Learn to Homestead: Keeping Egg Laying Chickens

hey you guys this is josh and carolyn with homesteading family and welcome to this week's episode of the pantry chat food for thought today we're going to be talking about raising chickens for eggs all right you guys well spring is almost upon us sprung it's getting there starting to warm up a little bit for us yeah and we're really making plans and thinking about everything out there on the property and one of the questions one of the topics we've been getting asked a lot about is just chickens and some of both the basics and the details on egg laying chickens yeah so we're going to cover that in actually pretty good detail today in the main topic but first we have to do the chit chat and um and answer questions so before we get to that question how are you and what's going on with you uh well i'm tired i'm spring tired you're supposed to have all this energy in spring which you do you know some fresh sunshine and things starting to like get a little green and poke up and you know grow a little bit but then you use all that new energy to get the gardens and get everything ready so you know it's that time of year where the snow is now gone we're able to actually get outside and do some work you know i didn't clean up the cottage garden last fall when i should have i didn't pre-prep it which is the best way to go but i just didn't have the time i just did not make that fit in i know that's reality you just you can't do it all yeah you got to be okay with yourself yeah and that happens so i decided that spring is a really good time to clean up the cottage garden and get everything composted and ready for this next year hey at least it's right there on the southwest side of the house it's one of the first places the snow is melting which of course is a great place for gardens yes but it's also allowing you to get in there early before you know things are pushing on you too hard not much is really sprouting or coming up yet so that's nice yeah it is really great so i'm spending quite a bit of energy on that sort of thing and uh you know projects out there yeah what about you well like you which you didn't mention i don't think is the seed starting and actually starting some things earlier this year and you know i resonate with you and just feeling tired and some of that is just the stress of the last year coming into this year and really feeling the need to continue to up our game yeah to continue to grow more to produce more to put more up to improve our systems and you know i had thought last year like okay we're going to slow it down next year and take it a little easier and in some ways we are but in other ways it's like no we need to push ahead we need to keep developing systems there's just enough going on that and i think you guys are feeling this we all want to grow a little more food we all want to put a little more up we want to improve our backup system so with that i'm getting things started earlier doubling up on peppers and we just keep not getting those uh even the seed started early enough so getting some of those done just like you are and you're you're doing some you know adding a lot to the the kitchen garden with getting the onions out there and what i think i saw leeks and cabbages and broccolis so thinking about all that planning and just putting up the hoop house the diy hoop house which there's gonna be a video on how to turn that bean tunnel into a very inexpensive hoop house or greenhouse greenhouse again to give us an edge in our cold environment we don't have the money for a big fancy hoop house i'd love one but we're going to make deal with what we've got and also to extend that season we're growing a lot more root crops but we still like our tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and we need to improve the systems there so that's what i'm working on is getting that up and ready to accelerate the melt of the snow and warming up the soil with this passive system yeah great very good good good okay so um that's it not much going on not much going on what are you guys up to let us know leave it leave us a comment let us know where you're at in your your homesteading year and what you're up to and what you're struggling with or what you'd like to know about yeah you could probably tell we're a little tired we're maybe a little subdued we're working hard we're getting into our year so it's all good stuff okay so we're winging it on the question i don't remember who asked this question other than i can tell you a lot of people ask this i'm now pressuring her to do a video on it because it needs a deeper commentary than we can give here yeah but um the basic question is can i can in an instapot can i can we're getting this over and over and over people really want to use their insta pots to cam pressure can you know it'd be really nice to have like a one size fits all appliance in the kitchen and the insta pot starts to come kind of close to that but the question can you can in an instant pot is kind of uh challenging first of all you can water bath can in an insta pot cool okay you would not want to pressurize it but in just its insta pot setting now honestly i would not recommend it because i think you're going to end up over cooking whatever it is that you have in there in order to bring that up to that steady rolling boil but if you can bring up your insta pot to a rolling boil without pressurizing it and you can maintain it at that temperature for as long as your food needs to be processed then you are technically safe to water bath can again you have to also make sure that your jars are submerged by at least one to two inches of water in that scenario okay but what i think people really want to do is to pressure that's really what they're hoping they're trying to save money i think totally get it um you know save on resources i think they're trying to save money but the other thing is is we've gotten comfortable with our insta pots now we're using them in the kitchen we're comfortable with it and the pressure canner is honestly still a little scary like it's kind of something we don't use very much and it steams and makes a lot of noise and it's jiggly and things like that the answer for that is no please do not pressure can in an insta pot the reason for that is that um you know if you really want to get into the science you can check out my video training that i have on the safety of canning and i actually go through all of the safety features of that we'll make sure there's a link in the show notes and description here for that but you have to be sure that you are bringing the contents of the food that are inside your jar all the way up to 240 to 250 degrees fahrenheit in order to properly can them if they're a low acid food that would be the scenario where you would pressure can the problem with an instapot is you have no way of actually measuring the real pressure that you are pressurizing your insta pot to even the types of electric pressure cookers that have a digital readout that shows you the pressure you have no way of checking that and being sure that it's correct and it's honestly you guys it's a life or death scenario i hate to make it so big but if you're not canning at the full pressure you potentially have botulism in that jar that you haven't killed off so that that digital temperature for for like an instapot or whatever you're using that's more of an fyi yeah where on a pressure canner the gauge or the weight is a safety a regulated safety device that is correct and even those dials on an actual pressure canner you have to have those checked every single year because those can go wrong so you have to take them into a county extension office and have them actually check those in order for those to be deemed safe you have to do that every year you have no way of taking your instapot in anywhere and having it checked and calibrated so it's really important that you actually pressure can at the correct pressure in order to kill off all that bacteria that could be in the jar in order to have a safely sterilized jar of food that can sit on your shelf and not end up killing you or making you really really really sick you just don't want to take that chance you don't want to take that and you know carolyn's got a few great videos out there but if you want to dive in if this is the year that you just want to master canning i'm just going to give a little plug here for carolyn's class because she'll take you she's excellent she'll take you all the way through from zero knowledge if that's where you're at or wherever you're at to being totally confident and comfortable in that class and if you're concerned about getting food up this year you're growing a larger garden whatever it is you're doing but you know you want to get more on the shelves and this is the year to master this just get the class and and she'll take you all the way through a lot further than any youtube videos are going to do yeah and it's all very safe it teaches you all the very safe methods so you can be really confident about your foods absolutely cool all right well that was a good question so insta pot pressure canning don't do it right and now let's dive into chickens and we're going to kind of just cover the foundations and the basics of egg laying chickens this is another area it's a great entry point for you guys that are wanting to increase your food production and and another cool part we're not going to talk about so much today but we'll reference is that you can actually preserve and store eggs yes yeah and so that's going to add to that um you know resiliency as well right if you even if you want to up your game with chickens if you're just doing a few okay we are covering a lot today so we better jump right into it okay so um where do you start what breed do you start with what do you need to know about breeds and what breed do you uh start with yeah so how do we approach that well you really want to start by knowing what you want to do with your chickens right if you are only you're trying to get as many eggs as possible out of your chickens that's going to dictate what breed you get versus you know if you want a chicken that can be used for eggs and then can eventually be used for a little bit of meat that's going to be a different chicken versus a chicken that is just for meat right so usually we classify chickens into four different categories you've got your heritage breed chickens these can actually kind of fall within the other three categories too right these are these are just heritage they're not your hybrids that have been developed for specific purposes right yeah then you have your specific egg laying breeds these are going to be pretty skinny chickens usually so they're not usually going to be good for pudding in the pot after their egg laying life cycle and they can be heritage or they can be a hybrid yes they can be yeah and these types of chickens are gonna lay somewhere around 300 eggs a year in optimal conditions so if you're looking mostly for egg laying chickens these are the kind of chickens that you're going to look for um this would be things like the austrolorps the leg horns the leg horns now we have a hybrid i think that we're using i can't remember the name of brown those were second year on those and those are going but they're specifically for egg layers and those are going fantastic as well those have been really good too so then you have something called their dual purpose breeds and this is uh with the idea that you have this chicken who's gonna lay quite a few eggs but still be large enough that you can get a little meat off of it in the long run yeah that's the idea and i personally after years and years and we've had a lot of dual purpose i i don't recommend them anymore i think you want to get your egg layers for your egg layers now they still you know the egg layers age out slow down and you can still use them for meat and you want to do that to make good use of your resources but get get egg egg laying chicken's the best for your environment whatever it is your your requirements are and get your meat chickens for your meat chickens the dual purpose a lot of people like it but it just doesn't it doesn't played out well without concept if production is your main goal then yeah you're not i mean most of your dual purpose birds are going to lay about 200 maybe up to 250 eggs a year in ideal conditions so you can see already that's between uh you know 50 and 100 egg drop from those egg-laying chickens but the thing is you also don't get that much meat off of them so they're not doing the egg laying that great and they're not doing the meat production that great now i've got to say though i love these dual purpose birds because they often are your kind of backyard chickens they're pretty they are plucky you know a lot of times they're kind of like the the buff woofing tins things like that they're kind of plump looking because of all their feathers you know so they're kind of fun to have as diversity and they're a little more handleable a lot of times the good egg layers are a little more wily and you know it's definitely the setters if you're going to get into the setting so you're right they are they are a little more nice backyard chickens so they do have their place but if you're really going for high production you really really want to go without those egg layers now i've got to mention the meat breeds real fast because sometimes if you've raised a bird for meat and it somehow escapes the butchering process that can either be because you lose heart and you decide not to butcher them i've heard that happen in multiple cases or um or you know it literally escapes and gets out and they end up being part of the egg laying flock those really are not going to be your best bet for egg layers you're going to end up feeding them a lot of feed just to get very little bit of eggs well a lot of times they'll continue to grow the ones we've seen that happen with that happen with the neighbor of ours and um he went ahead and experimented with that and we hadn't left them in the egg laying flock and they actually grew out and got too big yeah and you know had problems just like just like your cornish crosses have at eight weeks ten weeks it just didn't work you know they laid a few eggs yeah so this is where you really need to know your use for the chickens and what your ultimate goal is and again we kind of have gone to recommending go with the egg layers for the egg layers get the high production egg layers and get your your eggs out of them yup and so when you're looking figure that out and then figure out your environment and what chickens are going to do best in your environment talk to people and what you like it's nice to have some variety right we've gone with a little less variety recently because we're focusing on production with all the people in our house but it is important sometimes to enjoy chickens are fun to interact with and look at so you know you got to put all those pieces together absolutely okay so the next logical question is is where are we going to get chicks from where to go and we've got a few um ways to go out there you can hatch eggs out yes you can buy chicks day old chicks you can get pullets or you can get adults right so let's take them through that if you want to find hatching eggs you can do that in all different ways you can get them from a neighbor who has eggs that have been fertilized you can get them from a lot of online sources you can get them from a lot of hatcheries obviously they have to be fertilized eggs in order to produce a chick but what you need to know is that you would have to incubate those eggs before you're going to end up with a chicken right so you need an incubator set up and then you'll need the brooder set up after that so it's pretty advanced especially if you're just getting into chickens um you can get chicks and oftentimes you're getting those as day old or a couple day old chicks that is kind of the standard way to bring chickens into your flock that is the most common method that most of us are using and it's it's in all ways but one it's a great system okay yeah what's the one way that it's not agreed well you're dependent on you know and you are if you're buying the hatching eggs as well unless they're your own but you're dependent on a resource far away and that's working for us great now there may come a time where there may come seasons when that doesn't work so well um but this is what works right now well for most people stale chicks so another thing that you can do is you can bring in pullets which are between four to six months these are usually at what's called point of lay where they're just about to start laying the benefit to this is that you miss that entire chick period where you have to baby them and be mama hin essentially right keep them warm keep them fed we'll talk about that in a few minutes so you have chickens that are old enough to go ahead and go right into the main coop and they're just about to start laying so that can be a benefit the real con to that there i think there are a couple of them but the real con to that is that they are expensive they're usually much more expensive because somebody else has had to raise them out they usually are but it is worth pricing it out and figuring out how much are your chicks costing your system your feed up to that point because if you're in an area if you're in an area where there's not very many people doing pullets then they're probably going to be expensive but if you do happen to be an area where people are doing that it is worth checking it out it may it's going to cost you a little bit more in dollars no matter what but it will save you the labor and the time and it may be worthwhile so if you really like getting into the numbers it's worth finding out what's available and crunching the numbers because that can be a good way to go right another thing you can do is bring in adult hands which would be year-old type of range hands they've already been laying they're probably at their first molt which is where they stop laying for a little bit they lose their feathers grow in new feathers and they're probably already around that time but then they should have at least a second and maybe even a third really productive laying season following that and some people sell them out you know at the first mold after the first really productive run because they want to just get start over and get young chicks so that can be a way depending um you know to to get chickens that are you know laying already are going to start laying again after the molt for a you know a little lower cost and they're still going to produce pretty well for you so if you're finding day-old chicks which is really what i would recommend i don't know we didn't really talk about that is that what you would recommend to somebody who's a beginner uh i think so generally if you're really a beginner and you're worried about handling the babies in the system that comes with that because there are and we'll talk about a little bit there is a little bit to that and you have pulitzer adults available um that is a nice safety net because that fragile period has been dealt with right and so if you don't mind paying that little bit extra cost um that can be good but in general yes the getting the chicks is what most of us do because it's generally the most cost effective and it's going to give you the greatest variety you'll have the biggest ability to pick your variety most likely right always try to find them locally if you can somebody who's already doing them and if you can find a mother raised chicks a mother raise if you can find mother raised chicks that is really helpful especially if you're hoping to have hens that will brood and raise their own chicks a hint a chick that has had the experience of being mothered by an actual hen is already automatically going to be a better mother hin than one that was raised in a machine instead and this is the ultimate solution we all need to start doing this even if we can't it's a lot of time to devote to like a breeding program we've tried it at seasons and and it's just it's a lot of work and time when you're trying to produce but if we all would just start taking like sometimes you get a good hand that she likes to set try to encourage her try to set her aside if we all started doing that we'd start moving towards a little resiliency of having more hens that set and raise babies within our communities and so that's a great solution just to this other problem of it's hard to find them locally well we all just need to start doing a little bit and try to get that back into the breeding because it's been bred out yeah because of our current system yeah absolutely so if you can't find them locally which depending on where you are it's very likely that you won't find them locally unfortunately but you should look for a local hatchery if you can't find that then of course we have our online um local you know suppliers who will send you in the mail your day old chicks we don't they'll ship them out day old we don't have that though just we're not selling chicks oh we don't yeah right but there are many companies out there um the freedom ranger hatchery is who we have been using for a few years now that we really really like we have had their chicks are strong robust healthy and some of the ones that have been out there for a while that have grown there's a lot of problems some of the bigger hatcheries yeah so so do your homework yeah for sure absolutely okay so once you get those day-old chicks home yep you gotta take care of them they need a bit of they need a bit of mothering because they don't have them other hand so you've got to be the mother hen and we actually have a video on that we're not going to go through all of that process here because that is a bigger topic so we'll put a link to that video down in the description but really quickly you're going to have to have a brooder which is a very very safe it's like the nursery right you need to put them in this very safe warm protected dry environment to get them up and running until they have feathers so that they can handle the actual um space of the big coop and not be chilled or get killed off by exposure right yeah absolutely so check out that video if you need to learn how to get started okay so then how many chickens should you get as many as possible as many as possible that's mine i love eggs for breakfast and i love eggs and everything so you really really need to start by considering your space you should never have more birds than you have the appropriate space for because you will just you'll ask for you're asking for problems if you overcrowd chickens you're going to end up with disease you're going to end up with aggressive chickens bored chickens that start picking each other and start exhibiting anti-social behavior chickens do like to have buddies so we do want to have more than one all the time probably even more than two but you do have to make sure to give them enough space generally that's considered uh three to five total and we'll get into this in a minute with shelter and what not three to five square feet per bird inside and out is pretty good i mean if we can do more that's great and we'll get a little more specifics here when we get into shelter um and because it breaks down different ways now that we've got standard coupes and all these different mobile situations and we can we can talk about that a little bit but you know three to five feet if you've just got a coupe in a yard you need at least that much per bird certain amount inside certain amount outside so figure out your square footage and divide it by about five and you'll know about how many birds you can house it's important to remember that it's very common for a chick or two to die in the process of being shipped in so it can be a good thing to get one or two extras make sure you have a little bit yeah and most of the most of the chick i'd say factories that's what came to mind most of them will send you a couple extra yes because that does happen yeah and then yes figure for a little more and then sell a few of them if you've got too many yeah a few chicks yeah the other thing you want to do is check to make sure you're not going to get yourself too many eggs or too few eggs so you want to think about your egg you know the egg production of each chicken in general chickens are go are in the height of their lay are considered to lay about four to five eggs per week now there are definitely some amounts of time during the year where you won't be getting that many eggs if it gets too hot your chickens will stop laying if it gets too cold or mostly too dark daylight hours is the main factor yeah so anytime that there's less than about 12 hours of light they're going to significantly slow down so you may have to add a few more chickens in order to make up for those facts and you know what they're definitely in most places going to really slow down in the winter so you can make use of the extra eggs during the week in the in the production season and preserve those yes another topic but that is doable so when you have a lot of eggs you can preserve some for a time when you don't have as many yeah absolutely good okay so um moving on now to the we've got the breeds where to get them how many now we want to start talking about housing them and how to take care of your chicks and your chickens please do not wait until you have the chickens to figure out where you're going to house them let me just say we're speaking from experience we've done it a few times and it causes a lot of stress and it usually causes problems with the chickens so yeah figure this out before you get the chickens just not great care of the animals you know and there's two types of shelters in general right there's permanent shelters okay and there are movable shelters okay so we'll we're going to kind of talk i think in and out here of needs on both of those and options okay so regardless of whether you have a permanent shelter which is a fixed-in place shelter or you have one of those movable shelters a shelter chicken coop or shelter needs to have certain elements to it and the first is it needs to protect them for the what from the weather and the elements right right absolutely pretty basic got to protect them from the direct sun and heat too much heat you've got to protect them from the wind and too much cold yep that could be blowing snow and you definitely want to try to get them a dry place because chickens don't like wet right yeah absolutely so they also need to have an adequate amount of space right yeah this is where you get into depending on what kind of shelter you're dealing with how you set it up if you've got a permanent coupe with a yard you need at least you know two full square foot per bird in the indoor part okay as a square footage your coupe at least two and at least that on the outside that's where you're getting that three to five that's four square foot per bird more is better um you know if you can start getting three you know your coop doesn't need to be giant if it's a permanent coop indoors but you know consider winter time we've got a longer winter so the bigger that indoor coop is since they've got to spend a lot more time inside the better like you said they they they need to be active and do things and they'll turn on each other so two is a minimum um if you don't have a big yard then try to make that bigger and then if you've got a fenced yard to go along with that you know you at least want to i'd start trying to get three to five at least um for a permanent coupe now we want to try to see those chickens get out right we want to get them pastured we want to get them free ranged and um so you know one way maybe you may be able just to open the door to the coop and let them out on your property we've done that a lot and that is great great way to go now if you're going to be in a portable situation you know either part of the year or if you're you know really warm you could you could even do that all year for us we've got to do both we've got a regular coupe fixed coupe we're going to let them out of that sometimes of the year and then we're going to go take them in a portable situation now if it's a portable and you're getting them out in free ranging those can be less square feet okay because they're really not meant to spend a lot of time in there they're going to go in there to roost and lay eggs their food is outside their water is outside and you know different examples of a portable coop would be a chick shaw and that's a just kind of a cart that you move along with a built-in little coupe a chicken tractor and then just a larger like portable coupe that usually guys that are doing market style at that scale are going to use that but any of those you're going to move around so the square footage can go down inside to one to two foot inside it because the chickens are really going to be out either totally free-ranging or in a large netted area ideally on pasture and so they're moving around and they're just using that coop again at night yeah and for egg laying we love that system because it one spreads out the manure it's actually beneficial for the ground because you're spreading the manure over your ground so it's a great thing for an area that you want to bring the fertility of the soil back up but it also gets the chickens under fresh ground every day chickens tend to like to congregate around their little house and they put a lot of pressure right on the area around their house they eat off all those bugs first right so we want to move them around the yard so that they're always having access to fresh food more bugs more fresh grass and greens and they have clean ground to wander around on and of course this is the permaculture mentality where you're starting to get multiple uses out of out of one you know object on your property or on on your farm and so in this case the chicken is not just providing you eggs but the chicken is say controlling flies out in the pasture and fertilizing the field and there are guys that do full-on egg production systems but they actually see the fertilizing of the pasture what that does for the grass for their grazing production as the higher value okay and the eggs are just kind of helping pay for it because it's so valuable for the land right and you don't have to be in large pastures to do this so you can take a few chickens put them in a mobile situation and move them around a half acre i mean even your yard if you wanted to um to get that benefit yeah yeah and the chickens are much happier and they're going to do better so again all of that drops your square footage requirements for your coop yeah yeah you know i've seen them we've got a chick shaw that's down to just about one square foot per bird okay just a little bigger than that and really that's for summer time where they're gonna be out it's got overhangs they've got shade their foods outside they're just going in there to lay or to sleep yeah and you know but you gotta gauge that on your conditions if there's more weather and they're going to have to spend a little more time inside i would definitely want to make that a little bigger yeah okay and now the next thing we want to pay attention to for uh shelter is your temperature control at least we talk about temperature but maybe that's kind of a misnomer right when things get too hot or they get too cold you put stress on the bird's body so what we want to do when they get stressed they slow down laying or they don't lay as much you all know that feeling sitting out in the too hot sun and getting kind of stressed getting hot you don't want to do anything well chickens get the same way and there don't want to do anything relates to how many eggs you're going to get in the day or the week so what you want to do in that shelter is to provide them the most temperate climate possible for the area that you live in that may actually have a lot more to do with ventilation than it does actually cooling the area down providing that shade and some good ventilation is really important in the summer of course ventilation is always important for the health of the bird right um and in the winter uh you know they will still lay in the cold and chickens can actually survive a drastic amount of coal yeah they can take it very cold but they're going to slow down as their body gets stressed so the more heat you know the more insulation that you can provide for them the more eggs you're going to get yeah the misnomer is just that that actually controls the egg laying it's actually the daylight hours that control you know their egg their egg production right but then where you can reduce stress on them obviously the healthier they're going to be the more eggs they're going to lay so you know as long as you've got the adequate shelter that's great if you if you're then able to insulate your coop well great that takes it another step if you're in a cold environment and some people go to the extent of heating it a little bit with a heat lamp or something like that and you know how much energy that uses how far you want to go that's really up to you it's it's gonna help but it's not it's not gonna make a dramatic effect right you know yeah yeah okay so moving on your shelter also needs to have nesting boxes now this is important because your chickens are gonna be laying and if they don't start laying in your nest boxes they will lay all over the place and a nest box is a place where you can actually keep the area clean and suitable so that you end up with eggs that aren't broken and aren't excessively dirty and they're easy to find and they're easy to we've got a group of chickens that lay all over the barn yes yeah because we are experimenting uh with little free-ranging in the barn and um it worked well in some ways but others that didn't and we still find eggs everywhere for those few we do yeah so you really want to have one nest box per three to five hens they'll probably still all try to lay in just a few nest boxes usually they kind of like doing that but it's important to have as many as you can and they're most comfortable there that little dark space with you want a little shavings or straw or something in there to protect the eggs that's where they're comfortable that's where they feel safe to brood to lay those eggs and think about setting them yeah but you still need another way for those chickens to hang out right the roosts yeah so at nighttime chickens like to get on their roosts unless they're setting and so you need to go ahead and provide some poles or something for those hens to roost on so they can be up above the ground that makes them feel safe they're up off the ground and they like to kind of cluster together up there it's kind of their social environment for night time right the thing that you really have to pay attention to is that they're going to spend a lot of time in on that roost you're going to sneeze sorry yeah which means that the manure under the roost are really going to build up so you want to think through methods of collecting that manure try not to get yourself into a scenario where it's a really hard area to get back into to clean some people actually put things like pans or removable items underneath the roost so that they can really easily just pull it pull it out and go dump it out into their compost pile yeah yep good now another one we're touching on here which we kind of talked about that's the outside roaming pen or the portable pen but you bring up a good point in our notes here that people are going to ask about free ranging because sometimes people have a lot of predator issues whether that's from the sky or coyotes or whatever and so you're maybe real nervous about getting those chickens out and free ranging but you really do want to get them out and allow them to be a chicken and that's where the chicken tractors come in that you know people tend to think of more for meat chickens right but they can also be set up well for the egg laying chickens where you move them regularly but they're still in an enclosed uh enclosure and they're safe they're protected they can't quite range as much but they do have that production and so that's that's um another solution for that roaming side which leads into one of our getting onto our last points is security you may think that just because the chickens are right in your backyard and uh they're close to the house that you know maybe nothing is going to come in and bother your chickens you remember when i was building the deck for mom and dad oh yeah yeah and that coyote came in just like 30 feet away from us yeah all of us were outside air compressors going kids out playing and the coyote came right up to the house took a chicken and ran off right in plain sight not only that if you remember we ran after it got it to drop the chicken and it left and it came back within a half an hour knowing we were all there right so depending on your environment we were in a very coyoty heavy environment there yeah you do really sometimes have to keep an eye on that if you're in a suburban area getting chickens is kind of like putting the sign out that says free food to every predator in the area including raccoons skunks anything that you can think of wants to come eat your chickens so you have to make sure that you have a really secure coop if you have neighbors who have chickens it's really great to go ask them what kind of predators you're going to be facing and what's the best chicken fencing to handle that in some places you have to have a lidded coop where there's chicken wire over the top of the coop at least at night in other places you can get away with an open topped coop yeah this is where i really like the chicken tractors because we really want to get away from the fixed coupe model if we can it's just it it breeds things that are not healthy it's not the best for the chickens and so if you can't just open the door on your coop and let them free range for a few hours a day then that chicken tractor is just great because it protects them but it still gets them the ability to get out and and be a chicken mitchell solitude well hey you know what we've got one more key subject here to take care of um we have these chickens we have to feed them you gotta feed them right seems a little out of order but um we do need to make sure they get fed yeah and there there's a lot of ways to do that but there are some basic uh you know requirements and a basic place to start absolutely so when your chicks are young you need to feed them very high protein feed and that's usually considered 18 to 20 percent protein you get it either as chick starters what it can be called chick crumbles there's all sorts of names for it but you're looking for that 18 to 20 percent protein feed in a really small crumble that little teeny chicks can digest yep and we always do this even though we've got a lot of alternative methods we always make sure they're getting this but a little pro tip that works really really well is even when you're doing that lay in some soil onto that newspaper or that surface that you're getting from day one you can do this if it's got some bugs in it great throw in some grass or some greenery with that that does a couple things the soil or the sand starts to get grit into their gizzard and helps their digestion along with getting them used to pecking and scratching because that actually starts to get bred out of the chicken so we want to bring that back in and teach them how to get some of their own feed out of the natural environment and so on that starting even though you're giving them that high protein feed you can add in some of the natural element from day one and that we found that really gives them a nice boost and trains them to as they grow to get out there it also cultures them to actually eating the green things i have seen other people's chickens who've never had access to anything green and when they put green things in there they won't touch it i don't know what to do with it they don't know what to do with it so get some you know even if it's just a handful of grass clippings or you know some weeds out of the yard get some green things in there right off at the beginning so as they get bigger the standard advice from about 8 to 14 weeks is to move to a 16 to 18 percent protein feed the reason for this we want to drop that protein a little bit because we don't want them to grow too quickly we don't want them to develop their egg laying parts too quickly because that can cause some health issues for the long term laying and we also don't want them to develop their the rest of their body faster than their legs can contain it so you want to drop down that protein you actually drop it again from about 15 to 18 weeks down to something closer to a 15 feet now this is really idealized this is very technical it's really technical and we don't always follow all of this um so you kind of take it and run with it the way you can we definitely always start with the chick starter and then when um they get to about 16 weeks where they're about to hit point of lay they're starting to come on to adults they're fully feathered they're ready to be you know they've been out in the coop the main coop then it's time to drop them down to that 16 layer feed right yep and and then you depending on the season and their development i like to see them you know getting pretty fully feathered and again depending on the weather to start getting them out but the sooner we can get them out in free ranging yeah and and you know going after bugs and grasses and all that that helps supplement their feed and really helps them uh just develop a good health and a good robustness your eggs you're gonna see the difference in your eggs with that and then you can get into also fermenting grains yes both for you know making better use out of maybe lower cost grains scratch mixes or individual grains or just adding in those extra nutrition and and probiotics another thing you can do is the kitchen scraps and there's a lot of good protein and a lot of good feed from there as well yeah it's a great way to use your kitchen scraps too yeah it is for us until the until the pigs come in until the pigs show hey you guys it's been great to hang out with you check out our blog post on what to do with all of those fresh eggs that you're about to get after you get your chickens and they are laying the link should be in the description we'll see you soon goodbye

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 44,905

Keywords: Homesteading, Homesteading Family, backyard chickens, raising chickens, chicken (animal), chicken feed, keeping chickens, chicken coop, how to raise chickens, raising chickens for eggs, free range chicken, free range eggs, egg layers, laying eggs, chicken coop ideas, pastured poultry, laying hens, backyard chickens coop, backyard chickens free range, backyard chickens 101, backyard chickens in winter, backyard chickens success in your first year, egg laying chickens

Id: iJdC3yeSPq4

Length: 41min 24sec (2484 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021