Anyone here raise chickens?
 

I'm really starting to enjoy this farming thing, I have 23 acres and am putting it to use this year...starting with a larger garden and chickens....

The deal I have is the chickens have to be net zero, meaning zero cost after we peddle a few eggs here and there. Aside from the coup what should I expect for feed cost?

I propose you change your name to Farmer Howie. :D

I'm on my way! Its been a great family activity but I have to refrain from animals that will go to the market because of the kids attachment to the critters.

I've been reading the backyardchickens.com forums and see that there are many other benefits to free range chickens, like keeping snakes away and eating bugs, grubs.

I am not an expert here. But on one of my best friends' ranch, he decided to get into chickens a little. He had upwards of 25,000 chickens in different stages of fattening. One thing to be careful of is illness. He lost the 25,000 chickens twice to sickness and on top of this had to fumigate all the coups. Read well, cause in a split second one chicken can get sick and then they all get sick and their goes everything!

Iggy

Thanks, I'm looking at a much different scale though...like about 6.

Smart man; six is a good number. It has been 25 years since we have had chickens but when we did it was on a similar scale, providing plenty of eggs for a family of four with a couple of dozen a week left over.

If you have been reading up on it there is probably not a lot to add but FWIW, my preference is white leghorns; small, easy keepers, egg factories. Each chicken will consistently lay a large white egg a day, six of them will eat maybe 20-25 lbs of laying mash a week (much less if they free range). Be certain to provide plenty of fresh water and ground oyster shells.

Good luck,
Jim

Here's a fella that chokes his chicken.

http://backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=33619

Forget it. Your cost basis is between you and industrial agriculture. Your overhead per bird is much larger than industrial ag's overhead. That is why chicken-and-egg farmers no longer exist.

Feed costs are ... chickenfeed.

You major cost will be energy. Cold chickens don't produce and soon sicken.

Back in my honeybee, goats and chickens days I also had a year-round garden.

Pick your veggies early in the morning after you milk the goats and before you let the chickens out.

With free-range chickens on a small farm you let the chickens into the garden when seeds have germinated and leave them in until flowers open. Then exclude the chickens because you don't want them pecking fruit & eating bees. After your fruit is all harvested and before you replant, let the chickens & goats in to snack on the gleanings. Chickens will also eat bugs and both will poop everywhere. Then you till & start another garden.

Chickens stay in the coup until after you milk the goats. Feed the milk goats on the milk stand just enough to keep them interested while you milk but feed most of their food in the pen. Then let the chickens into the goat yard and they'll scrap-up spilt food (goats will not eat food off the ground, they are remarkably fastidious animals). Let the goats out into your woodlot to browse until evening. Then call them back and feed them a little food with the chickens scrapping-up. Then open throw some hen scratch into the chicken yard and the chickens will haul-ass into the yard where you close them up for the night.

You and the missus can do it all in about an hour to 2 hours in the morning and about an hour in the evening (unless you milk twice a day, I didn't). A 4 year-old can be taught how to harvest & weed and veggie garden. They're just slow. But heck, you've got time. Enjoy it.

Buy an old book entitled, "5 Acres & Independence." Take from it what looks fun and forget the rest. Get a subscription to "Mother Earth News". When my last kid leaves I'm moving out of town to resume the good life after a 25 year pause....

---chris

I'm a Rhode Island Red man, myself! I bought 2 doz straight run from Sears. As the birds aged we'd butcher cocks 1-2 per week until we were down to 2 busy roosters and 9-10 hens. Had to butcher a rooster 'cause they started fighting all the time.

The Rhode Island Reds are my actually my favorite; great duel purpose breed, XX large brown eggs (and unbelievable double yolkers on occasion), look good scratching around the yard. Grew up with them but when it comes down to economy of egg production I would have to believe that the leghorns are the better choice.

Jim

Chris,

Should we clue him in on the "molting" period and other such peculiarities?

Jim

If a hen begins molting, butcher it and start new chicks. The birds are in their most productive the first year prior to molting and they are also still reasonably tender. Older birds are less sexually reproductive and a lot tougher. Hmmm, sounds vaguely familiar.

It sounds like a much simpler way of life, and it's better than having employees. If you ever get mad at the chickens, just eat 'em!

Think twice about the larger garden. Twenty years or so ago we substituted two 4'X12' raised beds for our 20'X30' garden plot and found that maintenance was reduced from two to four hours a week to twenty/thirty minutes a week and the total yield didn't change substantially.

Jim

Works for employees, too. Plus, no unemployment.