving your baby chicks alone is different from leaving your adult chicken.
The baby chicken is extremely vulnerable to temperature fluctuations and disease. So you need to take special care of your baby chicks, protect them from drafts, and keep them warm and dry.
Also, you must ensure that food and water are always available for your baby chicks. If smaller things go wrong, it can cause death to your chicken. So leaving your baby chicken for a longer period can cause different adverse situations to them.
Therefore before leaving your baby chicks alone for a week, you must think twice. If you need to leave the baby chicken alone, you must ensure several things for them.
- First off, with a regulated temperature control system, set up a brooder. Also, add the automatic feeder and Waterer to the brooder.
- Set the brooder in a quiet, safe place where the chicks will remain alone without disturbance. Before leaving your chicken, there are several things to consider. The utmost consideration is to ensure that your chicken will get proper care even in your absence.
- So to ensure proper care in your absence, you can make arrangements or hire someone to take care of your baby chicks.
End Note
Hopefully, this comprehensive article on “can chickens be left alone for a week” has been helpful for you. Now you know that you can leave your chicken alone for a week if you can ensure some basic requirements for them.
However, we recommend you not leave your baby chicks alone if no one is there to take care of them. Leave your comment if you have anything to add to our discussion. We will appreciate that.
