Raising Chickens for Beginners

Ever looked at those crazy, semi-flightless birds and wondered how to do that? I was in your shoes 3 years ago. I thought no way should I be raising chickens.

I think I read every chicken book I could get my hands on and scrolled through every chicken blog out there. I grew up with a dog. And another dog. And a fish. That was it. My animals were all inside animals, outside was for exercise and bathroom breaks. Now I have more animals outside than inside. (Though the inside animals definitely keep me almost as busy.)

Then one day we just pulled the trigger and decided to give it a shot. Our daughter had just turned a year old, our son was a pretty reasonable 4 year old and we figured we should just add to the chaos and launch ourselves head first into this raising chicken business. You can order chickens by mail or you can wait until they’re available locally. Mail order gives you a little more control over breeds and timing. We order from McMurray Hatchery. They provide excellent service and healthy chickens and offer some great deals if you’re not sure about exactly what you want starting out. If you don’t already have a hatchery or thinking about switching, check them out.

The first round we bought 40 chickens, 10 egg layers and 30 meat chickens. Why did we get so many? Probably because we were sleep deprived and a little crazy. It turned out to be a great learning experience. We got a mix of cornish roasters and cornish crosses for our first foray into meat chickens. Our egg layers were an assortment. My son named them all and somehow we remember them all to this day. We ended up with a cute little Hamburg who we named Meatloaf, Kodo and Podo (our New Hampshire and Rhode Island Red respectively), Blackie our Australorp, Dukie our Buff Orpington, Maxie our Black Star, Snowball and Stripe our Ameracaunas, Tiny our Leghorn and Speck our Whiting Green. We also ended up with a free surprise chick, a cheeky little blue cochin rooster named Smokey.

Meat Chickens

The first thing you learn about raising meat chickens, especially cornish crosses, is they grow and they eat and they poop and that’s pretty much all they do. Their world revolves around eating. They are not particularly smart or curious and they will trample each other for food. You have to give them enough room and enough feeding space. As soon as ours were mostly feathered out, we tractored them. Meat chickens create a lot of waste and to leave them in the same space for 8-10 weeks just felt undoable to me. (I mean, the whole point of raising your own meat it knowing where it came from. Having my chickens covered in their own waste didn’t seem a whole lot different than a commercial chicken farm.) My husband and I made a chicken tractor from 2x4s, hardware cloth and corrugated plastic. It probably took us a morning to build it. That sucker is heavy but it is durable. If you build one, plan accordingly. Ours is definitely sturdy. I just can’t move it on my own so if my husband is working late, I’m kind of stuck just waiting.

We used an organic feed that I ordered from Amazon called Scratch and Peck. My birds loved it! But at $38 for 25 lbs, it got really pricey, really quickly. So we tried organic crumbles from a local feed store, which were substantially cheaper. The chickens were not big fans. Don’t get me wrong, our meat birds came around but our egg layers were not impressed. Luckily, our locally owned feed store is awesome and had an organic blend similar to the Scratch and Peck that was almost half the cost. Shop around for your feed, you might be surprised by what you can find. Some feed stores may carry the bulk ingredients and mix it for you. I am hoping to be able to grow some of mine this year. (I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.)

By week 8-9, our male cornish crosses were getting pretty huge so we harvested them first then did the females the following week. Mind you, my husband and I had never done anything like this before. Luckily, my 85 year old grandma had done this many of times and is a no-nonsense kind of lady so we were professionals (sort of) by the end of it. It’s a process but with some organization and pre-planning you can move things along pretty well. You can also find someone else to process your chickens but we were already at $10 a bird before processing so didn’t want to increase our costs. We were pretty pleased at $10 a bird for our first round, especially since that bird that was raised on pasture (though our cornish crosses really didn’t seem to excel at foraging) and organic feed.

Egg Layers

Our egg layers were adorable chicks that had all sorts of crazy patterns. It took me a few months to figure out what breeds we had because as they grew they got new characteristics and old markers changed. They were considerably smaller than our meat chickens and much more economical to feed. We used the Scratch and Peck feed for them as well. Once they hit about 16 weeks, I changed them to organic feed. It has less protein and more calcium to help aid with egg production.

We moved them into a really cute but ultimately very small coop. Since we already had plans to build them a bigger home, it wasn’t a disaster, just changed our timeline a bit. Remember, when you plan your coop, the more space the better, especially if you’re like me and seem to just keep acquiring more chickens. Luckily, my in-laws were getting rid of a shed so it was a great re-purpose project. Look for ways to upcycle for your coop and run. It is so much cheaper and if you’re willing to do the tear down and haul away, a lot of people will make you a good (or free) deal.

We got our chicks in July and by the following January our chicks still hadn’t laid a single egg. Talk about a bunch of freeloaders! Then one day, eggs just started turning up and they haven’t stopped since. You’re chickens will definitely slow down during molting, and days with temperature extremes but I’ve found that if you provide them with feed, water, exercise, they’re pretty consistent. You’ll also find that each one has her own personality which is so fun to discover.

Raising animals is a fluid process. Somethings are constant: food, water, shelter. Other things like aging, roosters growing into maturity and introducing new flock members all take patience and throw you a few wild cards. Hang in there and enjoy it and make the most of those learning opportunities.

Thanks for stopping by!

Nicole