- The price of eggs is getting crazy. - It's so crazy that people have never wanted
backyard chickens more. - And they're buying the
breeds that lay the most eggs and causing a shortage of
those breeds nationwide. And Jacques and I, we've
been keeping chickens for about a couple years each. - Yep.
- And we're not experts, but we've made some trials we've made some tribulations,
we've made some errors. So in this video we're gonna
go over some of the most common questions and
considerations when you're keeping backyard chickens. Before you begin down the
path of keeping chickens, you need to figure out if you're
actually allowed to do it. Believe it or not, some
cities prohibit it. or they sort of gate keep
it with very specific recommendations. - And some of those
recommendations or regulations might involve how many chickens
you're allowed to have, whether or not you're
allowed to have a rooster and exactly where your
coop has to be placed in your property. - Yeah, the last thing you
want to do is build a nice coop and realize you have too many hens or your neighbor reports it and it should be 10 feet
away and not six feet away. So a lot of things to consider, but once you do have that nailed down, it's time to talk coops. When it comes to the coop,
the home for your hens, it can be quite overwhelming. Now, whether you're buying or DIYing, there are some important considerations. What I'll say is if you're
buying on the lower end, you're gonna miss out on some
predator proofing features and they tend to be on a small size so you need to make sure
you're putting the right amount of hens in that coop. Now the Carolina Coop ranges up to $10,000 so it's certainly pricey but it's also completely predator proof. DIYing is a fantastic option and that is what Jacque's
done at his coop. - In order to build this
DIY coop for under $500 we spent quite a lot of time salvaging, reclaiming and collecting any
free wood that we could find. You could see that our Cleanout
outdoors are actually made out of a kitchen cabinet door and all of this is actually reclaimed from various projects that
we found on Craigslist so we just started collecting
from the very beginning. The other thing is that
the whole entire coop itself is actually sitting on a pallet. Now, there are some very
important considerations that we figured out while
building this DIY coop and the first one is that
when you have your coop, make sure you don't just
put it on the ground. You wanna leave a little
empty space like this which provides the chickens
more square footage to roam around in. It also gives them somewhere
safe to protect them from the weather. But now let's go take a
look inside to show you one of the most crucial details. Now that we have the
Coop cleanout doors open, you could actually see this
piece of wood right here and that is the roost bar. That's where they sleep
every single night. You could tell that it's
actually quite high up from the base of the coop. That's because we are using
the deep litter method here and I'm using all these
hemp pieces here to help soak up their poop and urine overnight. And what it does is it actually
keeps the smell very low because this will soak up any moisture. It'll actually compost in place leading to a very tidy chicken coop, when it comes to either buying or building your own chicken coop, the number one thing that bothers me more than anything is when I see this, this is the poorly named chicken wire. This is something that
could easily be broken apart by something like a raccoon. It actually just doesn't
last for a very long time. What you want to use for
any part of your coop that's considered a protective
barrier is hardware cloth and this is half inch hardware cloth. This will stop mice, rats, rodents anything from actually ripping this apart. It will last a longer time and it's going to make sure
that your chickens stay safe. - When planning a chicken coop, space is one of the most
important considerations. 10 square feet per hen
is a good rule of thumb. If you start getting under that you'll get into some
bullying behavior by the hens and you also have a bit
of a problem with disease. - How much space does
a chicken really need? Well, in terms of the roost bar space, they need about one foot per chicken. So this is two feet that
could support two chickens in the nighttime, but when it
comes to the actual internals of the coop, they need about
three to five square feet. So this is a four by six
coop, meaning it's a total of 24 square feet, and
that can support about five to eight chickens. But there is one more important factor. If you give your chickens
plenty of outdoor space like I have done here
with this chicken orchard, they will actually be
happier even if you have a little bit more than you should. But the only annoying thing
I have to deal with right now is that I have to close this door and open it every single morning and night - To make life a little bit easier. I've installed an automatic
chicken door that closes either on a timer or with the sun
so my hens can come out into my outdoor run area,
which gives them a little bit of extra space, and I
don't have to worry so much about letting them in and out because at the end of the
day when they go up to roost, this will close about 30 minutes after, and you can see Gucci
coming out right now. (clucking) You might be wondering, sounds arduous, sounds like a lot of
time, but surprisingly, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to take care of your hens. - There is one task that you
have to actually make sure you do everyday and that
is checking for eggs. So why is it so important that
you're collecting these eggs every single day? Well, if you let them pile
up too much, one might break and then a chicken might take a poke at it and find it actually really
likes the taste of eggs. And once that happens, you've
got an egg eater on your hand and it'll actively seek
and destroy your eggs so they could eat it. And it's really hard to break that habit. So make sure you're actually checking for eggs every single day. - On a weekly or monthly basis, there's a few tasks
that you'll need to do. I like to come in and just
give their bedding a little bit of a turn just to get some
of the debris out of the way. Don't even have to do this but just keeps it a little
bit more tidy for them. Don't need to do a full
bedding change, besides that. checking food and water and
topping up if necessary. And then just going into the run and cleaning
up any normal debris. - If you are using the deep litter method like both me and Kevin are
every six months to a year, you're going to actually have
to pull up all this bedding and get it outta here and
replace it with new bedding. Now by that point, the bedding will probably
be about this tall and most of it will have
already started to compost but there is something you can do with that bedding once
you've cleaned it out. Once you've cleaned your bedding out, you can actually take it and make one of the most wonderful
composts you've ever made. This was my previous bedding
that I actually added here about six months ago and I've
been building piles into it. So I've been adding greens and browns to get it nice and hot. And right now, after six months, it's so broken down, I'm actually amazed. I can't smell any manure whatsoever. It just smells like wonderful compost. This is going to be a killer
edition to my garden this year. - Something else that's
not really a chore. It's actually one of the more
fun parts of keeping hands is giving them treats. So we have some black
soldier fly larva here that they go nuts for,
and this is a great way to build trust with your hands,
you can connect with them. It's just a great little
mental break throughout the day and for me at least, it's
really funny to see how vigorously they attack these treats. But to be honest with you, keeping hands isn't all fun and games - As amazing as chicken keeping can be, chickens are living animals
and they do experience the occasional health issue. Some common ones are
bumblefoot, mites or lice. And so you have to either
be careful either caring for them yourself or paying
the bill to take them to the vet. One of the many reasons that egg prices are skyrocketing is
the spread of avian flu due to the way that chickens are kept in egg production in very large
scale, if one hen gets it, they actually have to
kill the entire flock. Now, that's not probably gonna happen to your backyard chickens, it's somewhat rare to
spread to a backyard flock but you have to remember that
diseases and loss can occur. - The most recent upgrade
I've made to the coop is adding this roof here to
the enclosed run and it's because we experienced possibly
the worst thing we've ever had to deal with when it
comes to keeping chickens and that is after a very long rainstorm, everything was so wet that
the chickens had nowhere to dust bathe and actually
got mites and lice. It was one of the worst
things I've ever experienced. We actually wore full body
like Tyvec painting suits and we had to flip the chickens
over in every orientation and dust them with a powder
to kill off all those mites. All the meanwhile, the
mites were just raining onto our suits, which is why we wear those full body protection. So just know that something
like that can happen. And of course, if you're
not willing to deal with it, you're going to have to take
that chicken to the vet. - Once you get to the point of actually deciding to get some chickens, you have three different options for how you're going to raise them. You can raise them from eggs, from baby chicks or from mature pullets, which are chickens that
are pretty much ready to go out into the coop and start
laying shortly thereafter. - There are many advantages of getting your chickens as baby chicks. That's actually with
both myself and Kevin did and the main advantage
is that they actually get very comfortable around
you, they get to trust you, they get to know your presence and they actually start
to recognize your voice. Whereas if you started with
something like a pullet, it's not going to really
get to know you very well from the beginning. It might be a little bit more skittish, a little bit more scared of your presence. And the biggest advantage, of course, over starting from an
egg is that you can get your baby chicks is what
is called a sexed bird. That means that it is known that that chick is going
to grow up to be a hen rather than a rooster saving
you with a huge headache. - When it comes to chicken breeds, there's actually a lot to consider. First of all, you can get
chickens that'll do better in a colder climate or
maybe a warmer climate. Then there's my personal
favorite way to choose, which is chicken temperament. Some are more aggressive,
some are a bit more docile. Now, mixing a docile
with an aggressive hen can sometimes mean that that
docile hen gets picked on, like my poor Orpingtons right here tend to get a little picked
on but if you mix and match, you can still be okay. Then there's other factors
like the egg color, egg laying amount, and then quite frankly, the overall flex factor of
the aesthetics of the chicken. I mean, look at Rufi right
here, this is my cream legbar, an absolutely beautiful
hen through and through. - When it comes to choosing
the right chicken breeds, there are quite a lot out there. Couple good ones to get you started with are Orpingtons, chirp right
here is a Buff Orpington, also have the Black Copper Marans, which is absolutely wonderful, the Wine Dots, Easter Egger Rhode Island Red and the Australorp. These are all chickens that
have a good temperament. They're not going to be very fighty. They're going to actually
want to bond with you and they all lay at least
200 to 250 plus eggs a year. - Now, there are a few chicken myths or misconceptions to clear up such as the breeds that Jacques mentioned. Those will lay somewhere
around 200 eggs a year which if you're counting means, yeah, you're not going to get an egg
every single day of the year. Typically, in the longer day
periods like spring and summer, you're gonna get consistent egg laying somewhere around every 24 to 26 hours assuming the hens are young and healthy. And then in the winter, when
the light levels get lower, egg production for some breeds
can actually drop to zero. Then you have to consider the
fact that as your hens age, their egg production also falls off. Years one to three are very
vigorous, high producing years and for a lot of breeds years 3, 4, 5, all the way through 10, which
is how long a hen can live can actually show you
nearly no eggs at all. So you need to have a plan for when your chickens stop producing. - One of the most common
myths in the world of chicken keeping is
that if you have chickens, your yard is going to stink. But I'm sitting right here
next to my chicken coop, giving it a deep whiff,
and I don't smell any signs of manure or droppings. Now, the reason why that is is
because it's a well-managed, deep litter system. So really, if you set
up your coup properly, you do all the right things
like having deep litter, you're not gonna really
notice any smell whatsoever. And if you do, it's probably because it's time to
change that bedding out. - One of the things I was worried about when I started thinking about chickens was how noisy they'd be. I live in a suburban
environment here in San Diego. I don't want to make my neighbors upset because I have these
beautiful hens hanging around, but to my surprise,
there's only three moments where they tend to be pretty loud. Number one is a good one, if there's a predator
around, they will freak out. I've had hawks fly over and the hens absolutely lose their mind but that's almost a good
alarm signal for you. Next, if they're squabbling or fighting, a lot of the times that can be solved by choosing the right breeds
with great temperament that work well together, as
well as giving them enough space so they don't, quite frankly, get annoyed by each other and
start pecking at each other. The third is one that's
a little bit more regular and that's when they're
doing their egg song, which is the squawking that happens before and during they are laying their eggs. So that'll happen typically in
the morning, at least for me and then it quiets down. So it's a very small portion of the day. - If you're worried about
noise, you might be thinking that you actually need a rooster
in order to produce eggs. That's not true at all. I could assure you that I got five eggs today and I have absolutely zero roosters. So the only time you
actually need a rooster is if you want to produce a fertilized egg to reproduce from your flock. - Many of you are watching this video because you're thinking about getting into chicken keeping because
of the rising cost of eggs. So why don't we see if
the math even checks out? First of all, the biggest
expense is gonna be the coop. Whether you're DIYing it,
that's an investment of time or you're purchasing at
500 bucks all the way up to like I said, can be
$10,000 or more for a coop at the highest end, that's
your biggest expense, far none. But then you have some
things that you need to do. You need to provide them some
areas to play, some toys, at least some method of watering. In this case, I have a
rain barrel that goes to a water bar that has
little watering nipples. It's a little bit on the fancier end. And then I have a
semi-automatic chicken feeder. This is sort of a gravity fed feeder here. You need the basics, a coop, a watering system, and a feeder. - When I first started
it off my chicken coop this was the first feeder
that I actually built which was made using PVC
pipe that was supposed to gravity feed down into this little trough
and give them food. Now it kind of worked. It didn't work that well. It's also just very small and crowded. So since then I've upgraded
to this coop ports feeder which has multiple ports,
holds over 60 pounds of food and means that I don't
actually have to add food for well over a month. I've also actually upgraded
my water to this guy which doesn't leak whatsoever
like my old one did and it has multiple ports at
a good height for my chickens. So these are upfront investments but they can save you so much time. And it makes chicken keeping even easier. - Speaking of chicken feed,
here at Epic Gardening, we use Grubbly Farms who are
the sponsor of today's video. In fact, both Jacques and myself have been using their products for about two years now, when our hands were just baby chicks both Jacques and myself
fed them little pecks, Grubbly's all natural starter feed. And then as adults, their
primary feed is fresh pecks, which comes in either a
crumble or a pelletized form. My hens tend to prefer the crumbles but yours might be different. Every morning, I make it a ritual to give my
hands a little morning snack with Grubbly's hometown harvest, which are actually oven
dried grubs that have 50 times more calcium than meal worms. I don't know what it
is about these things, but my hens lose their
minds when they get a chance to snack on these, all
of the Grubbly Farms Chickenfeed products
are made with the goal of reducing the impact that
our pets have on the planet without sacrificing their health. Great eggs come from healthy, happy hens. So a mixture of garden scraps and products from Grubbly Farms have been
the perfect combination for us. So check out the link
in the video description and thanks to Grubbly
for sponsoring the video. Let's break it down and look at just how much the food
cost is into a dozen eggs. Call it a buck per pound of feed. The average hen's gonna
lay around 250 eggs a year. That's roughly 20 cents an egg or about $2 and 50 cents per dozen eggs. But remember, there are
some fixed costs here too. There's the gear that feeds
them, there's the coop and then there's the fact
that the hens actually don't lay consistently
throughout their lifetime. So yeah, this is a
simplistic, crude example but you can start to see how affordable or not keeping chickens
can be just for their eggs. Jacques, it turns out, if
you don't add up to costs, having chickens is
definitely worth the money. (laughing) - Of course, we're not keeping
chickens just to save money on eggs. We're keeping chickens for
the joy that they bring and also the fact that you get these
delicious, nutritious eggs. - Yeah, I mean, the thing for me is I love having them
around, psychologically, they're an amazing creature
to just have fun with, mess around with, brings
a lot of joy to your life. Hard to price that into the equation. But then the eggs, the egg
quality is so different. Chickens wanting to forage,
that deep, dark yolk. The nutrient quality
is just so much better and the flavor's so much better. - I can't go back to star bought eggs. I just won't even bother. - I give some to my mom every so often. The Epic mom comes home and raids the old egg holder and then she's actually said
she won't eat eggs anymore unless it's from the yard. So hopefully you enjoyed this
beginner's guide to chickens. If you want more chicken
content specifically, head on over to Epic Homesteading, that is our homesteading
sister site where Jacques and I and some friends mess around, have fun trying to live an
urban homesteading lifestyle. Till next time, good luck in the garden. Keep chickens and keep growing.
