Chickens are a great first animal for any homestead. They are relatively low-maintenance and don’t require much land! In fact, many cities and towns now allow backyard chicken raising.

We have been raising chickens for over 7 years now and have learned quite a lot along the way. Although they are easy animal to keep, there are a few key points that need to be considered when starting your chicken raising journey.

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Research Breeds of Chickens

Analyze what your needs/desires are as far as raising chickens and find which breed works best for you. Some questions to ask yourself:

What is my main goal with raising chickens? A pet? Lots of eggs? Meat?

What size coop will I have? This will help you determine if you want a smaller, banty-type breed, or a standard, full-sized breed.

There are “friendlier” breeds of chickens if you are looking to have a pet.

Does egg color matter? Chickens can lay eggs in a variety of colors and shades. White, tan, brown, dark brown, speckled, dark red, pink, green, blue… If egg color is important to you, take this into consideration as well.

What is your climate like? If you live in a place where winters are harsh, you may want to look for a cold-hearty breed.

Consider the chore load.

When looking at how many chickens you will have, you also want to take into consideration the chore requirements. This will vary greatly depending on the number of chickens you have as well as the type of chicken. For example, we raise laying chickens and also meat chickens. Starting in the spring, our chicken numbers boom as we bring in our first batch of meat chicks. For 8-10 weeks we have extra chores as we raise those chickens for slaughter. Then of course we have to process them. In our case, this process repeats (and overlaps) during the warm months as we raise out a few batches of meat chickens.

Once we have raised the meat chickens for the year, our chore load drops back down to just laying hens . If you decide on a dual purpose breed for meat and eggs, your chore load will drop as your slaughter some of the birds for freezer camp. If you leave on vacation for a few weeks every summer, you may want to take into consideration how many chores you will be leaving for whomever you find to take care of your animals and plan accordingly.

Start with quality chickens.

There are many hatcheries all over the country, try and find a well-rated one as close to you as possible to minimize transport times (or even better, close enough to pick up yourself).

Check with your local feed mill/hardware store. They may have chicks available for purchase at various times during the spring/summer. You can also find reputable people who sell hatching eggs- those can be transported as well. This method can be more cost-effective (depending on breed and/or shipping charges) if you already have an incubator.

There are also many small farmers/homesteaders who raise chickens to sell. Check your local buy/sell/trade groups as well as craigslist. Be cautious though, you want to make sure your chickens are coming from a clean, disease-free farm.

• Additional considerations– do you want to purchase few-day-old chicks, larger pullets/cockerels, or mature chickens? The price goes up as the age of the chicken goes up but you will also get eggs faster and potentially not have to “brood” the chicks. You also have a greater chance of correctly determining sex of the chicken as it ages.

Research local laws. 

Prior to purchasing any chickens, if you will be raising backyard chickens in town, be sure to check with your local laws/ordinances to see how many (if any) chickens are allowed in your area and if there are any fees associated with keeping chickens.

Good quality and diversified food.

You are what you eat, right? Well, that’s sort-of the case with chickens too. Finding a good quality feed will give you healthier/happier chickens = better eggs/meat. That being said, chickens are like pigs with feathers. They will eat everything. Table scraps/vegetable scraps can all go to your chickens- even the gross leftovers you found in the back of your fridge (just not TOO moldy please)!

Chickens are omnivores so protein is a must, whether in their feed (most will already have it included) or with their scraps- don’t be afraid to toss in your steak scraps as well (do people really have steak scraps?)!

If at all possible, free ranging is the way to go. This allows the chickens to “do their thing”, scratching for bugs, eating grass, foraging. It will help cut down your feed bill and produce healthier birds.

We rarely buy store-bought, pelleted feed. If you have a feed mill near you, check out what they have for chicken feed. The quality is excellent and the price is usually a fraction of store-bought feed. Chicks, laying hens, broilers (meat) birds all have different dietary requirements and usually the people at the feed mill are more than willing to help you get what you need.

Rotate your flock.

Depending on your situation, you may want to rotate your flock every couple of years. Chickens can lay eggs for quite a few years but do their prime laying for 2-3 years. If you are able to, add a few pullets to your flock each spring and cull any that are no longer producing. This will cut down on your feed costs and old laying hens make great stew chickens. Purchasing ID tags to put on the legs of your chickens and recording them in your farm management book can help you keep track of the age of your chickens.

Keep your coop well ventilated and clean.

Frequency of cleaning will depend on the size of your coop/number of birds/free ranging status. It’s a good general rule of thumb to completely clean out the coop quarterly. In between, turn over bedding weekly and add more as needed. Compost the manure for your garden- chicken manure is an excellent source of fertilizer! To help minimize the mess in the coop, allow your chickens to free-range when possible.

• Along with this, any extra roosters can go in the freezer as well. A good rule of thumb is 10 hens to one rooster. If you realize one of your pullets is actually a rooster and don’t have room for him/can’t have a rooster, raise him up and cull him once mature. This also applies to mean roosters. There is no reason to keep an aggressive rooster. Into the pot he goes!

Make Some Money!

If you have extra eggs, sell them! If you raised a few too many meat birds, sell them!

I can all but guarantee you can find a family member or friend who would be more than willing to buy your farm-fresh goods! If you have high quality hens and a rooster, you may even be able to sell your eggs as hatching eggs. These bring in more per dozen compared to eating eggs and can even be shipped. If you have an incubator, you could hatch out chicks and sell day old or older chicks. Be mindful to not short change your own family, it would be silly to have to buy eggs for your family because you sold too many off of your homestead.

Keep good records.

This is something I wish I had done from day one. Now I am trying to work it into our routine. Keeping track of their food intake, feed costs, any medications/issues, egg production and sales from eggs/meat can help you remember how much you sold meat chickens for last year or when to take your chicks off of starter feed and put them on layer feed, among other things. It gives your brain a little break and is handy to look back on past records to improve your future homestead.

These tips have helped us raise happy and healthy chickens and I hope they help you too!

Thank you for stopping by the homestead!

Melissa