Getting started with chickens

by **b.m.** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:43 pm

My wife and I were talking about getting some chickens for egg laying and meat, but mostly for egg laying. My parents had chickens when I was a kid, as did several of my friends parents. I don't think there are any zoning problems where I live. My neighborhood is actually zoned equestrian, and many of my neighbors have some sort of livestock- chickens, peacocks, goats, miniature horses, full size horses, etc.. and I li9ve on a 1acre lot.

My question has to do with the placement of the chicken run / coop... Right now the north side of the house is fenced off as a dog run that we used while our dog was still a puppy. It's about 30' from the house to the fence line, and about 70' long. The dog doesn't use it that much anymore since she's grown an no longer acts like an idiot, so we were thinking of converting it, or at least a portion of it into a chicken run. But- would it be a bad idea to place the chickens that close to the house? Smell? Flies? I have no recollection of the downsides of chickens from when I was a kid; more years ago than I want to think about.

Thanks,
BM

by **KYZHunters** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:50 pm

As always, it depends. If you want a handful of layers to have eggs for the family, there shouldn't be a waste problem. Personally, I am not a fan of the dual purpose birds. We buy strong layers for eggs and Cornish-X for meat. If you go that route, make a portable pen you can pull around the yard; as long as you're not stocked to densely and move the pen every day, you shouldn't have a waste problem.

by **LtCmdLeia** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 1:07 pm

How many chickens are you planning on having? If you're only going to have a half doz or so, I don't see how that will make a big stinky mess. I'm not really fond of the chicken tractor idea, unless you don't mind chicken poop all over your yard. My chicken coop is 200 ft from the house, but I have friends with a doz chickens in their coops right outside the back door and they don't have a smell problem. The chickens take care of the flies, so that's not a problem. Just keep the coop clean. You can cover the ground of the run with sand to help with keeping that clean.

by **b.m.** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:35 am

Thanks for the replies...

I'm imagining we wouldn't have more than a dozen birds, but I guess we'd play it by ear. If we want more eggs, maybe get another bird or two.

As far as eating the birds for meat goes- as a kid whenever we had a problem bird it became chicken soup. Every once in a while we'd get a bird that was overly aggressive towards the other birds, or would start pecking the eggs, etc... I understand that old egg layers don't make good grilled or fried chicken (tough and rubbery) but have lots of flavor for slow cooking methods like soup broth, Hungarian paprikash chicken, etc..

Putting sand on the ground under the run isn't an issue. I live in the desert. All of the ground is covered with sand.

Thanks again-
BM

by **RachelBB** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:00 pm

If you use what's called the deep litter method, there is little to no odor. Basically, you pile a big load of shavings in your coop. The chickens poo on the shavings and every so often you stir/rake the shavings around and it mixes the poo in. The poo helps break down the shavings and the shavings keep the poo from smelling so bad. You clean the whole thing down to the dirt or sand once or twice a year, depending on the density of your bird population.

There can be some flies, I think we get more from the scraps we put out for the birds than the birds themselves. Then again, our chickens are right next to the horses. Flies are part of life here.

Hens can be noisy, especially when they start laying eggs. They'll cluck, squack, ba-GAWK and generally carry on like they've done the coolest thing and want the whole world to know. Personally, I don't mind the sound, and they're still quieter than the roosters, but it is something to keep in mind if you have day sleepers or littles you might not want disturbed. Hate for your wife to kill a great layer cause the hen woke the baby on one of THOSE days!

Enjoy your birds, I'm a total chicken addict and enable whenever I can.........

by **Kelvar** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:32 am

KYZHunters wrote:As always, it depends. If you want a handful of layers to have eggs for the family, there shouldn't be a waste problem. Personally, I am not a fan of the dual purpose birds. We buy strong layers for eggs and Cornish-X for meat. If you go that route, make a portable pen you can pull around the yard; as long as you're not stocked to densely and move the pen every day, you shouldn't have a waste problem.

I was thinking when I first saw this thread that it would be a damn shame if KYZHunters misses this. He's a guy the OP definitely ought to listen to. We've met. Yes, we are cool like that in KY. 8-)

by **BiggunsSmallarms** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 1:47 am

Make sure you gather the eggs daily and supplement there feed with I believe oyster shells otherwise they will start to eat there eggs and at that point you have to remove them(the one eating the eggs) from the coop. Also make them boxes that they just barely fit when when full grown separated from each other and that will cut down on the egg eating as well. Picking up the poop everyday is very important as well other wise the birds can get burnt from there own droppings. The smell depends on how well you take care of them and how regularly you clean.

by **LtCmdLeia** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 8:07 am

BiggunsSmallarms wrote:Make sure you gather the eggs daily and supplement there feed with I believe oyster shells otherwise they will start to eat there eggs and at that point you have to remove them(the one eating the eggs) from the coop. Also make them boxes that they just barely fit when when full grown separated from each other and that will cut down on the egg eating as well. Picking up the poop everyday is very important as well other wise the birds can get burnt from there own droppings. The smell depends on how well you take care of them and how regularly you clean.

Welcome to ZS.

I have to politely disagree. I have a LOT of chickens and have had them many, many years. There's no need to pick up poop. I've never known a chicken to get burned by poop, many have poop stuck to their feet.

While supplementing with oyster shell can be beneficial, it's not required. Most lay feed gives them plenty. I don't think making nest boxes small curtails egg eating either.

I think most egg eaters start with them finding one broken egg, so make sure the nest boxes have bedding so the eggs don't break when laid.

by **Kelvar** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 10:40 am

LtCmdLeia wrote:
I have to politely disagree. I have a LOT of chickens and have had them many, many years. There's no need to pick up poop. I've never known a chicken to get burned by poop, many have poop stuck to their feet.
While supplementing with oyster shell can be beneficial, it's not required. Most lay feed gives them plenty. I don't think making nest boxes small curtails egg eating either.

Having grown up on a farm raising chickens and gathering their eggs, I have to agree with LtCmdLeia.

by **Anianna** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:34 pm

My chickens are free range, as in, no enclosure whatsoever. While they do poop everywhere it only accumulates in the barn where they sleep. I do not remove it. I lay down some pine shavings. They scratch it all together, naturally composting it all. The only time I remove it is when I want to add it to my garden. Their poop does not burn them and the only problem I ever have with their poop is when they hang out on the front porch for a while and the only problem I have with that is that I don't really like stepping in it myself or tracking it into the house.

I also heard that it's a good idea to supplement with oyster shells, but I have a terrible memory and forgot and I have never had a problem with thin eggs or with the girls eating their own eggs. I also do not have nesting boxes. They lay where they like and their preference is a couple of overturned feed cans (like small trash cans) that we weren't using anymore.

We also have a bunch of roosters. They do not fight, but I imagine several roosters in an enclosure would probably get on each others' nerves. We were technically going to eat the roosters, but simply have not gotten around to butchering them and I don't know if we ever will. If you have your coop and pen near the house, I suggest not getting roosters at all. If you get chicks, get sexlinks (chicks whose gender can be determined by their color) to ensure you do not get roosters (do not get sexlinks at Tractor Supply because they don't know what they are doing and you will have too high a chance of ending up with a flock of roosters like I did - shop elsewhere). The problem with roosters near your house is the crowing. They crow at ALL hours night or day. Roosters next to your house are likely to keep you and your family awake at night, especially if you have more than one and they can take turns crowing all night.

by **Fletch** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:53 pm

The more free range (the more area, and type of area they have to roam) they are, the more access they have to bugs and other materials they can find to help produce that egg shell layer. Chicken foot burns are more of a battery farm problem, aren't they?

by **2now** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 1:27 pm

chickens are great and a first class survival prep. they take unedible garbage,compost it quickly and have eggs as a by product. I just cannot figuer out how to fit a coupe into an inch bag ;-)

do you want to be able to raise your own in the future? if so you will need roosters and should consider a few heritage breed hens. they lay less but sit a clutch of eggs much better.
for the small farmer with chickens less is more. Smell comes effectively from over population. how many chicken do you need?
24 chickens should mean about 20 eggs per day. How many eggs do you use now?

housing your chickens tightly makes some sense in cold climates as their body heats help keep the coop warm. but if cold is not an issue give your girls more space, and they will be healthier and happier. Why not use the whole dog run?

would the cop be inside the run or next to it?

by **b.m.** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:30 pm

thanks again for the information-

Regarding the poop- isn't it a good fertilizer? I recall as a kid, my friend's who had chickens also had fruit trees in their yard and would occasionally shovel up all the poop from the chicken pen and put it under the trees. I don't know if it was related or not, but their trees produced large, juicy, sweet fruit. And can't you feed chickens most of your kitchen fruit and veggie scraps? Celery tops, lettuce, potato peels, etc?

How does the cost of raising chickens for eggs compare to store bought eggs (health benefits aside)? I have a decently big family- six kids, and I would hope that chickens + a small raised bed garden would help cut back some of the grocery bill. But maybe I'm just dreaming... Even if it broke even it would still be worth it, imo...

BM

by **Dawgboy** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:48 pm

I say go for it. Chickens can be great fun. I would suggest Buff Orpingtons or Australorps for the desert. Australorps in particular are a large hearty breed that can handle extreme heat and cold, and lay a metric ton of eggs. Not only that, but are a gentle and friendly breed. Barred Rocks are also a great laying breed that work well in warm dry climates.

by **ZombieGranny** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:55 pm

b.m., the most it costs us is 27 cents a dozen in feed for eggs.
Sorry, old data - new costs further down the thread.
That's in the winter when the eggs slow down and there is less for them to forage, even counting our 'retired' hen.
Be sure to give them warm water and/or food when it's under 40 degrees to keep the eggs coming.
---
Edited because I haven't re-figured my costs in years.

by **LtCmdLeia** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:02 pm

b.m. wrote:thanks again for the information-

Regarding the poop- isn't it a good fertilizer? I recall as a kid, my friend's who had chickens also had fruit trees in their yard and would occasionally shovel up all the poop from the chicken pen and put it under the trees. I don't know if it was related or not, but their trees produced large, juicy, sweet fruit. And can't you feed chickens most of your kitchen fruit and veggie scraps? Celery tops, lettuce, potato peels, etc?

How does the cost of raising chickens for eggs compare to store bought eggs (health benefits aside)? I have a decently big family- six kids, and I would hope that chickens + a small raised bed garden would help cut back some of the grocery bill. But maybe I'm just dreaming... Even if it broke even it would still be worth it, imo...

BM

Yes it's good fertilizer. They'll eat just about everything. Don't feed them potato peels if the taters are at all green.

About the cost.. hmm well depends on what feed costs in your area, and how much foraging they can do. Right now I just about break even on feed selling eggs and still have enough for us. (I've got 7 kids) That's only because they're laying well, usually they don't lay half this much in winter, but the weather has been weird. Feed costs are going up though. It'll be nice when summer gets here so I don't have to rely on bagged feed as much to feed them.

I'll try to calculate what it's costing us like ZG did.

by **LtCmdLeia** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:09 pm

ok, ok, I gotta know what you're paying for feed ZG, and how many chickens you have etc.. because I just figured it's costing us about $1.50 or so for a doz eggs.

by **ZombieGranny** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:37 pm

Oh dear that was old data from several years ago, so sorry about that.
I will change the post.
-
I re-did the math...
We go through a ($15 - $18) 50 pound bag of layer crumble in about 46 days for 7 hens.
6 eggs a day.
So (if I did the math correctly) that's slightly over 40 cents a day... 81 cents for a two day lay of 1 dozen eggs.
-
We lost a lady a few weeks ago, she went in to lay and just... stopped... on the way in to the coop.
So now we have 2 black sex-links, 2 gold sex-links, 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes and 1 Golden Laced Wyandotte.
My girls forage a great deal, and are very trim.

by **RachelBB** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:53 pm

I go through a large bag, not sure if it's forty or fifty pounds, a week for about 15 hens, 4 ducks and one rooster. Honestly, I'm not sure exactly how many hens I have, but I'm getting a dozen eggs a day. A bag of food is about 13 dollars, so ninety some cents for a dozen eggs. I don't think you can buy them that cheap, and I can guarante they don't taste anywhere near as good.

Okay, I totally forgot about feeding the bantams! I have four hens and a rooster in a seperate pen, those hens give me three of the cutest half-size eggs daily! So that does cut my egg cost down even more.

I know it was less when I let them free range, but I got too tired of chicken poop on the porch--when it gets wet that stuff's slicker than snot---and having my flower beds dug up. I'm going to try training my new batch of hens to stay in the pasture vs hanging around the house this summer. We'll see how that goes.

by **KnightoftheRoc** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:12 pm

I haven't settled on a breed yet (need the farm first), but I've been considering chickens, along with rabbits and goats, maybe a pig or two later on. My plan is to get about 6 hens and a rooster as a breeding stock, and just let nature take it's course till I get to the point where I realize 'that's enough of these darn chickens'. Same for rabbits and goats- start small, build slow, stop when it becomes a full time job, or a single person couldn't handle it all. I was planning on keeping the girls for laying/producing young, and the boys....well, they better behave, if they want to avoid the freezer, is all I'm saying. I don't plan on avoiding males- those will be meat sources, the females will be producing what they produce- eggs, in the case of the chickens. Young and milk from the nanny goats, and the doe rabbits, well, rabbits, of course.

When I was a kid, my friend's dads raised chickens, and paid us to clean out the coops. After an entire winter, the chickens had plenty of poop and hay on the floor, but really, not a lot of odor involved, and I don't recall it being that bad, either. However, he also had ducks at one end of the coop, with a water tub. Good Lord, that was an entirely different story! It stunk, and was layer upon layer deep- and when you removed the top layer, oh, BOY, was it ripe!

This was in NY, so consider the type of winter we get versus your own, you may not need to even keep them inside in the cold months.

I do have a question on the oyster shells, that I just thought of while reading this thread- can the oyster shells I can find along the river bank be crushed and used for the hens? Or do they lack the needed amounts of whatever? I'm thinking this could be a free resource otherwise going to waste, that I could put to use for my own benefit, while not harming anything else.

by **ZombieGranny** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:26 pm

You might want to wash them first, however the shells in the bags definitely still smell like the ocean.

by **Anianna** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:54 pm

KnightoftheRoc wrote:...

I do have a question on the oyster shells, that I just thought of while reading this thread- can the oyster shells I can find along the river bank be crushed and used for the hens? Or do they lack the needed amounts of whatever? I'm thinking this could be a free resource otherwise going to waste, that I could put to use for my own benefit, while not harming anything else.

The oyster shells are just for calcium content. I would think that any oyster shells will still contain calcium, though perhaps in different levels. Many people feed egg shells back to their chickens, but there is some debate regarding whether that is a significant enough source of calcium for penned chickens and several people I have spoken with who do feed egg shells back to their chickens have a problem with hens eating their own eggs. I do not have that problem and would rather not teach them to enjoy egg shells if it risks them eating their own eggs instead of letting me eat them.

by **b.m.** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 2:53 pm

Well, I don't know how many times I've read this thread- there's a ton of good info in there...

Without knowing too much about the breeds of the birds, and how our feed stores seem to have a random assortment of breeds at any given time we just grabbed a variety. We ended up with 10 brids, a mix of Ameraucanas, Black Sexlinks (Stars?), Buff Orpingtons, and Rhode Island Reds. They told us that they were supposed to be 98% hens according to wherever it is they buy them.

thinking of keeping costs down on building a coop and chicken run- what are the risks of not using a run and just letting them just roam the entire dog run? We don't have many four legged predators in our neighborhood to worry about, but I know that there are cooper's hawks about, and we get a migration of turkey vultures twice a year as they pass though town. We have literally hundreds of them in our neighbors trees for a few days at a time. I don't know if they'd take to killing or if they strictly scavenge though...

To keep them safe from the dog and the cat they are temporarily set up in their brooders in my master bathroom (it sucks) but as soon as they are a bit bigger they'll get booted into the garage. Right now it's too cold for them (so the feed bin people say).

We also ended up with four ducks, which I'm pretty angry about. At first I was ok with it, by my wife let the kids pick out one for each of them (the four older kids) which was mistake #1. It was crowded and I was dealing with the fussy 2yr old at the time and wasn't paying close attention to what she was doing. So, they are named, at those of you with kids know what that means... And she let them pick the gender too! That means we have four boy ducks, and 1 girl duck. I'm so pissed it myself for not having the "these birds are for food- either we eat the eggs or we eat the birds- pick accordingly" talk with them before hand - mistake #2. So, now I don't know what to do. It kills me that I'll bey paying for feed for useless birds. I can just hope they fly away or something since my kids would be heart broken if I butcher their "pets"... My wife had ducks as pets when she was a kid, and had that in mind when we went in to the feed store.

So, that's anohter issue- can the ducks and chickens co-mingle if I just let them both have the run of the dog run? And I had the thought to place the coop on the outside of the dog run, faced directly up against the fence, so the eggs can be removed without having to enter the dog run. It reduces the risk of the kids accidentally letting the birds out if they are getting the eggs.

And as a side note- anyone have a Siberian Husky and chickens? How do they get along? My friends had a lab mix that liked to torture the chickens for her amusement, but rarely killed one. they let their chickens free range the whole back yard (1/2 acre lots) during the day and put them away at night. The dog would assume the hunter-stalker stance, pick out an unsuspecting bird, and then charge at it full speed and just run it over. The chicken would take a tumble and squawk, get up and resume scratching as if nothing happened. The dog would prance away all proud of herself...

Thanks again for all the help...

BM

by **LtCmdLeia** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 3:29 pm

You're going to need to do something about the ducks, they'll kill each other with 4 boys and 1 girl.

We have a Husky, the first few years he'd "play" with the chickens then look depressed when he couldn't figure out why they aren't playing back (he'd killed them accidentally). He pretty much ignores them now but that took 5 years and now he's getting old.