by Harvey Ussery
Photos by author
Eggs from backyard flocks are some of the best eggs in the world. Those dependent on supermarket eggs may not even know what they’re missing out on. Chickens provide more food than just eggs. Necessary culling of the flock graces the dinner table with flavorful meat.
But backyard flocks can play a part in self-sufficiency in more ways than simply feeding your family. Chickens offer bug control, tillage and great entertainment.
Poultry are ideal starter livestock for most homesteads, because their needs are simply and cheaply met, and anyone can start on a small scale.
A Place to Roost
One reason poultry make ideal livestock is that their housing needs can be met simply. All domesticated poultry are hardy and just need protection from predators and weather extremes. Housing that protects your birds from wind, rain and snow will be sufficient for your flock. It’s also important to provide shade on the hottest summer days. A minimum of 3 square feet of shade per adult bird is needed, although 4 or 5 square feet would be even better.
Chickens, guineas and turkeys all have a natural instinct to roost at night and will be happier if provided perches to do so. Any structure that permits them to sleep perched above ground level will fulfill their urge to roost. For the laying hens in the flock, provide nests. I make nests (12 inches high and wide, 16 inches deep) and line them with straw, leaves and other clean, soft material.
Many structures can serve adequately for housing poultry. I advise leaving an earth floor in the coop, covered with up to 12 inches of organic matter. Domestic poultry are cold hardy. They don’t require added heat here in Hume, Va., where temperatures reach 10 below zero, as long as they have wind protection in the coldest weather. I make sure that their house is draft proof, while assuring essential ventilation. On occasion, cocks (males) suffer frostbite on their large combs and wattles (the fleshy red protuberances hanging from and on top of their heads). If you are further north, you might want to select breeds such as the chanticleer, which have smaller combs and wattles that are almost resistant to frostbite.
Another winter concern is whether to provide artificial lighting to lessen the natural drop in the number of eggs produced during the dark winter months. I don’t use such lighting. We simply adjust to using fewer eggs in the winter. But if your flock is healthy and well fed, you can keep lights on them in the winter without consequences. It is convenient to set the light on a timer and set the timer to increase morning light for a total of 14 hours a day. Allow only natural light in the evening, so the birds aren’t startled when the artificial light shuts off suddenly. One 40- or 60-watt bulb should be sufficient.
High quality eggs are one of many great reasons to keep a flock of chickens.
In certain situations, chickens will eat eggs and once they start, it’s a hard habit to break. To prevent egg eating in the flock, mount the nests above floor level, provide enough nests (one for every eight hens or so) and collect eggs regularly.
We don’t wash eggs when they come from the nest absolutely clean. For those eggs with a smear or stain, we clean them using a paper towel dipped in a mixture of half water and half white vinegar. Avoid immersing eggs, as it can drive bacteria through the shells.
Your backyard flock can help preserve our historic breeds. The old English game breed has a thousand-year history as a utilitarian farm fowl.
Putting the Flock to Pasture
If possible, I urge against the conventional homestead flock, in which the birds are confined to a coop and a small, static chicken run. In a short time, the birds quickly consume or trample all available vegetation, and droppings accumulate. It’s ideal to allow the birds to be on a healthy, green pasture where they can benefit from the sunshine, fresh air and exercise, and forage a substantial portion of their diet.
Some flock owners have no problems allowing their birds to range free during the day, penning them up at night to protect from nocturnal predators. For others, different problems exist (your neighbor’s dog or your own), or proximity to gardens or flower beds prohibit this approach. In these situations, I recommend electric net fencing as a management tool.
This fencing is a plastic mesh containing interwoven fence posts. The horizontal strands of the mesh are intertwined with ultra-fine stainless steel wires. Attached to a properly grounded fence energizer, the fence offers an unpleasant (but not harmful) surprise for unwelcome curiosity seekers. I have used it for years to provide the benefits of pasturing the flock, confining the birds where I want and protecting them from unwanted predators.
Feeding Options
Buying bagged feed for a flock is convenient, and we’d like to believe that “scientifically formulated” feeds are the best diet we can offer. But think about this: What would the chicken eat on her own in a completely natural setting? Chickens are actually grazers, and eat a fair amount of grasses, clovers and broadleaf weeds. They love wild seeds and live foods such as earthworms, insects, slugs and snails. All of these options (plants, seeds, small animals) are alive and unprocessed. Commercial feeds are not alive or unprocessed; they are produced from highly processed ingredients.
I encourage you to think about the feeding of your own flock. A willingness to experiment, some research about nutritional needs and access to natural ingredients available in your area are the only requirements.
Whether you purchase prepared feeds or mix your own replacements (from ingredients such as whole corn, oats, wheat, field peas and kelp meal), the main goal of your feeding program should be encouraging your flock’s access to whole, natural foods. If your birds have access to pasture, they will discover a lot of high-quality food by themselves. If you recycle kitchen wastes or manage manure, you can harvest the worms as food for your flock. If you live in an area “blessed” with Japanese beetles, your eager birds will love them.
Earning Their Keep
There are many ways your flock can help you achieve key homestead goals. At one time, free-ranging poultry flocks helped to control excess insects in orchards. You can use a flock in much the same way, confining them to a specific area if necessary with electric net fencing. Another way the flock is useful is by cleaning up dropped fruit in the orchard, which can harbor disease or overwintering insects.
Although chickens would destroy a garden with their constant scratching, just before the garden season I allow my flock onto the garden site for two to four weeks. The birds consume sprouting weed seeds as well as slugs and snails.
I also assign tilling chores to my flock. If I want to begin a new garden, I net a flock of chickens onto the plot of land and let them scratch away at the tough sod. The sod is eventually killed and turned into the top few inches of the soil, getting fertilized in the process. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
Dealing With Chicken Poop
When raising chickens, there are several things you must deal with, and one of those is chicken poop. If you use a non-movable coop, I recommend an earth floor covered with up to 12 inches of organic matter. This deep litter arrangement is the best for safe and less labor-intensive manure management when coops cannot be moved to fresh ground. Chickens who constantly scratch quickly work their droppings into the litter, where decomposition is similar to that in a compost heap.
Materials used for litter should be high in carbon and include leaves and wood shavings. If sawdust and wood chips are used, they should be aged first. Avoid straw as it supports the growth of harmful molds.
During decomposition, microbes use nitrogen from the droppings as an energy source while they break down the litter into more basic elements. As the carbon in the litter is depleted, the nitrogen cannot be used efficiently by the microbes and outgasses as ammonia. Ammonia is not good for your birds’ respiratory tissues, so a whiff of ammonia alerts you to add fresh material or clean out the litter. Materials such as hay and soybean vines are higher in nitrogen and don’t work as well for litter, as they decompose too quickly.
Deep litter will save you from extra labor. You might want to shovel out the equivalent of finished compost annually. You can add it to the garden without further processing.
It’s OK to use an existing building with a wood or concrete floor. A deep layer of organic material can still be used as the foundation for manure management. Even straw can be used, as it stays drier. In this case, the litter won’t break down as completely and will need to be composted before you add it to your garden.
There is one potential dilemma with deep litter over an earth floor — digging predators. It’s an arduous initial chore, but it’s important to dig a metal roof flashing or half-inch hardware cloth barrier 18 inches deep around the perimeter of your chicken house. You won’t be sorry, as it can keep your poultry safe.
Advice on using a broody hen
Raising chicks is easy and a lot of fun. If you don’t want to order chicks or purchase them from a farm supply store, it’s simple to permit a hen to hatch eggs and raise the chicks for you.
Hens that are incubating eggs must be isolated from the rest of the flock, but can return shortly after the chicks hatch.
The “broody” instinct — a hen’s tendency to assemble and hatch a clutch of eggs, and to care for and protect chicks — has been nearly bred out of modern breeds. An occasional hen will “go broody,” but most do not. A few traditional dual-purpose farm breeds (cochins, buff Orpingtons, Wyandottes) are recognized for broody tendencies, though you cannot be sure any specific group will produce good mothers. If you want to deal with natural mothers, get a couple of hens of the historic breeds (old English games, kraienkoppes, asils, malays, shamos or silkies), among which the broody instinct is usually the norm, not the exception. Many bantam (miniature) breeds also are more likely to go broody.
You can recognize a broody hen from her Zen-like gaze and deep, careful settling into the nest. She responds to an offered hand with ruffled hackle feathers and an annoyed “Sqwarrrk!” At night, she stays on her nest after her sisters have gone to roost.
Hatching Eggs
If your flock doesn’t include an adult male (a cock, frequently called a “rooster”), the eggs being laid by hens won’t hatch. If you want eggs to hatch from your chickens, you will need one cock for about every 12 to 15 hens.
The eggs you will set under your broody hen will not need to be collected all on the same day. You may include eggs gathered over several days (up to a limit of approximately 10 days), since the fertilized germ cells stay dormant until a hen starts to set on the eggs and the temperature of the eggs is increased to a constant incubation temperature. You may not add to the clutch (or allow other hens to do so) after embryo development has started, because the eggs would not be on the same schedule for hatching.
But broody hens are terrific surrogate mothers and will hatch almost any eggs that fit under them. Some hatcheries offer hatching eggs and ship them through the mail. You also may purchase hatching eggs at online auctions.
Don’t consider letting your hen incubate eggs in a coop where other birds can access her nest. Relocate the broody hen (only at night) to a nest in a calm corner, with a physical barrier to exclude other hens. Provide feed, water and adequate space for her to vacate the nest to stretch and relieve herself.
After you see that a hen has “gone broody,” set her on plastic or wooden eggs to begin with. If she is restless at first, provide her time to settle on the fake eggs, often by the end of the first day. Then (again working only at night), swap the fake eggs for fertile eggs collected from your best hens or bought from good stock.
Chicken broodies typically tolerate a move to another nest. Females of other domestic fowl (ducks, geese, guineas and turkeys) cannot be relocated after their onset of broodiness without “breaking them up” (disrupting the broody mind-set). Plan in advance for such hatches, and let your broody female go on with her work where she has chosen to “set,” easily adding a kind of partition to prevent disturbance.
The amount of eggs to set directly relates to the size of the hen. The hen needs to completely cover the clutch, because it is her body heat that encourages the growth of the embryos.
Monitor discreetly each day, making sure the hen has food and water. Do not be worried about feed intake; certain hens eat little while brooding. Hens may prefer to leave the nest for a brief outing.
The literature will indicate to you that incubation is 21 days for chicken eggs (and up to 36 days for other species). But be ready at 20 days. I have found that, when using natural mothers, eggs are likely to hatch in 20 days.
Hatch-out of the entire clutch takes approximately 16 hours. In reality, this means you can leave unhatched eggs under the warm hen overnight for a final chance to hatch. Beyond that point, they are unlikely to hatch.
Newly hatched chicks can survive up to three days without food or water.
Relocating the New Family
I recommend moving the hen with her clutch directly to the pasture where the hardworking mother hen forages natural foods for her babies.
If you must return the mother hen and her brood to the original flock, supplement the laying hens’ additional mineral needs with crushed oyster shell. To supply for the higher protein needs of the chicks, feed protein-dense feeds from a small “creep feeder” shelter. You don’t need to be concerned about the safety of the vulnerable chicks with the older, often times contentious, adult members of the flock – they know the new mama will kick butt if any are stupid enough to mess with her babies.
Raising Mail Order Chicks is Easy!
Raising mail order chickens is easy and a lot of fun. You can order chicks from poultry hatcheries — or simply purchase them from a local farm store.
Right before hatching, a chick absorbs and stores the remainder of the egg yolk it’s been feeding on throughout incubation. This last amount of yolk can nourish the chick for several days before its first drink or meal, offering a window of opportunity for mailing chicks from a poultry hatchery to your home. When the chicks arrive, open the package in front of the postal clerk or carrier. Deliveries from a reputable hatchery are insured, and the hatchery will usually replace losses if there are a significant number of fatalities. It sounds scary, but I’ve rarely had problems. It is not strange, however, to have a few losses (either in transit or within the first few days) of frail chicks that just didn’t have a good start. Even in ideal circumstances, transport through the postal system is stressful for chicks. Supply them with warmth, water and feed as soon as possible.
Begin With a Homemade Brooder
A brooder is a warm and draft-free environment designed to replicate a mother hen’s body heat. You can purchase a commercial brooder, but it is inexpensive and simple to construct a homemade brooder from materials you have (a large cardboard box will do for a few chicks).
The brooder must include a heat source. Any lamp with 100- to 250-watt bulbs will provide heat for approximately a dozen chicks. It is possible to purchase a special brooder heat lamp or use small electric heating elements. To control temperature, lamps may be raised or lowered. The lower the lamp, the warmer the air at the chicks’ level. Safeguard the lamp or heater so it’s not near combustible surfaces (litter, cardboard or wood sides) — usually 18 inches or so, as suggested by the manufacturer.
Another alternative is a “hover,” a boxlike configuration of metal or plywood, hanging a few inches above the brooder floor and having a heat source. The chicks retreat under the hover for warmth, and back away for feed, water and exercise in the cooler area outside.
Observe chicks’ behavior to see if they’re too warm or cold. These chicks are comfortable. — Photo by Kary Nieuwenhuis
The typical recommendation is for the brooder temperature to be a constant 95 degrees Fahrenheit for the first seven days, and that it then be reduced by 5 degrees each week until the chicks’ bodies are entirely covered with feathers. Just watch the behavior of the chicks: If they huddle together under the heat, the brooder is too cool. If they retreat to the outer edges of the brooder, the heat source is too hot. If they are running about like water bugs, the temperature is “just perfect.” Of course, like all babies, they need a lot of sleep, so don’t be concerned if you see chicks immobile on the litter. The brooder must inhibit direct drafts (which would chill the chicks) but permit fresh air to flow.
Protect the bottom of the brooder with loose, absorbent matter such as straw, wood shavings (kiln-dried, not “green”), or shredded cardboard or paper. A slick surface like sheets of newspaper or cardboard can trigger leg problems, particularly in ducklings and goslings.
Be certain the area in which you set up your brooder — basement, garage, barn or other outbuilding — is protected against pets, rodents, snakes and all predators, any of which could destroy your helpless brood.
Water and Nutrition
The first order of business to teach your chicks is how to drink. As you take each one out of the shipping carton, dip its beak into the water. Then set it onto the floor of the brooder. Do not leave open water sources in the brooder. Chicks splashing in water could become cold and die. Use a waterer with a controlled “lip” so the chicks can drink but cannot wade.
Always use a small poultry waterer to prevent the chicks from getting wet. — Photo by Kary Nieuwenhuis
Commercial chicken feeds are almost always sold in three main formulas: a high-protein, medicated chick “starter”; a medium-protein “grower ration” or “pullet developer”; and a lower-protein, higher-mineral “layer mash” for adult hens. In a well-tended home brooder, supplements to the diet such as antibiotics, growth stimulants or hormones are totally unnecessary. To sidestep the additives, begin the chicks on the grower ration, or equivalent, and increase protein with fish meal; ground, raw beef liver; earthworms; chopped hardboiled eggs; milk; Japanese beetles or other insects. (You must not feed layer mash to young chicks — the extra mineral content may hinder adequate development of their reproductive systems.)
I like kiln-dried pine shavings as floor litter. I conceal the shavings with empty burlap coffee bean sacks at first, because the chicks haven’t learned what to eat, and they might try to eat the shavings. I spread out some feed initially over the sacking so the chicks understand about feeding. Then I remove the sacking and provide feed exclusively in a special chick feeder intended to minimize spillage of feed. A hanging feeder is preferred; raise it to maintain the feeding level at approximately shoulder height of the rapidly growing chicks.
In addition to feed, provide your brood free-choice “grit,” tiny bits of rock they swallow to grind their feed in their gizzards. You can purchase commercial granite grit (which is offered in various sizes appropriate to different ages and species of fowl), or you may locate chick-size grit, approximately the size of radish seeds, around your home.
Chicken Litter and a Homemade Brooder
The means to success is regular monitoring of the brooder, plus common sense. The main obstacle to success is stress, such as overcrowding, extreme hot and cold temperatures and running out of food or water. Keep your nose alert for the slightest hint of ammonia coming from the chicken litter, and add fresh material as needed.
Adequate sanitation in the brooder is essential to avoid disease and distress. But do not assume that absolute sterility is possible or desirable. You want to prevent the “caking” of manure in the brooder, produced by overcrowding or improper litter materials (those that are not absorbent and do not fluff up easily). While brooding successive batches, I recommend topping off the old litter with fresh material (instead of removing it completely and sterilizing the brooder). The litter becomes biologically active as decomposition continues (as in an active compost heap), resulting in microbial metabolites that actually toughen the immune systems of the growing chicks. An earth floor is ideal for this system. Raising purchased chicks is simple, but don’t forget that they rely on you for their every need.
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