Becoming More Self Sufficient With Chickens

[jtn42248]

I completely agree with what lazygardener said here. The way I say it is that all chicken plans are subject to change. What you think will work for you may not and what you think isn't going to may be your best bet in the end. Chicken breeds come to mind. You pick a breed that most say will brood chicks, then that particular line/strain just doesn't. Hatchery stock is famous for not being or doing what it is supposed to.

And to that last statement in the quote, definitely once you get going, steer clear of "free flea market chickens" and the like, to avoid wiping out all your plans due to some nasty carrier disease. Best of luck.


I remember my grandparents' farm in west Georgia and how they'd go pull a chicken to butcher for dinner. They didn't have Cornish X but all sorts of skinny whatevers and sometimes, it would take a couple of them. I was there for hog butchering and calf castrating and all other farm activities. It's a tough life but a rewarding one. My grandfather lived to be 100 years old and my dad is going on 94 himself, though he left the farm when he had to make a living for his daughters and moved to the city. I think farm people just live better, even if they don't live longer. JMO.

I agree. My great grandmother was 104 and still living alone when she died. My grandmother was 98 and my mother is 94 now and still living on her own and going strong. All good old American farm girls. I moved to the city, got a really good job, worked hard, had two heart attacks, high blood pressure, diabetes...retired, bought this farm, got some chickens, geese and ducks...blood pressure is almost normal, diabetes is under control with diet. A lot can be said for a good, quiet and simple life.

 

[jtn42248]

I have several breeds and my Wyandottes are the most likely to go broody. I have one Columbian Wyandotte that goes broody every 2-3 months and would make a great mother I think if I was going that way. Keep in mind that if you begin hatching your own chicks there is a 50/50 chance that they will be roosters...meat birds. So, try to select a breed that is truly dual purpose.

 

[centrarchid]

We are a family of 3. We are working on becoming more self-sufficient. I would like to maintain a flock of chickens that will provide us with meat and eggs. I am hoping to use broody hens instead of relying on incubators or buying chicks. I would like to be able to put a chicken in the stewpot each week. So I have a few questions. 1. What are some breeds of chickens that tend to go broody? 2. How many chickens would I need to maintain in my flock? 3. How often would I need to cull an older hen to make room for new hens coming up? 4. How many chicks would need to be hatched out each year? 5. How many chickens would be too many? I only ask this last question because I have turned into a chicken addict and if I'm not careful I will end up overrun. I should also mention that the meat production would be more important than egg production as 6 hens keeps us in eggs with some to give to family. We have just bought 19 acres so room shouldn't be a problem. Thanks for any advice.

My approach first by the numbers.

You desire one bird per week at minimum that will be 55 birds. Assume so failures to reach harvest due to many possible losses including predators, disease and need for replacing breeders. So for buffer raise that number about 110. Then assume you will get hens on average to produce two broods of about 6 chicks each which means about 12 young per hen per year. Dividing 110 by 12 gives a little over 9 hens. Your breeding season and harvest will be staggered ideally making so at any given moment you have at most half the 110 total on the ground. Based on my limited experience where natural forages dominate nutrition you will need about 4 acre as for juveniles and adults to forage. To make predator management easy, keeping the hens within a centralized one acre area will help with survival through weaning. Having other livestock, especially those fed at least a little grain will help keep ranging habits of birds tight. You will need real predator management possibly like that provided by dogs to give desired survival rates.

Game hens would be ideal as broody hens with a game rooster providing protection. Other breeds would be better sources of hatching eggs to be placed under the game hens. Keep those breeders and cocks separated from the game cock. Also keep some of the games penned as backups when losses of free-range birds occurs. Other breeds I would use include a number of dual purpose options. American Dominique makes for a good free-range juvenile though harvest bird at about 20 weeks post hatch but they will be a lot smaller than the Cornish X purchased at the store. If you go the rout where a lot of feed is puschased then heavier / faster growing breeds become better options.

There are details in the way broody hens are treated and broods spaced in time to prevent over grazing that should be considered.


When I was kid we consumed a majority of the games produced each year. They were consumed at a much smaller size than considered of the American table but harvest was done at about the end of the period of the most rapid growth. Very few where allowed to go get into the half grown weight of 2.5 to 3 lbs when feed conversion dropped off. Also remember the less time out free-ranging the less likely to have birds to be lost harvested by predators. We could run out entiire operation without importing anything except oystershell for laying hens. Confinement and rearing of chicks during winter immediately raised need for importing complete feeds or a major reduction in the number of chicks we attempted to raise. Normally chick production shuts down through winter but egg protein is more important for table use then as they are more abundant since few if any directed towards chick production and egg production high anyway.

 

[mtngirl35]

Everyone has given great advice and I really appreciate it. I expect lots of chaos and adjusting of plans and a totally different outcome than I imagine right now. But I do believe it will be an experience well worth it. I've been a country girl all my life and working with the land and animals has always given me a sense of peace and accomplishment. I got away from it for a long time chasing the dollar and my life has not been better for it. Luckily I have been blessed with a good man who also thinks this will be the best way of life for us and is working as hard as me to make it happen. My son, on the other hand, is a product of the high tech world and he thinks I'm a little bit nutty. Lol...he will understand someday I hope.

 

[speckledhen]

Quote: Oh, boy, I hear that one! Mine are in their 30's, both Air Force brats, of course, so we couldn't have a farm and chickens back when they were growing up, though they did visit their great grandfather's farm a few times when we came back on leave.

Funny, we were looking in Whitwell way back in the late 90's. There was an off grid property on top of a mountain and it was on some type of generator. We nixed looking at it many years ago. Now, I wish we had at least given it a chance.

 

[Beekissed]

A more self-reliant meat source would be meat rabbits...they take up less space and have a quicker, higher meat to feed yield than do chickens. You can even raise them on pasture in tractors and have less fear of predation in that manner, and you will have dogs on guard anyway.

Done properly, you could have a working, rolling flock of Plymouth White Rocks of about 40 birds, add 2-3 Cochins for brooding your eggs(you will also have WRs go broody as well, particularly if you are using heirloom bloodlines), which will yield huge cockerels for slaughter, great laying genetics and huge old hens when they are done laying. I'd put one of my spent WR laying hen's carcasses up against most 3 yr old roosters of any other breed out there.

As for stewing them or cooking a chicken in the oven...if you truly want to be self-reliant, this will not be the way to go. You lose so much of the bird in that manner and you also have to store them in a freezer, which requires electricity...one power out can render your entire winter meat stores lost. Canning your chickens is the way to go....you can use everything but the bawk for stock, rendered fat and meat without any fear of losing any of it. They will stay preserved that way for some years safely and you don't have to worry about freezer burn, cleaning out the freezer of meat no longer usable, etc.

Rabbits are great canned as well.

For self-reliance, I'd mix a flock of the WRs and have some NZ white meat rabbits as my meat source and keep them both producing at maximum efficiency by judicious culling, frequent breeding(rabbits), and using the Cochins for their brooding abilities.

With a good farm dog there's no reason you can't free range safely. Back him up with a shotgun for any stray dogs and you are golden.

 

[Phoenixxx]

Picking breeds is hard, for sure. So far, the best layer I've ever had is my australorp/ameraucana cross - she's even better than my best production layer was - she lays 7-14 days straight, takes a day off, then does another long streak. She's small, though, so not great for meat. My french black copper marans is HUGE (my husband thought she was a rooster for the longest time, lol!) and a decent layer of jumbo eggs at 2-3 days laying, one day off. I'm raising their offspring right now and will be breeding the marans/australorp roo to hopefully better the laying abilities of the marans and increase the size in future EE/OEs. This year has been particularly challenging for me, though - all manner of predators have discovered my flock and no matter what I do as far as fencing and containment, they always find a way! I went from 23 down to four, went on a hatching spree and got up to 40-something over the summer and now I'm back down to eleven. We bought rifles to shoot the foxes, a live trap for the coons (that escape it - I've yet to catch one) but still... the chicken experiment has been a very expensive one for me. A good dog will be a must.

 

[Ridgerunner]

A good dog is a key, like Bee said. Not just any dog but one trained and suited for the purpose. It can't be a house dog. It has to live outside.

 

[Phoenixxx]

I've been shopping for the perfect one for a while. It's tough! I have no fences and only one acre, so any of the mountain breeds would likely not do well here. I'm looking at collies and shepherds, but they will likely be house dogs at night.

 

[Beekissed]

Quote:
That's when they need to be outside the most. You need your own predator on the land when the rest of the predators are hunting...it's a matter of established territory. An outside dog needs to remain outside most of the time to have conditioning for the weather, in their coats and in their sensitivity to smells, as well as in their routines on the land. Inside visits now and again are nice, but to stay in the house at night is one of the worst things you can do for him and for your flock.