Does anyone raise chickens?
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion Archive: Archive January 2005:
Does anyone raise chickens?
Kind of a weird question, but I like to buy organic eggs and they are $3 more per dozen than non-organic. I have the space for chickens, but I have a couple of questions and don't want to look like a total fool when going to the farm store.
So, please don't laugh if these are dumb questions.
1. How many eggs will one chicken produce per week?
2. Do they lay all year or have seasons?
3. Do you need a rooster? I don't want one.
4. How do you tell when you go to buy chicks
which ones are the hens and which ones are the roosters.
5. What is the difference w/eggs with the different breeds of chickens?
I have had chickens off and on and here are the answers to your questions.
1. After the chicken gets to be about 5 months old they will start laying and will lay an egg every 3 of 4 days. Another way to think of it, on a daily basis for every 4 chickens you own you will get 3 eggs a day. More in the spring, less in the winter.
2. They don't lay all year, it mostly has to do w/ daylight so you can fool them by keeping the lights on in the coup and that will help winter production. I usually just let them go into a slump for a few months in the winter to let them get their reserves back up. For us it is usually about dec-mar.
3. No you dont need a rooster, you lay an egg every month w/ or w/out a man around, same thing for chickens.
4. You can buy chicks two ways. I am sorry I dont remember the terms. One way is that it is a 50-50 chance of male to female, they are cheaper and if you are willing to kill and eat the cockrells (young male chickens) you can do it this way. I personally always got the chicks that were sexed at the farm. They guarentee that 9 out of 10 will be pullets. (young girl chickens). We did have to dispatch a few of the chickens that turned out to be male. Not fun but not terrible. If you totally cant deal with that, check out your county fair at the end of summer. Usually the 4-h kids have pullets for sale and that way you dont have to raise them and maybe kill some of them. Only downside is the chickens I have bought this way just were not as happy and friendly to me as the chicks that I actually raised. I always raised them as egg layers but also companions in the yard and would talk to them.
5. I would personally go for Black Sex Link chickens or Barred rock chickens. They lay brown eggs, and are fun to have, especially the barred rocks, they are kinda spunky. Also Rhode Island reds are nice but they can be a little crazy. I would stay away from white egg layers, they can be very neurotic and really are no fun.
Finally I think it is a great idea. I had to give my "girls" away because a racoon kept getting into the coup and eating them. I miss their company and I miss the SO MUCH BETTER tasting eggs. In the spring I may try again and see if I can get the coup totally critter proof. Chicken poo is great fertilizer, they make great composters so anything not meat or garlicy can be thrown into the coup. OH yeah, they tell you to expect about a 10% mortality rate in the chicks. Except for my cat getting into the nursery I didnt have any of the some 30 chicks I have raised just die. If you would like more chicken advise just ask and I will be happy to impart my chicken knowledge 
Thank you!! We don't use a ton of eggs so I only want a couple of chickens. I didn't know a pullet was a girl chicken.
I am definately not into killing and eating the chickens. YUCK!!
I assume that your area is zoned for that - we live in an area that has a lot of different zoning, and poultry is not allowed in certain zones. I sure would hate to see you have to pay a fine in order to save money!
yes, we are zoned for it.
Oh yeah, you can also check your local feed and seed and see if anyone has posted chickens for sale or give away, same for the nickle ads. If you decide to raise from chicks you need to get at least 3-4 otherwise when they are little they can die from just getting too cold. Let me know if you do decide to raise from chicks, there are expensive and fancy ways to raise chicks and there are inexpensive and simple ways to raise chicks. I personally prefer the simple and cheap way .
My DH works in the post office. We live in a rural area, and every Spring, crates of baby chicks come in to the post office through the MAIL! I love to go in there and see their fluffy little yellow feathers through the air holes in the crates, and hear the incessant peeping!
I don't know where they come from, but a lot of people around here order them.
I couldn't kill and eat anything, either. I'm a vegetarian, but even if I wasn't, I couldn't eat a creature that I once "knew".
Hol, I totally feel that way. My family had a bull when I was a kid (long story about drinking and going to the farm auction LOL) and when my grandparents killed it I refused to eat any of it. I eat meat, but I knew this meats name!! As far as the chickens Colette, I'm interested to hear how it goes, I think it's a fun idea!
Hol, the baby chicks are really cute. They sell them at our hardware store, but I don't know if they are "sexed" or not and I am not killing chickens that I buy as pets/egg layers.
I wonder what the cats will think.
Colette,
I have laying hens.I have about 20 right now.I also have a rooster.They are very easy to raise.I have not bought eggs from the store since we moved to this house six years ago !
I buy my sexed pullet chicks from a chicken hatchery about 60 miles from my house ,I either pick them up each spring or take a drive out there to get them (the kids love going there).
You may have one near your home .
Ask at the feed mill ,they will know.
We also raise meat chickens ,then butcher them but thats a whole nother story, LOL.
So if you have any questions feel free to ask !
Your kids will love the chickens ,
they are so fun to watch !
and the eggs taste so much better.
We have a food scrap bucket ,we call it the chicken bucket.
The chickens get all our food scraps that we don`t eat.The only thing I have found that a chicken will not eat are potato skins.
And like missmudd said ,chicken manuere is the best compost for your garden.
My tomatoes are so good.
Just mix it in good and let it age a little or it will burn your plants.
and missmudd ,if you ever want to talk about chickens let me know cuz I like talking about them also.
I just bought a live trap because we think that there`s a raccoon getting the eggs too !
My rooster isn`t doing his job , LOL !
Laura (JLPaints) raised chickens a few years ago. She's not on the board often, but if she reads this, I'm sure she will have some input.
This sounds like fun. What kind of living arrangement do you need for them? If they just wander around the yard during the day don't you have to hunt for the eggs? Also how do you keep them out of the vegetable garden?
We raised butcher chickens one year, but didn't get around to butchering them until 12weeks ( about 5 weeks late) We hauled them to a meat locker in our cattle trailer and they came back cleaned and frozen and absolutly the best chickens I've ever eaten. However they weren't pets and we fed them in our empty silo every evening and then locked them up for the nigth.
Also tried raising 2 pigs, just free roaming ones. Named them "hotdog" and "bacon" by our then 4 and 5year old boys. They roamed right into the house one day when one of the boys left the front door open. Weren't able to eat them though. Once you name them.....
The living arrangements really vary by climate and risk of preditors. Yes you do have to hunt for the eggs if they are true free range chickens. At our old house we had our garden fenced in to keep the deer out. We built the coup inside the fence and sectioned off half. We let the girls rotate through each section, one half one year, one half the next year and both sides during the winter. You dont have to rototil very much because the chickens really do a fairly good job of making sure that everything is weeded out and turned up and fertilized. I would exclude them from the side I was putting in my garden a few months before planting so that the poo would not scorch the plants.
The big thing you need for your hens are a nesting box (about 1 for each 4 chickens) a perch for them to sleep on (otherwise they will sleep in the box and poo over everything), and a way to keep them warm and safe from preditors if you are in an area you have to worry about that. At our old house it was mostly a lean to, when we moved to the new house we did not realize that a neighbor was feeding racoons (dumb bunny) and so we had a few chickens picked off. I didnt have the time to get them secure before they would all have been eaten so I gave them away. I have know people to use old camper shells, sheds, whatever to house the chickens. I would recommend them for anyone who can have chickens to keep chickens. The egg quality is so much better, the chickens are a blast to watch, and they have so much better quality of living than commercial hens. I think that is why the eggs are so much better.
Collete my In-Laws raise chickens, I'm not to involved in it but I thought I'd let you in on something they tried this year. Someone told them to put either cayenne or red pepper flakes can't remember which I'll get back to you on that in their feed and they would lay year round (think its the flakes). Well lol, it worked the chickens are laying year round in good amounts.
Also like they said you dont HAVE to have a rooster but IMO fertilized eggs are better. (I really hate the sound of that but its true).
I really prefered not to have a rooster, mostly because the roosters are noisy and can be real brutes to the hens. Pulling out their feathers, reproducing in my back yard and such. Also I would always be cracking the eggs carefully, I would absolutely disolve if I found a chick inside an egg EWW!! So the fertilized eggs may taste better (I havent tried one) but I will pass
Gross, no way can I eat a fertilized egg. I don't care how much better they taste!!
Plus, dh's cousin has a rooster and I'd end up wringing it's neck if I had to listen to that racket.
I like my rooster .He is a barred rock and is beautiful.
I have heard that they can be very mean.I guess I am fortunate that mine is not.
The kids and I have watched him take food out of the feed trays and feed it to the ladies.
He has broken up fights between the hens and has chased out skunks and possuums out
of the hen house.
We have never found a chick inside of an egg.We collect them everyday from the nesting boxes.
I suppose if an egg went undetected for a while it could happen ,but I wouldn`t want to eat a week old egg either thats been under a chicken ! LOL.
EEWWW ! That would be gross.Fear factor material !
Hey ! It`s an idea,they probally already had something of that nature though.
I do love my rooster though , and so do the hens ,so I figure if the hens are happy it`s a good thing !
I wonder if it mattered that I had my rooster first before I got the laying hens?
Maybe thats why he is so gentle?
Someday (when I figure my camera out) LOL ! I will post a picture of him
Colette,
LOL! You get used to the crowing ,you really do !!It sounds almost peaceful after a while.
yes, but will my neighbors?
Colette , thats what always worried me too ! Until one spring day I was walking past a
neighbors house (they are an older couple) and they asked me if that was my rooster that they heard in the morning.
I thought , OH NO ! Here it comes , they are going to complain about his crowing.
I told them yes,it was my rooster and I hoped that it wasn`t annoying them,
They laughed and said ,no that a rooster crowing was a GOOD sound ! .
Then they asked when they could buy some eggs ! LOL! I sell them to a few of my neighbors.
It`s nice to keep in touch with the neighbors that way ,especially in the winter months when we don`t get out as much and see each other as often.
My kids usually get the egg money.
But only if they keep up with cleaning the coop !LOL!
Barred rock roosters are pretty I must admit. Someone at our last fair was giving one away, they had the numerous newspaper clippings from the police report tacked to his cage . He was famous. lol. Our town allows chickens in city limits but no roosters or pigs
That reminds me Colette. If your feed store has barred rocks for sale, you can hedge your bets on getting all females by waiting if possible for them to have a few feathers. The males have more white feathers than the females and the bars are closer together on the males. I did this one year by accident (I didnt get to the feed store immediately) and had read somewhere about this so I went for the blacker ones. I bought 5 chicks and they all ended up pullets. Also usually you can find someone to take a rooster off your hands if you put in an ad or leave a note at the feed store.
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