Raising Your Own Chickens

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kevin,

I currently raise both chickens and rabbits and what you say here is absolutely correct: rabbits are a more efficient and easier source of protein than chickens. Also, your point about food sourcing from surrounding locales is accurate. An anecdote in that regard: A  young 3-month old rabbit escaped here (4-acre ranch) a while back and I couldn’t catch him. He was seen numerous times daily for months, escaping dogs, coyotes, hawks etc. obviously thriving off of the local vegetation.

All that being said however, I would still keep chickens for several reasons. First for redundancy, and second for variety. I currently feed my critters store-bought food, for which I have stockpiled a years supply, but I also am growing feed crops as well as observing where and what types of indiginous foods are available. These alternative food sources would stretch my stockpile considerably.

Also, chickens can derive a significant portion of their food from natural sources, just like rabbits, if allowed the chance. It’s penning them (for their own protection obviously) that limits their foraging abilities. That’s why I think that the chicken tractor idea is so advantageous: they get the protection of the cage but yet fresh ground every day to forage.

Those are some of my observations on chickens and rabbits. Don’t even get me started on the sheep, hogs and goats!

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Brian,

It ain’t. Particularly in a metro area. You are merely part of the “tax base”, to be mined by your municipality. For me, that was another one of life’s unpleasant realizations.

If my schedule permits, I would like to raise a few broilers next year to get my feet wet with the slaughtering aspect. It has been a LONG time since I killed/cleaned anything. I don’t  think rabbits are in the cards for me, a little too “cute”. I met a woman at a pasture management seminar this year that felt the same way about goats and had to shift her focus to sheep and cattle only.

Thanks woodman. Having this info in one spot will get me closer to my goals.

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Thanks for the perspective. I couldn’t agree more. In addition, I think chicken eggs complement rabbit meat very well; whereas rabbit meat is extremely lean (see “rabbit starvation”) chicken eggs are a good source of quality fats and fat-soluble vitamins, especially when pasture fed.

I’d like to learn more about goats. I heard that it is not uncommon for a milk goat to produce a gallon of milk per day, and that they eat practically anything and their demeanor is very dog-like. When I am finally in a position to buy a home with a little bit of land, among my first priorities will be to procure some hens for eggs, rabbits for meat, and goats for milk. Sounds like a good, redundant trifecta to me.

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 Rabbits would be easier to hide in  a place that does not allow you to raise chickens .  Although they put up a squeal when you butcher them so you  might want to butcher when things are noisy .  You could tan the hides .  plant  a little patch of Alfalfa  without notice , feed them dandelions .       But  no eggs …Bummer .
 FM

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Regarding goats, you’re right on most counts: they can produce a gallon a day, (though not usually-more like 1/2 to 3/4 average) and their demeanor is very good especially compared to sheep (being called “sheeple” is definitely not a compliment!). Be careful though regarding the myth about goats being able to eat anything. They actually can be finicky and besides their milk can take on the flavor of what they eat. A buddy of mine (a real farmer–really-- supports a family of eight kids) gave his goats some broccoli and he got the worst tastin’ milk ever. He then tried squash and got the sweetest milk ever. Who’da thunk that? I only feed alfalfa, bermudagrass and a little grain and our milk is great.

Don’t jump in too quickly with the goats though. On a hassle-factor scale with one being easiest (rabbits!) and ten the hardest, goats are near the top. This is because once they have milk, they must be milked twice a day every day. Some folks will let the kid nurse through the day to eliminate the evening milking so that it’s only necessary to milk in the morning, but still, it’s every day. If you don’t mind that commitment, then the milk (and cheese and kiefer etc) is way, way cool. It’s worth it to me, but it’s something to think about.

Oops! I just remembered this thread is about chickens. Sorry folks, didn’t mean to hijack.

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Greetings from Maine!
An excellent resource if you want to scale up is Anyone Can Build A Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker by Herrick Kimball – see http://whizbangbooks.blogspot.com/. No good in power-down, but until then, it makes the plucking fast and easy!

I’ve been raising birds for meat and eggs for 9 years now, and I applaud the author’s work. (Nice trick, that water heater! I thnk I’ll steal that idea for an incubator.) FWIW, I keep my birds for 2 years, then put them in the freezer for stewing. I’m still buying chicks and buy a different color each year to keep the ages straight. The reds are in the freezer, the Buff Orps (yellow) are still laying a year and half on, and so are the Silver-Laced Wyandottes (black and white) I got this year. I’ll buy reds again this year.

I have good luck introducing new birds into the flock if I move the older girls to another pasture in the summer, move the kids into the winter coop/pasture for a few weeks, then bring the older birds back “home” for winter. Be sure let that pasture rest for a few weeks with no birds so it can recover a bit. I’m fortunate that I have two structures and pastures AND a “nursery” space.

Usually a few girls act broody, but they don’t stick to it. I have a rooster (GREAT crow – he trills it at the end!) so I assume at least some eggs are fertile. I may try just taking a clutch and incubating mechanically.

My best advice for chicken tractors: Don’t make them too big! Heavy + awkward = Pain in the @$$…

Maybe I’ll try a rabbit tractor… hmmm…

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Yes, indeed!

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FM,
I am living in France close to Geneva (switzerland). I sell to the expat community (UN related crooks) They mainly want the breasts 26-30 Euro a kilo. The left overs (the nice tasty boney parts)  i freeze it for our own consumption or give it away to the local food bank . The breasts are covering all the costs including profit. 

 I am working in nigeria on a 2 month on 2 month off basis. yep in the paradise of the Niger Delta. This is pure hobby though with some small adjustments and scale up i can live easily from it. I do not own land as land is still very expensive in the Geneva area. Prices already came down but just a few % since the economic down turn. Presently i work together with an old farmer where i help him with his dairy farm and in exchange i can use his land to raise my birds. The birds are eating 20% of the land and 80% bio-grain mixture.  

Dressing the bird (slaughter) is still my headache part. It always take me 10 minutes of meditation before i start killing a batch of birds. The Featherman system (look on youtube) works fine. I also bought 1 set as we could not find a simular set in Europe. Officially it is illegal due to sanitation regulations but inspection agencies are busy with other things and not really interested in a small scale practicer.

I really suggest to watch all the youtube movies of Joel Salatin of polyface farm. I copied his model and bought all his books. 

With chicken farming i will never get to a salary of what i am earning now in the Nigerian Oil Industry but it gives me a lot of enjoyment. Especially seeing my kids picking up the interest in farming.

Good luck. Marteen

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks Dutch John.   All chooks (that choose to)  are sleeping on the roost pole when we check on them later after lights out.  Maybe they have the timing down

There is a problem I’m wondering if some chicken peeps can help with…4 (all of the Rhode Islands) out of our 12 chickens won’t roost on the roosting pole.  Instead, they crowd into the the nesting boxes and sleep there.  (they have never used the roost pole regardless of season).  The sleeping in the nesting box is ok, the problem is  they poop there, too.  Not great for appetizing or sanitary egg collection when the poop ends up all over the eggs.  Any ideas ? 

 

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Thanks for the great comments by all.
Supplemental lighting in winter - Patrickhenry, I haven’t really tried this yet, although there are some old christmas lights hanging on the coops now since I ran a cord out there anyway for the water heaters.  My flock in 2009 was born the first week in June and started laying in December, and laid like crazy straight thru until about November this year when they went into molt.  My 2010 flock I got earlier, in April I think, and they started to lay in fall then dropped off a bit when the days got shorter and and colder.  I figure I’ll just let the chickens follow their natural cycle.

Litter management - one method described elsewhere is the deep litter method.  You keep mixing it and adding a bit mroe shavings or straw and supposedly the buildup is mitigated by decomposition which also helps keep the chickens warmer.  I’ve been using hay since I have a bunch, and stirring it every day keeps it from getting matted and the poop goes down inside so that the hens aren’t walking in it.  If I let them out promptly in  the morning they tend to releive themselves outside anyway.  If the litter seems to get really soggy and nasty I fork it out into the wheelbarrow and throw in the compost pile.

If chickens aren’t allowed by local ordinances, I bet it’s something you  have a chance of overturning with a little citizen initiative and education of the authorities.  I know some other communities in my state have changed their ordinances to allow chickens in the past few years.

Brooder setup - Kevinoman, good points, I agree the photo I showed does not have an ideal setup.  Perhaps a better way to describe the right amount of heat for the chicks is they should neither be all crowded together in a pile under the light trying to keep warm (which can suffocate young chicks) nor be as far away as possible from the light trying to not be too hot.  If they’re active inbetween those extremes they’re probably okay.  

Commercial feed - Layer pellets like I get by Blue Seal are made in a factory and optimized in nutrition for hens to maximize egg production.  A 50 lb bag is $12 locally here.  It is a concern to me that I am still dependent on feed made in a factory 50 miles away which in turn gets grain from probably middle of the country.  So I try to supplement with all I can; e.g., I grew a ton of extra corn and saved only the best ears for myself; the rest went to the chickens.  They also get to forage on grass in the yard.  I’m not sure how much egg production is affected though by less than optimal nutrition.  That may not be a factor if you are not in the egg selling business, and you get the minimum number of eggs a day you need anyway for personal consumption.

I’ll need to cull some chickens soon once I figuer out for sure which ones are past their prime and I get new chicks.  I know a couple are done pretty much for good that a neighbor gave me after his house burned and his flock was homeless.  I don’t think I’ll have a problem dealing withat at all though.  I’ve picked up and buried plenty of dead ones killed by predators or disease.

Goats - we had a couple pygmy goats here a long time ago and they are really fun and produce good milk and they are the next animal I would get, but it’s just a bit too much of a committment at this time.

Rotation - good ideas featherjack.  Now that I have two coops built, I’m thinking I’ll combine the nest of the two flocks I have now and move one coop back into the shop when I get the next batch of chicks next spring.  The two cloks mix together anyway when they are allowed out to graze.  It’s funny though, chickens really do know their pecking order.

Nesting boxes - I have this problem with one chicken now too patrick.  She wants to sleep every night perched on the edge of the box and poops over any eggs that are in it.  What I do is keep trying different modifications to the coop to make it uncomfortable to perch there.

 

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   For nesting boxes we use the large buckets  with the lids cut 2/3 rds  so the eggs and nesting material will not fall out .   We have a lot of people save their old shredded paper and also straw . Anyway  we can pull the buckets off their perch and give them a good hose down when ever we need . I think this saves from mites .  Also we dump a  bucket load of old ashes out there so that the chickens bath themselves and this gets rid of mites too.
  We put a bale of alfalfa  scattered on the floor  so the chickens keep their feet dry and  scratch around  for the seeds to keep everything loose enough to scoop up a couple times a year . The floor is cement so the shovels , push broom and wheel barrel is all we need to get the job done .  They are out side at the crack of dawn  go in to lay a little after noon and hen go back in for roosting at sundown .  Low maintenance !

  To keep their water thawed we use a float-able tank heater .  

 For the bantams that get broody  we separate into cages and just keep eggs under them .  I got rabbit cages to raise the chicks in , the litter drops into rubber trays and are then dumped onto the compost pile .   I like these cages because nothing can get into them  , like cats, dogs etc.

 I order 150 bushel of a feed mix  to last over a year .  The feed and seed  they add the minerals needed . The price practically doubled this year  because with delivery the total came to  $1,100.      I get $2 donation  for a dozen  .

 I really have no idea how many chickens are out there … that way when people ask that is an honest answer.    I try to raise a different breed each year so I know how old they are .  This year  is  Buff Orpingtons  they are a nice bird, last year the Araucana .    Butcher most of the roosters at 20 weeks .  Some of the hens are laying for 7 years … I can tell by the color of the eggs.

 You just learn by doing

 FM

 

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 sorry  I was wrong on the grains 3920#  of corn = 70 bushel @$5.19 =363.30
                                                            3920 Milo =  70 bushel@ $5.08 = 355.60

                                                            2249 0ats = 70 bushel @$3.25 =227.50

                                                              #800  protein meal and minerals  plus delivery $200.52

                                                           so total is 10,889.00 #   for $1,146.92

      What I feed with this is 3 horses , 1 cow  ,2  calves ,2 pigs ,  and umteen chickens, ducks and geese . All the Animals are pasture feed from May -oct. then  we  hay them for the other months . 

 Makes me wish that I had paid closer track of how many dozen eggs we got .  Summer time it was about   3 dozen a day and now we  only get  six eggs  a day  until  they start up again in Jan.   I know  the pork  worked out to be $.90 a pound and the beef  was $1.00  average .  not a huge savings if you are eating only hamberger  but …  I also make the soap and soup stock . 

 

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I’m new to chicken raising, but have 6 girls 92 Marans, 2 cream legbars, and 2 RIR/Light sussex cross) who we’ve raised from 1-day old chicks to 20 and 18 weeks old so far, and have the first 4 delicious blue eggs this week!  Just wish I’d started earlier - they’re a pleasure to have around, each with their own distinctive ‘personalities’, so they’re much more than just egg producers to us!
A couple of top tips which I don’t think I’ve seen on here yet - watch out for the very cold weather. We’ve just had the earliest, harshest winter for 100 years, with constant freezing temperatures which got down to -16 deg C, and 2 feet of snow which lasted for several weeks. Their combs and wattles are at risk of frostbite, but you can give them some protection from this by massaging some beeswax-based ‘hand cream’ a couple of times a week when the weather forecast looks very cold.

Chickens don’t like snow, so try to provide them with a sheltered outside area as well as their hen house - we have a small run covered in fine mesh to keep out predators, 12 feet x 3  feet, and have covered it with thick polythene to provide a mini polytunnel for when the weather is truly awful.   We also have a few cold frames outside this run, with half of each frame covered, which means that when the wind is strong they can jump in there and get a lot of protection from the wind but still enjoy scraping around in the grass (when it isn’t covered in snow).  We also have a 50metre electric netting fence to give them a bigger protected area, and when we’re around, open the gate to let them free range around the garden and orchard.

We’re using diatomaceous earth in the wood shavings in their hen house and run, and dusted around the perches, as protection against mites.  It is also, apparently, good for them to eat, to act as a natural wormer, and to provide minerals.

When we had the deep snow, we couldn’t keep a path down to the grass for them, so they were eating only bought-in layers pellets. One chick developed cracks in her feet which were bleeding at the joints, and started to walk stiffly, didn’t want to come out of the hen house much, and generally looked a bit miserable.  We couldn’t find anything about this online or in our chicken manuals, so added a small amount of vit C powder to their drinking water (which also contains half a teaspoon of cider vinegar as a general tonic), and started feeding a couple of handfuls of sprouted mung beans daily to the whole flock.  Within days she was much better.  While we were on vacation for a week, the cracks started to come back as our stand-in carers hadn’t been giving them the beansprouts, but these healed quickly again when the beansprouts were added back into the diet.  Our theory was that when the chickens can’t get at really fresh, raw food, their immune system is depressed and all kinds of odd symptoms may appear.  There’s little nutrition in the grass during the winter months, since all the goodness is pushed down into the roots, so beansprouts are a fantastic nutritious and easy food to grow inside, all through the winter.  We have a few ourselves too ; ) 

We’re now leaning towards the idea of a house cow or milking sheep/goat!

 

 

 

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Thanks for the tips annepan.  My flock is not liking the current cold temperatures here either, down to -7F a couple nights this week.  They survived the first night, but were a lot happier when I put a heat lamp in the coop the next night.  The snow is keep them in the coop mostly too, but I shoveled out an area and spread some hay which they’ll come out on if I scatter some food on it.  I think they get some Vitamin C from treats like carrot peelings and apple cores.I’m interested in milking goats too some day.  Had a pair here a few years ago, really fun animals, but it’s a committment, probably not as much as a cow though.

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I just heard Paul Wheaton on the Survival Podcast describe his chicken raising methods and realized I pretty much arrived at the same solution as he did!  More info here…

http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp

raising chickens in paddocks

Ahhhh .... now this is the ultimate solution for raising chickens. At least, it is the best (IMOO) that I'm currently aware of.

There are two basic approaches:

  • 1) Four or more fenced areas. Put the chickens in an area and after 7 to 10 days move to the next area. Each area gets at least 28 days of rest until the chickens return. The more areas you have, they can be smaller and the time spent in an area can be less. If the chickens consume more than 30% of the vegetation, you have too many chickens or too small of a paddock.
  • 2) Get the same effect with portable fencing.
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    http://homesteadgardenandpantry.com/agrarian-life/self-reliance/preserving-eggs-with-water-glass/
    apologies if this is already common knowledge or has been covered- but it is worth repeating for those (like me) who have never heard of this amazing retro-technology.  Frightening to think that in our rush to embrace convenience and gadgetry we let ideas like this become obsolete.

    edit: someone has taken the time to try this and other methods and compile a comparison of results:

    http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/1977-11-01/Fresh-Eggs.aspx

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    Gently, humanely, and matter-of-factly taught by Alexia Allen of Hawthorn Farm, in Woodinville, Washington. She has a beautiful, reassuring voice.
    Filmed by Paul Wheaton of permies.com

    Part 1 of 2, how she kills and and plucks, including her philosophy and approach and how she feels:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_S3P0eU0lE

    Part 2 of 2, how she cuts and processes, including anatomy lessons and what goes into a stock pot:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExGRrwlhldA

    Viewer discretion is advised. But if you do eat chicken, I think it is important to at least watch it once. If you plan on having chickens for eggs and later, for meat, and you have never killed or butchered a chicken, I think watching this is also important.

    Poet

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    I cannot wait until they post part two!

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     if you put a little vinegar in the bone stock you will get much more nutrition from it .    Not sure if I would ever have the time to coo and talk to the chicken  first .     I swing them around twice and cut the head off when they are trying to figure out what happened .     But each to their own to getting the job done .
     Fm

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    [quote=safewrite]I cannot wait until they post part two!
    [/quote]
    I thought I posted Part 2 of 2. Both parts are showing when I look at it.

    I’ve heard that! Something about the acid helping to leech minerals from the bones.
    I think Alexia Allen is awesome. She obviously takes the killing more personally and has added elements to her ritual to make it more meaningful for herself.
    Poet