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GenericOverusedName posted:Its sort of a pipe dream for me at the moment, but I would like to raise hens for eggs at some point in the future. About how many would you need for a dozen eggs a week? How much space would they need? How do you deal with predators (foxes, hawks, semiferal dogs, etc. )? The amount of eggs you'll get depends on the breed of your hens, their age, and the time of year. We've got 15 Rhode Island Red/White Rock cross hens, and we are getting roughly an egg per day per hen. They're in their second summer of laying - egg production was a bit slower when they first started, and slowed way down in the winter. Productivity will also drop off as they age. This chart has more information than you will probably ever need on chicken breeds, including their productivity, hardiness, egg color, etc. If you want about a dozen eggs a week, two or three chickens with at least one of a productive laying breed would probably be a good start. You wouldn't need a whole lot of space for only three chickens. I'd recommend a tractor-type coop so you could move it around as needed. We can't do this, as most of our land is densely wooded. If you're talking about just having a few chickens in a yard, something mobile will be much easier for mowing a lawn and will reduce cleanup. Predators, again, will depend on where you live. We live in the middle of the woods, and chickens are very delicious, so we lost a few chickens as pullets last spring/summer. Raccoons got most of 'em. We made their coop really secure and hooked up a motion-activated light, and haven't lost one since. The gross/sad thing is that if a chicken is visibly injured or bleeding, the others in the flock will viciously peck at it. I love having chickens! Fresh eggs rule and I love being able to toss them my kitchen scraps. We found out that they really enjoy cake: 
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Jun 9, 2011 18:16
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GrauFrau posted:Yes please! More chick pix! One of the glaringly obvious differences I've noticed between supermarket eggs and the eggs from our chickens is that ours have much firmer, more cohesive albumen - I figured it was just because supermarket eggs are so much older, and the albumen naturally breaks down a bit as the egg ages. Maybe those eggs are just older? Chickens sometimes lay in weird places, maybe your egg provider doesn't find them right away. It could also be that those eggs are coming from the older hens in the flock. If they smell fine, your dog's GI tract should handle them no problem. Last summer, our puppy would sometimes find chicken eggs of indeterminate age in the woods and eat them up, shell and all, and she never had a problem. She also liked to eat their poo poo, and has literally never had a single health problem! Since people have mentioned goats... has anyone kept both hens and goats? The neighboring farm through the woods has about 40 dairy goats and a nice-sized chevre operation. They get rid of most the male kids every spring. We were thinking of taking a few in this past spring, but we have an actual kid on the way, so we'll probably wait a year or two. If space within the coop isn't an issue and we have them cordoned off from each other, would chickens and goats be alright sleeping in the same structure?
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Jun 20, 2011 01:57
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Mr_Biggs posted:Chicken questions To prevent them flapping over the walls, you could always just periodically clip the flight feathers on one wing of each chicken - that's what we do. They can still get a good couple of feet up in the air. As for teaching them where to roost, we just kind of shuffled them into their coop right before dusk every night and shut them in. Before long, they had the hang of it. Now if we could just get them to lay in their boxes, instead of under them...
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Jun 22, 2011 00:12
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A flying piece of posted:Chicken pics Those are some warm chickens, it must have been a hot weekend where you were, too. I felt bad for our hens, but as it turns out, they really hate being spritzed with the hose. Zeta Taskforce posted:How did you all acquire your chickens? We got ours from Moyer's Hatchery, which is about an hour and a half from where we live. They have a really extensive catalog, and I'm pretty sure they ship all over the US. They do "trim" the beaks of the chicks (it looks like they hold the very tip of the beak to some sort of heating element) so that they don't hurt each other during shipment, which I know some people think is cruel. All of our hens' beaks look normal now, for what it's worth. The local Tractor Supply had chicks this spring, but they were much more expensive than a hatchery would be.
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Jul 26, 2011 00:13
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I'm pretty sure one of our hens has gone broody. This is my first flock, so I'm not really sure - basically, she just won't budge from the laying box, and seems to have pulled out some of her breast/belly feathers. When we pick her up and take her out, she'll walk around, scratch and peck and eat a little bit. She looks really pissed off as she does it, though. I've read you can put ice cubes in the boxes or block them off, but I don't want to do that to all 16 boxes for just one chicken. She's always in the same box, so could we just block off that one box? Is it okay to just keep and eye on her and let it run its course? There's absolutely no chance that any of her eggs are fertilized. Lyz, sorry to hear about your flock. We're pretty sure a local dog got one of ours last summer, too - any other predator would've struck at night and actually eaten the thing, rather than just kill it and leave it there. Here's hoping the owner keeps a better handle on his dog in the future.
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Aug 4, 2011 21:56
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