Backyard chickens! Anybody do it? Raise chickens, I mean. Have any wisdom to impart? I'm considering it--fun for kids, free eggs, what could go wrong? 
Backyard chickens! Anybody do it? Raise chickens, I mean. Have any wisdom to impart? I'm considering it--fun for kids, free eggs, what could go wrong?
Predator-proof your yard and just sit back and enjoy! Make sure you can do it in your area. Lots of cities will let you keep a limited number of hens, no roosters. The eggs are much, much better, I'll never go back.
Try duck eggs.
I knew someone was going to snag that gasket for an avatar ......
subscribed.
We still need to predator-proof our yard, but are also strongly considering some chickens or ducks at some point. Tractor supply has them for sale every spring (but you have to buy at least 6, and they aren't sexed)
Ducks are GREAT for raising and selling eggs. I our friends were raising ducks along with chickens. They were getting $12 a dozen for duck eggs, and had a waiting list!! They stopped raising them because they were messy I guess.
www.backyardchickens.com is a GREAT source for info.
914Driver wrote: I knew someone was going to snag that gasket for an avatar ......
I did it at your suggestion.
Bok Bok Bok
I would love to have some chickens, and have studied different coop designs so I will be ready when we are ready to do it.
what could go wrong?
They are filthy, filthy, filthy animals. Your kids will hate you. Sorry to piss on your dirty chicken parade. A vegetable garden is fun though!
I have to build our chicken house this week and get ours outa my shop. Granted there are a couple I plan on eating this summer 
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This is our first year having chickens here at the house. We do have a vegetable garden and berry bushes around the property as well.
Not the same, but I gave mom a covey of 7 Bobwhite Quail for mothers day. They have been staying between the house and the swampy area to the north. They come up near the driveway to eat the cracked corn she throws out on a big flat rock. If you live in the country you could do the same with chickens.
Chickens are dirty, ducks are berkleying filthy and stinky.
Predator-proofing includes having some protection from owls. Sleeping hens are easy targets for all kinds of critters. Skunks, possums, racoons, weasels, dogs, cats, hawks, owls, local redheaded children, etc. My folks had good luck training the birds to go into a coop at night, that way they could make sure the coop was secure rather than making sure a yard was secure. They let their chickens out in the afternoon (their birds tend to lay in the mornings). Most of the aforementioned predators would rather attack after dark, or are deterred by the presence of big farm dogs. The big farm dogs don't cause problems, so long as you train them early that chasing the livestock is bad news. We've given away dogs because we couldn't keep them off the chickens.
Rhode Island Reds are excellent starter chickens. They are a hardy variety, and lay plenty of eggs. Cornish Cross is a good choice for meat-type birds, but raising birds to eat is an entirely different process.
Anybody who wants more info, shoot me a PM. I was a nationally-ranked chicken judge in high-school (braces for chicken judge jokes), and can provide LOTS of helpful advice.
The approximate quantity we are considering is four. No plans to keep a rooster, just hens. I've got the coop about half done, and part of our rear yard is already fenced from where we had a couple old dogs that have since departed this earth.
Oh, that reminds me.
Count on 1 egg per hen per day at best. Egg production slows down if the coop is cold (in Kansas, we're talking October-March ish), and tapers off to next to nothing as the hens age (want to say the folks cull out old hens at 4 or 5 years).
Edit: and typically, hens don't start producing until they're around 6-8 months old.
I have guineas. They get on my truck and make me oh so mad. The did lay eggs when there were more of them, I think all of the hens were eaten. The eggs were fantastic. They eat bugs like it's their job (which it is) so we keep them around. Fewer spiders, fewer mosquitoes.
What timing for the thread. I was just searching CL not an hour ago for used chicken coops. We're considering the same thing. We go through about 36-50+ eggs per week. We've got plenty of yard for chickens, and our kids would probably have fun. Didn't realize they only lay one per day....not that I expected a Bugs Bunny cartoon stash of eggs daily, but thought it was a little more.
Just FYI, even though they're miserable messy horrible creatures, ducks actually lay more reliably than chickens, or so they say. I can confirm that duck eggs are fantastic.
The cartoon stash is doable, but not under every hen. Some hens have more motherly instinct and like to sit on eggs, other like to go chase bugs and do chicken things.
At peak production, my folks get around two dozen eggs a day from 30 or 35 chickens (some roosters). Not out of the ordinary to find one hen sitting on 60% or more of those eggs.
JohnInKansas wrote: I was a nationally-ranked chicken judge in high-school
You must make this your sig 
My neighbors across the street raise chickens in their back yard. No problems with noise or odors as far as I know, but I think they only have six or eight of them, and they keep them in a coop. They get enough eggs for themselves, plus enough extra to barter with someone else in town who's raising chickens for meat.
On the other hand, when I was a teenager I worked on a chicken farm that had gigantic sheds holding around 100,000 birds each...the smell and mess there was pretty horrific.
I kept 20 of them when I had a small farm before I met SWMBO (I raised chickens and rusty Italian cars)
I'd love to have a pair at our house now, just for the eggs. Once you've had eggs that fresh no store bought egg will ever be good enough.
We have 7 laying hens we raised from day old chicks. We have a large, fenced area for them so their mess isn't all over the place. Very low-maintenance animals in my experience. By the time I pay for feed, fencing, etc. I'm not sure that we save any money but I think the eggs taste better and are safer than what you can get in a supermarket.
Stay away from roosters-they will scare young kids to death and crow at all hours of the day and night. I clean the coop about once a month and it is a 15 minute job. The composted chicken manure is great for the garden.
In reply to JohnInKansas:
John-I've never been to Kansas but I'd like to see the rooster eggs...
I've always thought having backyard chickens was pretty cool, and after tasting truly fresh eggs (blue and green ones, how cool is that?) I don't think I'll be able to resist someday when we have some land to put them on. After hunting around for DIY coops for suburban spaces, I thought this plan was pretty sweet:
http://catawbacoops.com/
looks easy to build, easy to find space for, and could probably keep a small family reasonably supplied with fresh eggs. For $20 you could probably have a good time working on it with your kids too. The idea is that the coop is light enough to pick up like an ark, so that you can move the chickens around the yard to different spots every few days for fresh foraging and to keep the poop from piling up in one spot and burning the grass.
After watching my mom deal with lymes disease for a decade i'm all about ruthless bio-warfare on ticks, and if chickens can take 'em out then i'm a fan. mosquitoes can go to hell too.
edit: JohninKansas, how are Buff Orpingtons for a beginner in the NC climate? No real reason i'm interested other than that they look pretty 
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