Question about live chickens?? for farmys

Hopefully there are some farmy mummies/daddies on here who can answer my questions

My DH got our son a pet chicken for easter (gave it to him last night) and although DH says he 'knows' how to look after one i was hoping that someone could give me some pointers on looking after a chicken...we lived on a farm for 4 yrs but only had pigs, sheep, horses and cows so have no idea about chickens!..
Its a female one and its not fully grown yet but it has just got all its feathers.
We called her Pepper cos shes black with silver lines through her so looks like pepper and she is now living in a cute little hen hutchy thing. DH has just gone to get some smaller chicken mesh because the stuff on there now is too big and the chicken can get her head through!! which in turn gave good oppotunity to the cat to grab its neck!!! but i heard the chicken making a racket and got there to stop it!! hense the smaller mesh.
Now im just giving you a quick run down on it so if you think we are doing something wrong or missing something then please let me know

Any help and advice would be much appreciated...

Its going to be a laying hen and the guy that we got it off just keeps them in laying cages which is what we are doing and im just assuming that its not against council regulations as long as they are contained and our neighbours a have lamb and the other has a goat so im thinking that my chicken is small fry
We are going to clip the chickens wings and let it out for a run during the day while we watch.

Edited by Baysmum

Oh and it's a good idea since you have it in a hutch to move it around fairly often so it can peck at new grass etc

Thanks Stacey I hope my cat (Sabel) gets use to the chicken as she is only a kitten really! but Pepper (the chook) wont really need to put up with Sabel as Pepper will be in the (now) securely meshed hutch/coop and when pepper is out we will be watching. The place where we got Pepper has about 200 chickens!!! wandering freely around a huge farm (laying chooks in hutches etc though) and they are just wondering with the cats!! (about 5 of them) and the jack russell dogs! (6 of them) which ammused me!!.
Im glad you said to get those pallets as that is what DH picked up today and i was hoping that it was alright. At the farm where pepper came from i saw them all pecking at a pigs head and though "WTF!! i didnt think they ate that!!" i guess they are pretty harty!.

Im not even sure if there are any regulations here in Kawerau being such a small old town and most house yards are enormous! our yard is a quarter acre section so we are not close to neighbours (as they have the same size sections also).

Oh i have a question now that you mention the moving the hutch thing - this might be a really stupid question but do they eat the grass or just peck at whats in it?
I also wondered whether they actually drank water! lol even though i have just seen pepper having a nip at the water dish! lol

They eat the grass and the bugs that are in it. But because of how they eat they usually just mostly trample it.

Chooks are good at defending themselves too, my mums little dog gets pecked at by mums chooks when it's annoying them hehe

Easy way to stop it is to sit somewhere in the yard (not overly obvious) and sit there with a hose and when she goes near the hutch you spray the cat on full strength lol. Our cat only tried it once after getting sprayed and never went near them again hehehehe

My SIL had/has chickens, I can never remember whether she has any, has given them all away, got new ones... She tends to get them as babies and grow them then give them away and get more babies.

I have no idea how to look after them (SIL lives on a farm) but Maya loved chasing them when she was younger and now she likes hand-feeding them.