I have had lots of people ask me questions about raising chickens. For us it is a very affordable way to get organic range fed eggs and chicken. I am definitely no expert, but my mom is. So, she has been kind enough to type up a ton of information about chickens. It is way too much information to put in one post, so I will break this up into several posts for you guys to enjoy.I will do my best to answer any questions that you guys may have, but I will probably have to defer to my mom. She knows more than I could ever hope to know about chickens. She does mention local stores in these posts, but I am sure that most of you will find similar stores throughout the country.
Can you actually save money raising chickens? Yes and no. The first year, definitely no, unless you already have a chicken coop. The cost of fencing, housing and the chickens will be more than you would spend at the store. The second year, you probably will break even if you can begin to grow some of the feed for your hens.
Your best plan is to build a coop as cheaply as possible. You don’t need a palace. They will be fine with used lumber. I’ve even seen a great looking coop built from free wood pallets. Patty the Garden Girl (Google on the web) has wonderful videos of how she actually raises her chickens on top of her raised garden beds at very little cost.
You will read all kinds of things on the internet about how to build coops and the “must haves” for feeding. Yet, our ancestors raised chickens on cracked corn, milk and foraging. My father sometimes laughs at the feed that I buy. The chickens ranged all over the farm and ate what they could find. True, they did not lay as many eggs and perhaps the feed to meat ratio was not as good, but they were healthy and you did not spend a fortune on raising chickens.
We buy the feed to get things going really well the first year. Now, the second year, the chicks are raised by the hens and I don’t even worry about buying the special feed for chicks. We sometimes buy one bag of starter/grower to throw to them, but they love running all over the orchard with the hen and seemed to ignore the expensive feed. The last several chicks that were hatched were raised just on scratch and whey. They foraged with mom and seemed to do fine.
Tomorrow’s post will be about neighbors and additional resources.
Click here for Part 1 – Where Do You Get Your Chickens
Click here for Part 2 – How Do You Feed Them
Click here for Part 3 – How Do You Get Started
