- Let's see what kinda money
I've got in here today. $100, $200, 3, 4. I got 500 bucks here. All jokes aside, my friends, it is a good year to get into
the world of keeping chickens. I've got my little treats here. I've got my hens. They're a little scared. I think they think that I'm
some sort of great giant coming down from above to tackle them, but once they get into
it, they get into it. So in today's video, I'm gonna run you through
a complete starter guide to getting started with chickens. Everything you need to
know, dispelling some myths, correcting some beliefs, and also getting into a
little bit of a discussion about cost and regulations. So join me and the epic thickies. Let's get into it. First I wanna dispel a
few chicken-keeping myths. The first and probably
most pervasive is that if you keep chickens, you're gonna have a really
stinky, sloppy yard. And that's really just not the case. If you keep chickens well,
have the right coop set up, the right litter set up, and the right sort of outdoor run and you don't really mess around too much with giving them too much
food at once, for example, they really aren't a dirty animal. Yeah, they kick some
dust up here and there, but it's not that big of a deal and they bring a whole lotta joy to your house as well. Monsters!
(chickens clucking) The next thing is that you don't
need a rooster to get eggs. In fact, this is probably something that a lot of us as kids, if you didn't grow up with animals, it's probably what a lot of us thought is that, oh, you need a
rooster to get the egg. It's actually not true. The eggs that you're eating when you go to the grocery
store are just unfertilized eggs that hens will drop every 24
to 26 hours in peak season when they're younger hens. Another myth or sort of misconception is that some hens can be quite loud or chickens can be quite loud. And although Butter is a bit
of a prima donna, aren't you? You're kind of a loud little bird. Sometimes they will get a little noisy when they're doing their egg song, when they're about to, about to lay. Ooh! Or for a very particular reasons. Looks like they just had a little bit of a scuffle right there. Wow, I haven't seen that in a long time. Girls, chill. Great example right there of when a hen will get a little bit loud, when they're squawking or fighting with one another a little bit, trying to establish themselves
in the pecking order, or when they are distressed
in some way or laying an egg. Besides that, it's just little
chicken noises here and there that kinda blend into the
background of daily life. Another misconception is
how much work chickens take. They really don't take that much work. You have to collect daily eggs. You do need to make
sure the coop and litter is clean to some degree, but there's techniques that
you can use to mitigate that. And then you really just have to make sure you water and feed them, both of which can be automated. And I'll talk about how to do that. Another interesting fact is that chickens, like our little girl Rufio right here, they do not lay eggs every single day. Like I said, a young hen in summer will probably lay roughly one a day, maybe 24 to 26 hours or so. In the winter, that starts to fall off. You can go a couple days
sometimes without getting eggs. And then as a hen gets older,
they also will stop laying. So for the first three, four years, they lay relatively consistently and after that, they do start to slow down and actually completely
stop as they get older. So you have to have... Lobster just came over and said, "Don't disclude me from that." You do have to have a plan for
your hens as they get older, whether you're raising meat birds. I personally am not with these hens. Or maybe you wanna keep them
as pets at that point in time. One of the more interesting facts for me, I actually learned about
chicken eggs, was in New Zealand when I was on a traveling trip and I noticed that
flats and flats of eggs, like hundreds of eggs at a time, were just kind of sitting
out at the grocery store completely unrefrigerated. And I inquired and I said, "You
know, what's going on here? Don't these have to be
stored in the fridge?" And they looked at me like I was crazy. And the truth is that if you
are harvesting your own eggs from your own hens, as long as you don't wash them, they don't have to be stored in the fridge for at least two weeks or so. That's because there's this natural bloom, which is sort of this protective
coating around the eggshell that means that it is
completely sealed off. Now if you wash it,
that's a different story. You'd be washing that bloom off and you'd be lowering
the shelf life of them. So if you wash, you do
have to put in the fridge, but it's really nice. You can store them in like a really cool looking
egg holder out on the counter and you don't have to
worry about refrigeration. Last couple facts here. Number one, you will not start and end with the same amount of chickens
that you thought you would. Chicken math, as it's
called, is a real thing. Now somehow I've avoided
chicken math so far as the six hens that I started with, like Butter here. Come on up here, Butter. Come on, Harry Lab. The six hens I started with
are the ones that I still have. But, guys, I'm planning
on adding three more hens, maybe four to the coop this year. So don't beat yourself up if you just keep getting more chickens. It's very natural. And, as I said, with the egg production
and maturity of chickens, you actually might wanna start
adding more to your flock so that your egg production
stays consistent. And then, finally, you can have chickens in way
hotter and colder climates than you actually think. They are able to tolerate
those at a much higher level than most people think. But you do have to make
some considerations for their coop design, the ventilation, and the insulation if you
are in one of those climates. Let's talk now about the
primary considerations for getting into the world of chickens because it's not as simple as just buying some of these little cuties and getting in the game. You have to figure out,
can you get in the game? And what I mean by that is some cities and some states, et cetera,
they just don't allow for it. So you need to figure out if regulations allow you to keep chickens
in the first place. Sometimes the answer is yes, but you have to jump through
a couple different hoops. Jump through those hoops and
then move on to the next step. Now in my particular area, fortunately, I am
allowed to keep chickens. Maybe I'd still be doing it if I wasn't, but that's another story. But what we need to figure out is okay, maybe you can, but there's still some
regulations on how far the coop has to be away from the side of the house, how many you can have. Can you have a rooster? Can you not have a rooster? Almost every jurisdiction is
probably gonna limit roosters in some kind or a hen that acts like a
rooster, like Gucci here. But you need to check that because the last thing you wanna do is have someone come inspect or have a neighbor that gets angry. Turns out you are not in a permitted or well-regulated area. So you get in trouble and
you gotta give up your hens. Let's head inside the run to talk about space requirements next, which is one of the most important things before you get some hens. We're gonna talk about the
henhouse in the minute, but right now I'm standing
in the indoor covered run where they got their water bar. And their feeder and we
need to talk about space. This is one of the things that
a lot of us really do feel a moral obligation to provide. Especially when you don't have chickens and you just go to the grocery
store and you buy eggs, you're looking for that pastured hen. Why? Because they have the most space and that space is of the highest quality. So if you're keeping hens at home, at least in my opinion, you really wanna provide
them with a lot of space. And for an outdoor run or basically any sort of run area that is not the coop itself, ideally you wanna be providing at least 10 square feet per chicken. So for my six hens, I would like to have a 60-square-foot
outdoor-indoor combination run. So it could be any mix of those. It could be fully out, fully in, as long as it is separate
from the henhouse. So in this case, this is a 6-foot-by-18-foot
covered indoor run and that is well over 100 square feet. So it's a bit over
double what I would need for six hens, at the
absolute bare minimum. Why this is so important is, number one, it's good for animal welfare. They're gonna be annoyed
by each other less. There'll be less fights like
we just saw a little bit ago. And you're also just gonna have more area for them to explore,
stimulate their minds, forage, get some different types
of protein in their body, dig for grubs, that kind of thing. So more space, the better. But we do have to talk about
the actual henhouse now too. Here we are on the backside
of the coop at the henhouse and we can see Gucci is curious. She wants to know what's going on. So here is where the hens
are going to roost at night. I have these two roost bars right here. As a rule of thumb, you want about a square
foot of roost bar per hen. So these are six feet long. So in theory, I could
house 12 hens in here. But the other consideration is you want roughly
three to five square feet of total roosting and henhouse
space per hen as well. So this is about six foot by
four foot, 24 square feet. Divide that by about, I
don't know, four or so and I could have six hens. Now I do have the completely
covered indoor run here that we were just at, which means that I can probably
have a few more hens in here since they have so much
space both in and outdoors. And then I've got my little
egg hutches right here that kinda gives a little
bit of extra space, but this is kind of what you want. And you do want some level
of ventilation going on. Over here I have three different windows. Of course, this coop is kinda deluxe. And then what you can do here as well is open a vent door without
actually opening the henhouse. So in the summer I can open this up and keep them nice and vented. You can see these hens are very curious. They always wanna know what I'm up to. Guys, I'm just talking about
how to best care for you, okay? So it's all good. The final thought I have for
you on overall coop sizing is it's kind of like the same
thing with getting more hens. You're probably gonna get more hens. Chicken math is a real thing. Like I said, I'm gonna get probably
four more this year. So this coop can house up
to 18 relatively safely. I might wanna expand the
actual henhouse in that case, but if I get to 10, I'm completely fine. So I bought less hens. I raised less hens than
my coop could support, so I could let the
chicken math do its work. Next you need to talk about where you're getting the coop from. This is a 6-foot-by-18-foot
coop out of Carolina Coops, which I do believe if you're going to buy a more deluxe-style
coop, first of all, they make ones much smaller than this, but they're not cheap. I'll be honest with you guys. They're not cheap, but you get extremely good build quality and the best designed coop for
animal welfare on the market. As you can see, the hens are loving this outdoor expansion that we have built, which was a custom little build that we put up here on the channel. But the truth is actually
kind of unfortunate. And what I mean by that is that many coops at the very lower end of the price range simply aren't designed with the best animal
welfare practices in place. And so you might spend
200 bucks on the coop, but the hens really aren't
living their best life. And honestly, if you go
over to Jacques' channel and check his garden out, his coop build was completely DIY. It was very inexpensive, but it is perfectly set up
to give the hens the life that they want. And honestly, Matt from
Carolina Coops went over, took a look at it, gave a little bit of a roast, and he couldn't find much to say about it. It was a very well designed coop. So you don't have to go
extreme like I've done here. You can totally get or build
coops that work really well. Now we need to talk about
how do you get the chickens? Do you raise them from eggs? Do you hatch them? Do you raise them from baby chicks? Pullets, which is a
sort of teenager chick? Or do you just go ahead and grab hens that are ready to lay. Coop ready, as they're called. Lav, chill, chill, chill. Do you grab little Lavenders and just pop them into your coop? Now there's a couple schools of thought. Number one would be the pure play, that would be raising them from eggs. The problem there is that you don't know if that's gonna be a male or female. Most of the time you cannot keep roosters and a lot of people just
kind of don't want roosters. And so that's a bit of
a gamble, in my opinion. And it's also the most
advanced level of raising hens. Now you can then go to the
other side of the spectrum and get coop-ready hens
that are about to lay. To me, that kind of spoils some of the joy and fun of this process of
of getting to know your hens and raising them. So to me, I wouldn't really recommend it. Now you can go a little step down and get what are called pullets, which are probably the weirdest
looking version of a hen where they look, their
feathers are coming in, they look a little scraggly, kinda like they're going through puberty, but they get a little
closer to that laying age. So you don't have to to kinda go through that whole raising process. But then, at least for me, I really preferred raising
them from baby chicks. Most of the time they have been sexed, meaning that there's a very high chance that they're going to be females, or hens, instead of roosters. So you don't have to deal with that. But then you also get
the entire experience of raising hens from baby chicks, which is very satisfying. They're some of the cutest
little birds you'll ever see. The only problem is you do
need a bit of a setup there. So you need some kind of brooding setup, which you really need a
container of some kind. You use some sort of bedding, like pine shavings is the
one that we ended up using. And then you need to keep them warm 'cause normally they'd be hugged up right next to their mothers, but of course their mothers
are not in the picture at this point. You are their mother, so you need to give them something. Now what most people will do is they'll use these heat lamps. It's kinda just like a
light with a reflector that radiates heat into
the brooding setup. I personally am not a big fan of that because it can cause
what's called pasty butt. So when the hens poop out of their vent, it can sometimes catch on the
little fluff that they've got. And then the way that the heat radiates from those heat lamps can kinda dry it out and stick the vent shut, meaning that they can't defecate anymore, which means that they can
actually die from that. And so what we ended up
doing with these hens, they got the best of the best. They got this little
electrical heat set up that they could kind of nestle under and we put it in the early video when we were raising the baby chicks. But to me, I would say
raise them from baby chicks. It is far and away the most
satisfying experience you can have with your hens. Now if you've decided to raise, then what you can do, I'll show you little Butter here, is pick your favorite breeds. Now what I did is I picked
two Orpington breeds. And Butter is a what's called a... Lobster. What are you doing? You're in my shot, Lobster. You're literally in my shot. So I got Butter, as well
as all of my other hens, from a local breeder. And she is a Buff Orpington. So Orpington is a really
popular beginner breed. They're very good at being mothers, if you ever wanna hatch from eggs. They tend to go a little broody, meaning they want to hatch
an egg pretty quickly. So they can sometimes
be a little annoying, but they're very friendly, loving hens. Buff Orpingtons, especially. Lavender over here is
a Lavender Orpington. I have two Wyandottes, a Gold Laced and Silver Laced. The Gold Laced is Gucci,
the Silver Laced is Chete. Chete, like a machete blade. That's what I named her. And then I've got a Cream Legbar, which is sort of a
heritage English variety. This is Rufio with the
kind of weird tufted head. She's also very thin
and weird looking hen. And then I have Rhode Island Red, who I have named Lobster. Rhode Island Red's actually
a mix of a meat bird and an egg-laying bird. Very great variety, and kind of what you think of
when you think of a chicken. But with breeds, you really wanna pick
based on the aesthetic, if you like a particular aesthetic, their personality type or
their personality tendency. So like I said, Lavender and Butter are Orpingtons that are sort of friendly,
more mellow hens, whereas the Wyandottes can be a little bit more
assertive and standoffish. And then you also want to pick hens that might do better or worse based on the climate you're in. I'm in a pretty temperate climate. I can do most breeds, but some are really
good for colder climates or some are really good
for hotter climates. And that's really just up to you. So I'd say browse around, do a little bit of experimentation. And the last thing is the egg color. I know that's important
to a lot of people, getting an Easter egger or a blue egg or a really dark brown egg, like a Black Copper Maran hen. To me, I didn't care so
much about the egg color as I did about the unique look and personality type of my hens. But really that's the fun
of choosing the breed. It's totally up to you. All right, let's talk
caring for your hens. Breaking it down into
daily, weekly, monthly, and maybe every six months to a year. Daily, really the only thing
you need to do is come out, chill with them, say hi, maybe hold 'em, pet 'em a little bit,
feed 'em some snacks, and then just collect the eggs. You don't have to do
anything besides that. On a weekly basis, I would
say look at their feed, see if it's running low, look at the water, see
if it's running low. You might wanna do a little
bit of a light clean, but, again, not a whole
lot on a weekly basis. On a monthly basis, I think it's a good idea to come out into either the outdoor
run or inside the coop and see if you need to
do a more thorough clean. A lotta the times what I'll
do is I'll rake up anything that they're not eating at all and I'll throw that in
the classic compost. And then I'll come out, I'll give the hens a once over, kind of give 'em a look, see if they're looking healthy. Maybe I see any issues. And then I'll also rake
flat the interior run. And I'll also give the coop, the actual bedding in the hen house, a little bit of a shake
up so their droppings don't just accumulate in one spot. But you don't have to do a
whole lot on a monthly basis. The only place where it
gets a little bit hectic is at the six month to a year area where you might need to do
a full litter change out. But even that is not that big a deal. You can just shovel it out,
throw it into the compost, wet it down, start that going again,
and you'll be good to go. In the case of the Carolina Coop, it's actually really nice 'cause you can just flip
this bottom door down and throw it all right into a wheelbarrow and you're in a good spot. And the bonus is you're kinda harvesting some really ready compost. So, you know, these girls, they do a lot, they do a lot for us. And fortunately for us, we don't have to do too much
to keep them happy and healthy. Now there are some things that your hens can fall prey
to besides actual predators, which we'll go into in
a different episode. This is why we have so many
different protective mechanisms around the coop so that,
you know, some mammals, some predatory mammals
and birds don't get them. But there are some
actual diseases and stuff that they can fall prey to, like mites and bumblefoot
and these sorts of things. Fortunately, both Jacques and
myself haven't really dealt with that too much. The only thing we've really
dealt with is a broody hen and that would be this little
girl right here, Butter, the little chubster. So she tends to go broody. She being a Buff Orpington, that's kind of one of the
things that they're known for. Broodiness really though, honestly, I don't find to be that big a deal. Yes, they wanna sit in
the egg hutch for a while and try to hatch a non-existent egg and they get a little
annoyed if you go near them. The only thing that that
seems to be a problem with them going broody is that other hens, the rest of them, get a little bit annoyed when they see a broody hen. I don't know what it is, but they tend to be just
a little bothered by that. And so they sometimes can peck at the hen, but I haven't even seen that. In the case of Butter, she stayed broody for maybe a month or so and the hens just learned to
use a different little slot in the egg hutch and they were all good. I saved the best part for last, maybe the worst part for last, depending on your perspective, and that would be how much does keeping
chickens actually cost? So this is a choose your own adventure. You could spend, I mean, literally you could spend
the price of a car on a coop. I've known someone who's done it. It's the most beautiful
coop I've ever seen. It's actually bigger than my house and I should just consider
evolving into a chicken to see if I could live
in this person's coop. Now that's probably not realistic for almost anyone that's
watching this video. And to be honest with you, the Carolina Coop that I have
is also a quite pricey coop at around $10,000. So you definitely don't have to do that. And if you were, you certainly aren't doing it because you're trying to
get a return on investment on these beautiful girls' eggs. Even though eggs are at
their most expensive point that we've seen in recent years. Still, it's a little
too pricey to justify it from an investment perspective. But if you're gonna do a DIY coop, I would say the cheapest you
could probably get away with is about 300, 400 bucks or so. Unless you're using
completely found materials and you are an expert carpenter
or builder of some kind. As far as materials, you're
gonna need some kind of feeder, some kind of waterer, Now you can keep this very DIY and cost $0 with certain types of buckets or you can get a little
fancier and save yourself time. Time is also money. We have the automatic water bar here. It's just water pressure
that makes it automatic and that's just a rain barrel with a PVC that kind of (clicks) goes up. And they have these
little watering nipples and they go out from there. Then you also have a
feeder that you can use. We use the CoopWorx feeder,
which actually is on our store. It is, again, it's a little
bit of a pricier idea, but it can hold two 50-pound bags of feed, which is over a month of feed for sure. And it's got eight different feeding areas where you can just, you
know, chickens can get at it. They don't have to wait in their line, they don't have to get mad at each other. They can just go in and eat. Then you have the cost
of the hens themselves. So these girls weren't that expensive. I didn't choose crazy breeds. Honestly, the Buff
Orpington, Butter, over there and Lav, they both cost about I think $10. There are some breeds that
can cost about 100 bucks, even though most rare ones don't get over 100 bucks or so. So they're not that expensive in terms of most pets, I suppose. But, again, you know, if
you're getting a lotta them, that can definitely add up. You shouldn't feel the need
to get really fancy breeds. You can get 5 to $10 little baby chicks and raise them or just get
in touch with a friend. A lotta friends like to hatch them, if you're sort of get into
the homesteading community and you're in a good spot. Finally you have their feed. Now I'm probably spending 50
bucks on their feed right now 'cause I give 'em so many treats. Ah, that actually hurts. But, you know, feed can be about 50 cents to
two bucks a pound right now. It's getting a little bit more expensive, mostly because I think everything in the world of chicken keeping
is getting more expensive. But it really depends. I mean chickens will eat about a pound
and a half a week of feed, but it depends on how much
you're growing and giving them. Uh-oh, did you get in there? Maybe. If you're growing a lot in the garden and giving them a lot of
scraps and food scraps, that will skew downwards and you'll have to buy in less feed, but you don't wanna give
them no chicken feed because chicken feed is
formulated specifically for their nutritional needs, as well as their ability to lay eggs. Calcium in there, all that kind of stuff. So you're gonna wanna make sure and actually get some chicken feed. We use a company called Grubblies, which we really, really like. Actually hoping to have it
carried on our store here at sometime in the near future. But for now you can
just check the link out. But yeah, I mean look, if you look at it only on a feed basis, even at the highest end of feed based on all the math, which I won't do off
the top of my head here, but it ends up being roughly $2.50 per dozen of eggs if you are
paying just for the feed. But of course all the other costs that I talked about also
have a huge, huge factor. So I mean really, in the end, are you doing this to save money? It's not really about that. It's about the animal welfare benefits. If you wanna have these
beautiful creatures around, hanging out with them, getting some nice peace and quiet and maybe a little bit
sometimes less peace and quiet. If you want higher quality eggs, there's no higher quality
than grown in your backyard with the stuff that is
forged around your backyard. It's simply just way better. And it's just the psychological benefits and the overall quality
of life improvements that having these beautiful
creatures around give you. So this was our primer guide, little off the cuff
guide on getting started with hens this year. So if you want anything
else, drop it down here. We'll do more chicken episodes here on the homesteading channel. 'Til next time, I'm gonna hang out with my
girls a little bit more. I'll see you soon. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
