The Chickens Are Earning Their Keep

 

 

We have been getting a consistent supply of eggs from our 7 hens since the beginning of the year.  A co-worker had put dibs on fresh brown eggs since November of last year.  A price was agreed upon and then we (patiently) waited for the first dozen eggs to become available.

We are finding that the new breeds of hens we have right now are not as consistent at laying eggs as our originals.  Their eggs are also smaller than our original hen’s eggs.  Due to a problem with a hungry red tail hawk this past winter, we lost 3 full-grown chickens in the span of a month; one of them being one of the original red sex link hens who was our best layer.  Let me tell you, our red sex links lay an egg almost every single day and their eggs are huge: we are talking XL or XXL.

In January and February, we sold 5 dozen eggs to my coworker friend as well as another coworker.  The proceeds from the sales are almost enough to purchase another 50 lb. bag of chicken feed.  The best part is: we still have more than half a bag of food for the chickens to (hopefully) last us another month or two.

My goal for this year was to spend no more than $50 on chicken feed by supplementing their diet with mealworms, table scraps, food from the chicken garden and free food we get from friends and family that is expired.  So far this year, we have purchased 1 bag of chicken food for $17.24.  This is about $4 more than what we usually spend on their food, but we needed it and it wasn’t worth driving 30 additional minutes to get it from our usual supply store. 

As mentioned, we still have more than half a bag of food left for the chickens.  Assuming we sell another 5+ dozen eggs in the next month and a half, we will have more money from the sale than the food costs to feed the chickens.  Not only that, we eat our fair share of chicken eggs throughout the week! To me, this is a win-win scenario!

Are your chickens earning their keep?

How many do you have?

 

Thinning the Flock

{{I originally wrote this post on Friday; however, did not get it posted on the blog on time. Since writing this, we have processed 3 more chickens, bringing our flock down to a total of 10 hens.}}

There are currently 13 full-sized chickens running around our fenced in back yard.  To be honest, this number really doesn’t phase me and quite frankly, I enjoy owning the chickens.  Then again, I could easily become an animal hoarder because I love all things fuzzy and adorable. The number of chickens we own bothers my husband and he has made that vocal over the past couple of months as the chicky babies have continued to grow.

Admittedly, it was a big leap to go from 3 compact laying hens to 19 chickens at one point. The chickens we have are of all different breeds and sizes, some of them twice as big as our cute little compact (1 ½ year old) red sex link hens.  In the beginning, the chicky babies didn’t require a lot of attention or food.  Now, at 4 ½ months old, they eat a lot, poop a lot, take up a lot of room and two of them (roosters) are crowing loudly as early as 5:00 in the morning.

All of these factors put together, I think it’s time to thin the flock.  When it gets to be a little warmer outside, we are planning to process 4 or 5 chickens.  It will be difficult to decide which ones stay and which ones will be processed. 

I look at Craigslist every few months and there are always listings for free roosters.  If we decide that we want to breed a couple of the chickens for meat in the future, it shouldn’t be too difficult to pull off.  Until then, we are looking forward to a few more hens to start becoming fertile and laying eggs over the next month before processing the rest of the flock.

Midgilist

It is a little known secret that at work, my nickname is Midge.  It is an inside joke because I had a vendor call me from another country and ask for “Midgin.”  Lucky for me, it was one of the sales reps that took the call and the nickname has stuck ever since. (Please note the sarcasm.)

My coworkers think I am absolutely crazy for all of the things we do in our family.  I have been told by a friend that he is creating a new term for people like me and it is called Midgilists.  What kind of person is a Midgilist?  Someone who goes above and beyond to find ways to do everyday tasks for little or no money.  He is pretty much telling me that I’m cheaper than cheap.

I asked him why he felt this way, and he fired back with about a dozen of the following things I have done over the years.  When I thought about it, I added to his list just to give you an idea what a Midgilist does:

• Raise chickens for eggs
• Raise chickens for meat
• Going no ‘poo
• Researching (and still considering) bamboo as a renewable heat source
• Research solar panels and windmills (and ways to make them ourselves for less!)
• Grow a garden
• Cut our own hair
• I touch up my roots using hydrogen peroxide (for pennies a month)
• Plant perennial fruits, vegetables and herbs
• Crochet some of my own sweaters
• Create a chicken garden to help cut the costs of chicken feed
• Breed mealworms as a food source for our chickens
• Harvest mealworm poop to fertilize the garden areas (a new infatuation of mine)
• Make homemade vanilla
• Brew our own beer/wine
• Can the overabundance of apples
• Make homemade jams
• Freeze vegetables to consume throughout the winter
• Make our own soap
• Convert our vehicle (Kia Rondo) into a mini-camper
• Do our own oil changes and car maintenance
• Home improvements using recycled materials
• Cancelling the satellite and installing an antenna instead (we get over 30 channels now, by the way!)
• Homemade laundry detergent (a new recipe for our HE )
• Homemade dishwasher detergent (another new recipe)

…and the list keeps going on and on.  Until I sat down and thought about all of these things, I completely forgot we do most of them!  We do these tasks on such a regular basis that it is second-nature to us and we don’t feel it is really out of the ordinary.

There are some people who are preppers and others are survivalists…but I’m a Midgilist and I’m OK with that.  I am proud to be thrifty and willing to put some elbow-grease into whatever we do to help save money and become self-sufficient.  There is much more we could do to improve on our Midgilism in the upcoming years.

Until then, may the Midgilists unite!

(I know there are a few of you out there. J)

This post is lined to the Farm Girl Blog Fest.

 

What I Learned While Butchering Chickens

The weekend before Thanksgiving Todd and I were butchering our 4 month old roosters.    The main reason we were butchering one of them was because it had been crowing for over a week and I didn’t want the neighbors to shut down “Operation Meat Birds” we’ve taken on this year.  We decided to butcher 3 of the chickens I was pretty confident were roosters because we didn’t want to take the chance of having another one start crowing in the next few weeks.  We butchered the 3 most mature roosters leaving one to breed with the hens in the spring.

The 3 Roosters We Butchered
The Black One Was the Crower

I wasn’t sure if we would be able to butcher the chickens ourselves, but we both did just fine.

I have posted these links before, but I will post them again to anyone who wants to learn how to process some of their own flock. 

Part 1
Part 2 

I will be completely up-front and honest with you: the worst part was the first 2 minutes.  The head came off within seconds but what the video above didn’t prepare us for was the flailing of the wings that took place for over a minute.  I stood there watching in horror wondering if we did something wrong.  I will also tell you I will never be the one to cut off the chicken’s head.

After the wings stopped flapping, the rest of the process was pretty straight forward.  Dunk the chicken into water at 140-160 degrees for about 30 seconds to loosen the feathers.  Cool the chicken off in cold water, and start taking the feathers off.  This takes about 10 minutes when doing it by hand.

After removing the feathers, it is time to take the esophagus out which takes no more than 5 minutes.  After the esophogus is the removal of the innards and to cut off the feet which takes about 5-10 minutes.

Overall, it took us about 3 hours to process 3 chickens; however, we stopped for lunch in-between and took several breaks.  I would say it would take 20-30 minutes from start to finish if you were on a roll.

Two of the 3 Processed Chickens
(The yellow is because we had the water too hot when de-feathering this chicken.)

The question I always ask when we are doing something like this is: Is it worth it?

I cannot honestly answer this question with a definitive yes or no.  To save money: probably not.  To eat organically and locally: definitely!  We have not yet cooked up any of the chicken, so I couldnt tell you if there is a difference in taste.

It takes time to process the chicken, but I am happy knowing the chickens had a great life of roaming the yard eating bugs and vegetable scraps in their short 4 months here on earth. 

We will definitely be doing this again in the future; however, we will try to plan the processing in warmer weather.

It really is eye-opening to see how an animal goes from roaming around the yard to prepared for dinner.  I would recommend it for anyone interested in learning about how food is processed as well as for those looking to eat more locally. 

This post has been linked up to:

    

 

Breeding Mealworms

Just in case anyone thought otherwise, this is proof that I have gone bonkers.  I am breeding mealworms as a renewable food source for our chickens.  I was surprised when I brought it up to my husband that he didn’t even bat an eye which means only one thing: he has realized that I have done lost my mind a long time ago.

So, how did I learn about breeding mealworms?  It was from a post that I received from Jane who has a website entitled Hedgecombers.   When she posted a comment on one of my posts, I took a look at her blog and noticed an article about breeding mealworms.  After doing some research, it seems to be a pretty simple thing to do. 

I set out to purchase mealworms and start our own mealworm breeding operation.  I ended up getting them from this seller on eBay and I am extremely pleased with the purchase.

Mealworms the Day We Got Them

So, you may be wondering what you have to do to breed mealworms.  I’ll tell you.

1.)    Buy mealworms

2.)    After several weeks (up to 2 months), the mealworms turn into pupas which is like a cacoon

 

3.)    Out of the pupa (1-2 weeks later) emerges a Darkling Beetle that live up to 3 months

4.)    The beetles mate and produce eggs

5.)    The eggs hatch into mealworms

6.)    The life cycle starts all over again

Is it really that simple?  YES!

Within 3 days of owning the mealworms, pupas started to form. Once they formed, I picked them out of the area with the mealworms and put them in their own area so that when the beetles hatch, they can get busy making some eggs!  Also, please know that the Darkling Beetles don’t fly, so there are no worries of having these things flying all over the house.

I am getting a little bit ahead of myself.  This is what is needed to breed mealworms:

• A warm place (for maximum breeding, you will want the temperature to be around 76 degrees)
• Plastic tubs (I am using old tupperware containers)
• A food source (bran cereal, oats or chicken feed) of 1-3 inches in the plastic tub
• A water source (a slice of an apple, carrot or potato)

Water Source for Mealworms

Many people on YouTube use sweater boxes to start their mealworms out in, but we keep our house pretty cold and there was no way there is any one spot in our house that is 76 degrees in December, January, February or March!  Instead, we put our egg incubator that we bought when we purchased too many fertilized chicken eggs for our broody hen to work (again).  The 1,000 mealworms we purchased fit in a small plastic container inside the egg incubator.  I am pretty confident we can keep up to 5,000 mealworms within this incubator comfortably. 

The mealworms will eat through the 1-3 inches of their food source (also known as a substrate) with time.  Once they do, all you have left is what looks like sand.  I will let you in on a little secret: this is mealworm poop.  Another inside secret is that this “sand” is great fertilizer for plants.

  

Costs Involved:

Incubator (we already had)
Plastic tubs (we already had)
1,000 mealworms ($18.99)
Large container of oats ($2.19)

Total invested in mealworms:  $21.18 (not including electricity use and slices of potatoes and carrots that we always have on hand)

The only reason I decided to breed the mealworms in the winter is so that I could get some experience and to build up our supply of mealworms for the chickens.  I do not plan on feeding the mealworms to the chickens until the next generation of mealworms hatch.  I have decided otherwise. Our "operation" is producing so well, even within just 2 weeks of owning the mealworms, that we will start supplementing the chicken's food with mealworms in the next month or so!  It takes anywhere from 3-4 months for the entire life-cycle to take place.  My goal is to breed enough mealworms to keep a nice supply available to the chickens through the colder months next year when they arent able to forage for their food as well as to sell them locally to help recoop the costs.  I also plan on selling the mealworm poop as fertilizer when there is enough to sell.

As you can see, with the life cycle being 3-4 months on mealworms, I can make an endless supply of treats/protein for my chickens while keeping the cost of commercial feed to a minimum.   

The mealworms have tripled in size over the past 2 weeks!

I admit I am creeped out by these things.  The noise they make while digging through the oats is an eerie sound because I know it is 1,000 mealworms!  Ick.  To me, it’s like a bad horror movie.  But I know that this is the best possible food for our hens and a replenishable one at that, so I think it’s worth it.  Maybe with time, I will be comfortable enough with them to pick them up with my own two hands. But for now, I will continue to use tweezers thankyouverymuch!

 

Chicken Solarium

It is getting cold here in NorthEast Ohio, and I know that with time, that beautiful thing we call snow will be falling.  I was looking into ways to get the chickens outside to enjoy the sunshine durring those frigid cold months. The chicken coop we have for the chickens is perfect for roosting and sleeping 17 chickens, but not 24/7! I found a link showing someone's chicken solarium, and I started to think about what we could use to make one here on the homestead.

 

 

The great part about the solarium is that we had everything we needed on hand!  We replaced sliding glass doors at the front of our house several years ago with french doors, so we had a large, heavy pane of glass ready to be used as a solarium.  The best part is, the glass is so long, it can accommodate most of the chickens in the area!

We know which direction the snow drifts form, so we closed off one side of the solarium with bricks that we had lying around from other projects that have taken place around the homestead.  As you can see from this picture, the sun shines on this area pretty nicely between the hours of 10AM and 5PM. 

Now, when the snow begins to fall, we will have to shovel a pathway from the chicken coop to the solarium for the chickens to enjoy the warmth and sunshine… and get the stink blown off of their feathers!

 

The Great Debate: Butchering Chickens

 

It is quite humerous to me the opinions that people have about our purchase of fertilized chicken eggs.   I work with a majority of men and they loved hearing about the fertiliezd eggs that we got; however, opinions started flying as soon as I mentioned what we plan on doing with some of the chickens.    

Take Gentleman #1:  His wife is a vegan: He is not. Together, they adore animals and do not believe in animal cruelty (neither do I!).  Please note: this gentleman eats meat.

Gentleman #2: Just read a book about a plant-based diet entitled The China Study and converted his ways from a meat-loving carnivor to a (mainly) vegetarian diet.  He has had this new way of eating for two months with a couple of meatatarian slipups now and again.

Both gentlemen have been giving me a hard time about our plans to butcher some of our chickens.  Gentleman #1 argues that it is not humane to butcher a chicken.  While trying to defend myself about how slaughterhouses work with the meat he purchases from the grocery store, he rebuttled with an “ignorance is bliss” type of attitude.  I find this completely hypocritical.

Gentleman #2 gives me a hard time about eating meat in general, stating that it will be the death of me and that humans were not meant to eat meat.  Again, this is his opinion.  And as the saying goes, “Opinions are like…*”

 My opinion:

{I am not saying that my opinion is the proper opinion to have; however, it is something that my husband and I strongly believe is right for us.}  

We do not want a lot of chickens running around our yard and I will not tollerate several roo’s pecking each other to death.  Our current chicken area is over a quarter of an acre where the chickens can roam and eat bugs as they please.  I like knowing that our food source is able to run free and I dlike knowing what they are consuming.  There are no cages to keep them in or horomones fed to our chickens to bulk them up.  They are a la natural, and I feel that we give them a great life here on the homestead.  Did you know that chicken bought at the store is generally butchered between the ages of 35 days and 45 days old?  I remember what our chicks looked like at a month old, and they werent a fraction of the size of the chicken breasts that I purchased from the store.  Our chickens will not have to deal with being bulked up for slaughter, as we can patiently wait for our chickens to mature naturally before getting ready to butcher them.

3-4 week old chick

I know our chickens are happy.  They run up to me when I go into the back yard and will eat goodies (cracked corn or kitchen scraps) out of my hand.  I find them running around free-range at 6 in the morning and sometimes I see them roaming around at 9:00 at night when I take the puppy out to go potty before bed.  I feel that the environment we provide for our chickens is the best possible atmosphere for them to have to live out their happy, healthy lives!!

Please note: I am still not 100% sure we are able butcher the chickens ourselves, but we are not ruling it out.  We are researching methods of humanely butchering some of our flock.  I found this video of a way to humanely butcher a chicken.

These are three very different points of view on butchering chickens.  I am sure you have your own point of view on this topic and I would love to hear what you have to say about butchering chickens.  

 

 

*If you havent heard the saying, it is:

"Opinions are like a-holes. Everyone’s got one and  they all stink.”

Chicky Babies

To catch up about our broody hen, please read:

• Broody Hen
• Which Came First: the Chicken or the Egg?

On July 16^th, after over 21 days of incubating fertilized eggs, chicks began to hatch!   It was a glorious day of firsts for our homestead.  Hubby and I had never gone through this before, so we didn’t know what to expect.  Actually, hubby was out of town for a few days when the chicks began to hatch, so I was constantly texting him with what was happening.

  

Out of 30 fertile eggs, 12 of them hatched on Monday, July 16^th.  I got home from work to see a bunch of peeps under Latte, our broody hen. 

Over the next week, we had a couple more peeps hatch each day.  Total, 19 chickens hatched from the fertilized eggs we received.  This could have been due to a couple of reasons: Some of the eggs may not have been fertile or I didn’t incubate the ones inside properly.  Latte was not able to lay on all of the eggs we had, so we bought an incubator to incubate half of them indoors.

Once the peeps hatched and got their fluff, we brought them inside to a tempertature controlled area of the house under a heat lamp.  It was such a blast to watch them fumble around the first few days, and adding a few more to the mix every day or two.

Unfortunately, a couple died unexpectedly the first week: one had a medical complication that I was unable to doctor up and one was a runt whose legs and beak were growing, but it’s body wasn’t growing properly.  Let me tell you…chicks are pigs!  They eat so much!!  After the first week, they tripled in size.  I had to find another place to keep them so they had some room to roam around.  We ended up using an unused dog cage that we had.  I put leaves in the bottom (free!) and we set up house for the chicky babies.  They stayed in this area for approximately 3 weeks until they had all their feathers and it was time to move them outside.

 

 

Even though we have a chicken coop that would accommodate all of our chickens, we were afraid the hens would peck the chicks to death.  Even when we experimented with the chicks outside, the hens were not fond of the chicky babies!  Hubby was gracious enough to build a coop to keep the chicky babies away from harm, but acclamate to the weather.

 

 

I realize that the chick coop is not the most attractive coop on the market, but it was free and it serves it’s purpose. (Please note: Hubby built a door for it!)  We decided that once we integrate the chicks into the hen’s coop, we will eventually use the chick house as a breeding shack in the future.  We are calling it “The Love Shack.”

Mocha not sure what to make of the curious chicky baby

 

Unfortunately, when the chicks were 6 ½ weeks old, we lost another to a hawk outside.  We are at 14 chicks right now and I hope we don’t lose any more.

The chicks are 3 months old now, and to date, I cannot figure out which is a hen and which is a roo.  From what I’ve read, I may have to wait another few months or wait until they start crowing!  I have a feeling that we have 4 roo’s, but don’t quote me on that. 

Chicky Babies Today: 3 months old

 

I will admit to sitting outside and watching all the chickens run around their fenced in area for hours on end.  They are coexisting outside just fine, but I am continually finding the hens stealing the chick’s food!  They are pretty much both the same size right now with some of the chicky babies being bigger than our 1 ½ year old hens!

Two chicks and a hen (on the way left).  They are pretty much the same size!

 

If you are able to own backyard hens, I highly recommend it.  Not only do they provide food for the table, they make great pets.

Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?

{I had this post ready to go live back in July well before I decided to stop posting on SparingChange.  So, now that I’ve come back from my 2 ½ month hiatus, this is what we chose to do with a broody hen. }

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about our broody hen, Latte.  She refused to come out of her nesting box and we were torn as to what to do.  Our options:

 

1. Buy fertilized eggs for her to lay on
2. Lock her out of the coop until she is done being broody
3. Buy pullets (female chicks) so that our egg production does not go down while we have a broody hen in the future

I found a micro-farm about an hour away from where I work and the lady I spoke with was a wealth of information.  I emailed her a week later about our decision to get pullets; however, she didn’t have any that were sexed to ensure we were getting female hens instead of roosters.  We were able to purchase chicks but there was no guarantee how many males or females there would be. 

After staying up late one evening weighing the pros and cons of each option, I decided that the fertilized eggs were the best route for us!  In my mind, it was the most natural (and frugal) way for Latte to put an end to her broodiness.  She is getting what she wants: to lie on eggs for 21 days and patiently await the baby chicks!  This decision cracks me up a bit because we originally wanted nothing to do with the fertilized eggs due to the fact that we would have roosters.  However, after thinking about it, I decided that if the roosters were a problem, we could have them butchered and eat fresh chicken throughout the year. 

 

 

 

 

I made the drive after work to pick up the dozen fertile eggs on Monday, June 25^th.  Again, the owner of the micro-farm was nothing less than a pleasure to deal with and extremely accomodating. She gave us some extra fertilized eggs with our order.  When I got to her house to pick up the eggs, she gave us a shipment that a woman ordered but never paid for!  So, instead of getting a dozen fertilized eggs for $20, we got 30 eggs for $20!!!  It was like Christmas day for me on the 25^th of June!

 

 

On the drive home, I began to fret about how we would house these chicks that would be hatching in 21 days.  We have a double-decker chicken coop where the nesting boxes are on the 2^nd floor.  I was worried that when the chicks hatch that they might fall and hurt themselves.  My wonderful husband agreed to make a nesting box on the first floor of the coop for our nesting hen and the fertilized eggs.  The cost to us: Free.  We had all supplies on hand.

 

 

A pro to having the fertilized eggs is that we can keep a rooster (assuming we get at least one rooster out of the fertilized eggs) for ourselves to fertilize more eggs in the future; thus providing more adorable chicks!  In turn, we can pretty much “grow our own food.”  When I think back to what Todd and I are striving for in our lives, this simple step of purchasing fertilized eggs go hand-in-hand with our ultimate goal.  We want to grow our own food, and now, we have the ability to do just that!

So, the learning begins all over again with the new addition of our eggs.

 

 

And if you want to see what Latte did as soon as we put a portion of the eggs in her nesting box, you can witness for yourself the natural beauty of a hen protecting “her” eggs in this video. (Please excuse my husband's belch.  He didnt realize I was taping.)

 

 

We are expecting the chicks to hatch between July 14^th and the 18^th, and I cannot wait!

So as it turns out, I still cannot answer the question about what came first: the chicken or the egg. But I’m OK with that.

I would like to make mention of my husband through all of this.  This is the man who never wanted anything to do with chickens in the past.  Now, he is the man who said it was OK for me to bring home fertilized eggs and he was even willing to build me a nesting box on a whim to house 15 eggs and a broody hen.  Now, he is building several more nesting boxes to install into the coop to accommodate the chicks that end up hatching: whether that be 6 or 30!  Really, what man would put up with these crazy antics of mine?  I am truly blessed!

MIA

I am not sure if anyone has noticed but I have been (intentionally) MIA for the past 2 ½ months.  At the beginning of July, I scheduled an post that I decided never to make live, but to just let the blog sit idle.  I didn’t know for how long the site would sit unattended, but it wasn’t until I received encouragement from a reader several weeks back and a friend ofmine who also reads the blog that I decided to start writing again.

Don’t get me wrong, I have missed updating and writing on the blog over the past 2 ½ months, but I really needed the time away to focus on other things in my life.

This is the post that never made it live back in July:

I Don’t Want To Be Connected (To Electronics, That Is)

Over the past month, I have been struggling with being “connected” by the internet and cell phone.  For the first time in my life, I am not concerned about the amount of time I am spending online because I am met with my own personal resistance to being connected.  I am perturbed by a society that is connected to their cell phones and internet connections every waking minute.

In the month of June, I inadvertently started to break away from blogging* and the internet in general.  I think I posted once a week for two or three weeks.  I checked my email every several days but I was horrible at responding back.  It was so bad that I even received a second and third email from a friend who was worried that something happened to me!

With the fast-paced world around us, I have been yearning for the truly simple life.  A life with no real plans on the weekends and time spent together with friends and family face-to-face.

Have you gone through a phase that you completely disconnect from the internet and your cell phone?

 

*Please note that I love-love-love connecting with people! I enjoy blogging and reading emails and comments from followers of the blog.  But I have been cutting back a bit to “stop and smell the roses” along the way.

 

So, what have I been up to over the past 2 ½ months?  A lot!  I have several posts to write and update my faithful followers on what we have been up to here on the homestead including what we decided to do with our broody hen, how our garden turned out this year, our new way of eating gluten/dairy and sugar-free, and many other topics.

The only difference from the past is that I will not be posting nearly as much as I used to: most likely just once a week.

To all the readers who have stuck with me through all of this, THANK YOU.

Our First Year of Collecting Eggs

From Left to Right: Blondie, Latte, Mocha

July 1^st marked our first (full) year of our chickens laying eggs.  It has been a learning experience but so much fun to raise these chickens! 

Stats:

• From July 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011, our 3 chickens laid 476 eggs*
• From January 1, 2012 to July 1, 2012, our 3 chickens laid 402 eggs*
• Total Eggs Laid: 878 (73.16 dozen)
• We got our first “fart egg” in 2012 (a fart egg is a teeny-tiny egg-so cute!)
• Total spent on chickens and feed from birth to current date:  $ 140.41
• Price per dozen: $ 1.92

You may notice that the chickens have not laid as many eggs in 2012 as they did the last half of 2011.  I believe that this is due to going on a 10 day vacation and a broody hen.  There were two days in 2012 that we did not receive a single egg.

Mocha: "What YOU lookin' at?"

Even though we could buy non-organic white eggs at the grocery store for less, we enjoy having the chickens running around the back yard, eating bugs, demolishing kitchen scraps, staring at us as if we are the odd ones, and providing a source of fresh eggs every day.



Source

*This statistic does not include the eggs that were cracked or broken.  It also does not include the eggs that our neighbor collected for us while we were on vacation.  They kept the eggs as a perk for keeping an eye on our little cluckers.

A Broody Hen

Latte : our broody hen

Over the past week or so, we have had a broody hen.  I’ve heard of the term before, but I never realized that hens without a rooster (thus, no fertilized eggs) would go broody.  To be honest, I thought our chickens were “broody” when they did a little song and dance after laying an egg! I was sorely mistaken.

We had noticed that the number of eggs we’ve been getting from our 3 chickens has decreased since the weather got nice, which was very confusing to us.  Come to find out, Latte, our “leader of the pack,” is actually broody. 

How to determine if your chicken is broody:

• She will not come out of the nesting box
• When you physically pull her out of the nesting box to go run about with the others, she is fluffed up and not happy at all!
• The once leader of the pack will become a loner
• She will stop laying eggs

I decided to visit Craigslist to see if we could find some fertilized eggs.  We have been talking about getting 6 more pullets (female chicks) next spring, but wanted to know if we could get the fertilized eggs now and let Latte incubate them naturally.  I found a micro-farm about an hour away from where we live that has fertilized eggs ready to be warmed up by Latte!  The owner I spoke to was a wealth of information.  I learned that if we went this route, it would take 21 days for the eggs to hatch. How fun!!!  The only downfall is that we could potentially get roosters, which we are not interested in.

So how do you stop a chicken from being broody?

You keep her out of the nesting box.  We have a door that closes and locks the nesting box so that nothing could get the chickens at night.  We are now using that to lock Latte out of her nesting box.  By doing this, she is not able to nest, thus, in the next week or so, she will be done with being broody and start a regular routine of laying eggs again. 

The other routes are to buy pullets from this breeder and let them mature this summer and fall to start laying eggs for us in late fall or winter and wait patiently for Latte to get back to her usual routine of laying eggs. 

We have yet to decide what we want to do, but I will tell you that I am pretty confident we will get our pullets from the micro-farm even though they are double the price of pullets from Tractor Supply.  The owners brought their chickens over from Australia (not shipped by a hatchery!) and they breed with only their original blood lines.  I like that the chickens didn’t come from a hatchery, are hormone, antibiotic-free, happy free-range chickens! 

SIDE NOTE: Upon doing research on how to sex chicks, I found this on YouTube that breaks my heart.  This is how our first 6 chicks were handled before getting to Tractor Supply, and then to us.  No wonder one died within 24 hours!  I am now fully convinced that we will not be getting any more chicks from a hatchery of any sort.

Have you ever had a broody hen?

What was your experience?

Different Flavors in Eggs (Store-Bought vs. Fresh)

One of my favorite breakfasts is dippy eggs and toast.  For me, there is nothing better in the world.
A couple of weeks ago, Todd was extremely sick, and the only thing he could eat was eggs and grits!  The chickens weren't producing enough eggs to keep up with Todd eating them, so I had to buy eggs from the grocery store.

Our eggs vs. store-bought eggs

Everyone always talks about the difference in farm fresh eggs and store-bought eggs.  When we made the transition to our chicken's eggs exclusively (when they produced enough for us), I really couldnt tell the difference. 

This past weekend, we had a couple more white eggs in the fridge, so I decided to do a taste test.

Can you tell which is the store-bought and which is the brown chicken egg?

I was surprised not to see that much of a difference in the egg while cooking.  The store-bought egg is on the left, while the brown chicken egg is on the right.

Even though they looked the same, the taste in fact was very different.
To me, when I ate the store-bought egg, it didnt taste like anything!  When I started dipping into the fresh chicken egg, you could actually taste the creamy yolk flavor.  It was delicious!

This may be based on the fact that I am now completely spoiled with farm-fresh eggs every day, but we will continue to own chickens strickly for the eggs.  They are so delicious!

What has been your experience?

Planning for Chicks / Our First Year Owning Chickens

For those who are thinking about getting chickens when they become available at local TSC stores and hatcheries within the next month, this has been our experience with the chicks (including how much it cost per dozen eggs in the first year.)

From Left to Right: Blondie, Latte and Mocha

It is hard to believe that we’ve raised chickens for the past 11 months.  Around this time last year, I was checking out every book from the library on how to raise chickens and trying to learn as much as I could to ensure healthy, productive hens.  Now that we’re 11 months in, I realize how simple it is to take care of these wonderful creatures.  They have become part of the family, and we absolutely love having Blondie, Mocha and Latte.

 The first two weeks were the toughest with the chicks.  Out of 6 chicks, we lost 2 within 24 hours (I think one was sick when we got it and the other was a freak accident.)  As chicks, you have to make sure they are nice and warm with a heat lamp until they begin to get their feathers.  I told Todd on a couple of occasions that I could watch the chickens grow!  They grow up so fast! 

3 Days Old

A Couple of Weeks Old

 We took care of our chickens indoors for over a month until they were getting too big for the large container we had them in.  This is partly due to me being overly cautious as well as waiting for the construction of the chicken coop to be complete.

The chickens were so happy to be moved outside! For a few weeks leading up to the move to being outside permanently, I would take them out in the garden and let them run around eating bugs and getting acclimated with the weather.  In the beginning, they would follow me around the garden everywhere I went.  They didn’t want to venture too far away from mother hen (me!)  But after a few weeks of preparing them, we moved them outside into their chicken coop and they have been happy chickens ever since!

Hanging Out in Chicken Coop

Shortly after moving them into their chicken coop and letting them roam free while we were away at work in a half acre fenced yard, we lost one to what we think was a red fox that had been in our area.  Chicken feathers were found a couple of days later a little ways out from their enclosed area.  We were sad, naturally, but I’m glad we haven’t had that issue since.  We are now down to 3 chickens.

First Egg Laid in Coop

July 1st, one of our hens laid her first egg at 4 months of age (only two weeks after switching them to layer feed.)  I was so excited!  By the end of July, all three hens were laying an egg a day consistently.  To date, the chickens have laid 561 eggs which equate to 46 dozen and 9 eggs eggs!  We have spent $117.31* on the chickens and their food in this time making each dozen of eggs cost us 2.51/dozen!  Last July, the cost per dozen was over $11!

In the state of Ohio, it is law that chickens must be purchased in increments of 6 because they are a flocking bird; however, that may be different in the state in which you live.  You can call your local TSC and inquire about the minimum you would have to purchase.  Our chicks were $2.49/each and they are the golden sex link breed. We really love this breed because the chickens are smaller in size (about 5-6 lbs) and produce nice big brown eggs.  I have read that when it gets cold, the production of eggs may slow down; however, we have had only a few days of 2 eggs versus 3 with the cold weather we’ve had over the last three months.

Rare Occasion the Chickens Are Out in the Snow
Left to Right: Latte, Mocha and Blondie

I {heart} Chicken Butts!
(this was taken before the 4th chicken was killed by red fox)

 We tend to have a dozen eggs on hand at all times with the 3 chickens we’ve got.  We just love these little layer’s personalities and have had so much fun learning and getting to know each and every one of them.  We would love to get 6 more chicks in March, but we have no need for 9 eggs/day!  Maybe in 2013, we will add to our brood.  Until then, we will continue to love and laugh at the ones we’ve got.

Last year, my goal was to learn about how to care for chickens, and quite frankly, it was pretty easy to do.  Chickens are resilient (except when predators get to them) but entertaining and rewarding when they start producing!  This year, I was toying with the idea of learning how to maintain a beehive.  Instead, we decided to forgo the expense of bees and focus on producing enough vegetables to sustain us through the fall, winter and spring from our garden!

Are you planning on learning something new on the homestead this year?   I want to hear all about it!

*Please note, this is just the price of the 6 chickens and the food.  This does not include the chicken coop, which was built for around $200.  The coop will house our three current chickens as well as new chicks in the future for many years to come!