Raising Your Own Poultry to Enrich Your Life and Help Preserve Rare Breeds
Why have poultry?
Why bother?
- It doesn’t take much land to produce both meat and eggs, so even city-dwellers can fit them in a small space.
- It gives you and your children a “farm” experience without a huge investment.
- They can be easier to care for than a dog (at least our dog!).
- Chickens are entertaining and make good pets.
- You can enjoy their eggs without having a noisy rooster.
- The eggs and meat you get from your own chickens can be far healthier than what you get from the store.
Chickens or turkeys?:
We were able to have both chickens and turkeys on our 13-acre farm, but many of you will find having just chickens more feasible. However, the Narragansett turkeys we had were a joy. Even the toms are friendly and the hens are wonderful mothers. When we hatched out their eggs in the incubator instead, the babies are adorable. Baby turkeys are not as fearful as the chickens became after the first few days of age. The downside of friendly babies is the real possibility of "imprinting" them so that it's impossible to be outdoors without them underfoot! But for me, enjoying these beautiful animals is a big reason to have them.
My intention with the following is to focus on raising chickens, but you'll find that this article also applies to turkeys and ducks. Enjoy!
Newborn Narragansett turkey poult
Choosing the best breed for you:
Heirloom or hybrid?
What you want to do with your chickens will be the biggest determinant of what breed you want. We wanted birds that would be good both for eggs and meat and we also wanted to help save old breeds. We became members of the Livestock Conservancy and choose the "critically endangered" Dorking chickens. It's fun to think that Julius Caesar actually brought this breed to England!
Besides choosing the breed, you'll enjoy choosing what variety you want. We were originally able to get the Silver Grey Dorking chickens from Murray McMurray Hatchery. When we decided to go with the rarer "Colored" and "Red" Dorkings, we were able to get them from members of the Livestock Conservancy. It was enjoyable after that to be able to share these chickens' genetics with others who wanted to raise them.
If you're mostly concerned with raising meat birds, the short-lived Cornish Cross birds that are butchered at two months of age work well. They are what we buy in the grocery store, so there is a lot of meat per bird and they easily cook to give tender meat.
If it's high production layers you want, Leghorns are excellent. Many of this type of bird can be found at farm stores or TSC in the springtime.
Red, the red Dorking rooster and two of his hens
Why have a rooster?:
We've always had a rooster, but I realize that city-dwellers may not have that option because of ordinances that don't allow them. Without roosters, you will still get those precious eggs and the delight of having hens scratching around for bugs in your yard. But, of course, what you won't have are fertile eggs.
The upside to eggs not being fertile is that you'll never have a "blood spot" on the yolk from an egg that was left under a hen for a day or two. That blood spot is the beginning of a baby chick and so it is a sign that there's a rooster around that is doing his job.
The hens seem to like having a rooster with them, and perhaps because of the breed or because our roosters were raised on our homestead, they were always friendly
"Buddy," the Silver Grey Dorking rooster
Housing:
Purposes of shelter:
When we plan housing for our poultry, we want to keep in mind what purposes it has:
- Shelter from extremes in weather
- Protection from predators, especially at night
- A place to roost
- Nests of proper size both for laying eggs and for sitting weeks while hatching eggs
When we moved to our 13-acre homestead, all the outbuildings were in disrepair. The former chicken house was coming apart at its seams and was used for storage of unused farm equipment. Restoring it so that it was predator-proof required elevating the entire building using several car jacks and pouring a cement foundation. The building was then reroofed and sided with metal. Windows were made to provide cross-ventilation on hot days.
The chicken house in the foreground has exits for the chickens into divided, fenced yards. This allows us to have two varieties of Dorking chickens while keeping the roosters and their hens separate. They then alternate days that they get to explore the entire farm. When they stay in their yard, they have either a tree or Jerusalem artichokes for shade and protection from hawks.
Floor plan:
Keeping the two varieties of chickens separate in order to save these rare breeds also determined the interior design of the chicken house. The turkey house and the yards are also divided in two so that we can have two toms with their hens.
The aisle is large enough to have a metal covered can to hold the food as well as having their nests open into the aisle to make egg gathering easier. In truth, it's never really easy if the hen doesn't want you to have her egg!
Roosts:
Poultry survived originally by sleeping in trees, and both the turkeys and chickens still think that's a good idea. It's why we like to be home at dusk to escort them into their homes and shut the door.
It also means that they like to roost off the ground and having a chicken roost allows them to do this. It also allows me to clean out the poop and straw once-a-week and carry it to the compost pile.
Each side of this roost has a cortec board underneath that pulls out, sort of like a cookie sheet being pulled out of an oven. I then just use a handful of clean straw to scrap the soiled straw into a bushel basket before carrying it out to a cart and then the compost pile.
The turkey house roosts can be folded up against the wall for cleaning the floor. What motivates me to clean the poultry houses weekly is that flies lay their eggs in the manure and the maggots hatch out in about a week's time. A neighbor warned us that maggots can actually penetrate a chicken's flesh, and I don't want to chance that. Besides, our chickens are worthy of a clean house!
Chicken house roost
Turkey house roost
Nests:
The chickens' nests are 12" x 12" boxes about two feet off of the ground, The turkeys' nest is a larger platform where they usually lay their eggs on the top, but it's sometimes worth getting on hands-and-knees to discover more eggs underneath.
The Dorking chickens proved to be very "broody girls," and as we get into summer, one after another gets "broody" and stops laying eggs. Instead they sit, filling the nests until we thought we had to build more. The joke was on us, and indeed, five nests for ten to 15 hens is plenty.
Safety first:
There are times when it's helpful to have an extra place to put the chickens. When we hatch out eggs in the incubator there are, of course, as many males and females--or "cockerels" and "pullets." They guys all get along until about 18 weeks of age, and so when it's warm enough outdoors we transfer them to a homemade chicken tractor.
The two advantages of having them contained there is that we can move them to fresh grass twice-a-day and we can keep them safe. This safety comes with an obligation on our part to plug in the electric wire each evening that surrounds their tractor. It's with guilt that I share that when I forgot, there was one less chicken in the morning without any sign of a break-in. When the neighbor's dog caught a mink in their yard, we blamed it!
Feeding your flock:
Many options:
- We began by buying bulk food from our local feed store.
- When we learned that Purina sold organic chicken food, we switched to buying that. If we "are what we eat," then we are certainly what our poultry eat!
- We next learned about Fertrell's Nutribalancer supplement and began adding that to their food.
Food fit for royalty:
Once we learned about Fertrell, we found our way to optimizing the poultry food. We bought in bulk organic corn, oats and soybeans and bought the other supplements from Fertrell. Having dealers across the country meant accessing these supplements more easily, and getting the organic grains resulted in enlarging our community of like-minded homesteaders.
One room in the barn was walled off to be "rodent proof," and not only held most of the ingredients, but also a Craigslist small cement mixer for mixing their food which was made fresh about every five days. The grains were also ground fresh with the small Bravo food grinder.
It took some years before we made this investment of money and labor, but it was wonderful to feel our chickens and turkeys the very best--not only for their health and enjoyment, but for the excellence of the food they provided.
There is one more aspect of poultry nutrition that I believe is very important. Not only is having the option to be outdoors a humane option for poultry (and all farm animals), but it can contribute greatly to their health and nutritional status. Birds are great foragers of insects and insects are made up of high quality protein. It feels foolish to me to purchase more food for our poultry when they enjoy foraging for themselves. It's why when store eggs are advertised as "vegetarian fed," I know the poor chickens were confined to the indoors and their eggs cannot be of the quality we want to eat.
Sustaining your flock and the breed:
For those of us who don't want to go out and buy more birds every few years, hatching out fertile eggs is a "sustainable" way to keep your flock going. Our Dorking chickens are very "broody" girls, and are more than willing to stop laying eggs and simply sit on their fertile eggs for three weeks. The Narragansett turkey eggs require four weeks of incubation, but these old-breed birds are willing to do that.
I don't know how their predecessors managed to stay safe in the wild while incubating eggs, but I don't trust the raccoons, fox and dogs not to find them where they huddle in a fence row. Instead, we've made a predator-proof corner in the barn where we can quietly move the broody hen and her clutch. She gets room and board there without other hens to attempt adding their eggs or even sitting right with her. In return, we get to watch her hatch out and care for her chicks.
Broody hens:
Depending on a hen to hatch out her chicks is probably sufficient to maintain a small flock. One hen which we simply named, "Mama Hen," somehow made it up to the barn loft daily until she had at least ten eggs to sit on. After three weeks, we would start to hear them peeping as they hatched out and would usually end up doing a treasure hunt through the hay bales to locate all the chicks. We constructed a half-sized chicken tractor just for her to care for the chicks when they were very small. They would then move together into the chicken house and become part of the flock. The boys (cockerels) got sorted out later when they got to the adolescent stage and began fighting.
We were very fond of Mama Hen, so it makes me sad to say that after four years, a raccoon made its way to the barn loft and killed her. However, she was seemed so happy being independent that I'm not sure if we would have done things differently.
Incubating eggs:
Incubating eggs each springtime--when the birds are laying the most eggs--allows you to have more control over the number of off-spring that will be hatched. It's not 100%, but if you're wanting to keep your flock growing or get enough cockerels for eating, or get enough chicks to share with others, I believe an incubator works best.
Attempting to mimic incubation under a mother hen means regulating the heat, humidity and even turning the eggs. How much of this is automated and how much you have to be responsible for depends on the quality of incubator you buy. I do believe that to incubate a few in order to give children (and us big kids too!) this experience, a smaller incubator than what's shown here works fine.
Sharing endangered breeds:
If you have an old breed of poultry that is in danger of going extinct, besides raising them, it's very important that you are able to share their genetics with others. Belonging to The Livestock Conservancy makes you part of a community that will be eager to share with you--both for finding the breed you want and to make it possible for others to raise the breed you have.
I have never attempted to mail chicks, but every spring I send off eggs to at least a couple of new owners. I've met delightful people this way and have never had anyone less than eager to pay for the eggs and shipping. In truth, I don't charge much for the eggs which seem to belong more to nature, but I leave that up to you. Keeping our homesteads sustainable sometimes means making an income!
A mama hen takes at least ten days to establish her clutch of eggs, and so I attempt to get the eggs to their new owners within a week of when they were laid.
I cushioned each egg with tissue paper and wrapped each dozen in bubble wrap before adding wadded newspaper and extra protection around them. UPS usually did a good job in getting them to their destination unbroken.
We had never raised chickens, ducks or turkeys before we began homesteading in our fifties. We therefore depended on a couple of basic books to help us out. Although I attempting to include some basics here, it's difficult to include all the little glitches that occur. I'm thinking about things like a hen with an obstructed crop, having a houseful of broody hens, parasites, or pecking order disputes.
We used the book, "Chickens in Your Backyard," though I see there are many similar books available. "Raising Chickens for Dummies" always informs and never insults me! "Story's Guide to Raising Chickens" is also excellent.
Besides giving you superior eggs and meat, I hope that your birds will give you great enjoyment.
