imacowgirl2
Songster
We've had chickens since March 2022 now, and we're finally starting to define our purpose (other than eggs and a great homeschool/entrepreneur project for our daughter, E).
I wanted to start this thread to keep a history, so to speak, of our flock to be able to look back at going forward. Also, chicken math is real...in March we started with 8, with intent of max 15; when the new ones arrive tomorrow we will be up to 34 birds!
Our current goals (as of 8/10/2022):
1. Produce enough brown eggs for my daughter to start an egg selling business in our area
1a. Potentially also sell pullets and/or hatching eggs locally for other backyard chicken keepers who want a flock for egg production
2. Raise a self-sustaining meat bird flock that can supply at least half of our chicken requirements for our family within the next 2 years. Right now, chicken is the only meat I buy from the store, and I'd like to be completely self-sufficient on meat within 5 years, without having to buy meat bird chicks from a hatchery every year.
3. Raise a few birds of various breeds for my daughter to show in our local 4-H show, and eventually our state show.
3a. Potentially also sell chicks to local 4-H families for showing at the county and/or state level.
Timeline to get us to this point:
Late February 2022:
My daughter, E, asked for chickens when we saw all the cute fluffy chicks at Rural King during chick days. She’s been asking for years and I’ve always told her no because I knew she was too young for the responsibility. Since she’s now 10 and more responsible, I told her she could potentially get some if she researched breeds and how to care for chicks and chickens, and wrote a paper for her dad explaining why she should get them, how she would take care of them, why she picked the breeds she did, and how she was eventually going to make money at this endeavor. She did a bang-up job and he granted permission.
March 6, 2022:
We came home with 8 little chicks from Rural King, all Barred Rock pullets. They moved into the kiddie pool in our basement laundry room as a brooder.
March 8, 2022:
We started talking about E's plans for her chickens and found out that both of us really wanted to raise chicks, ideally using a broody. After realizing Barred Rocks don't necessarily go broody very often, we decided to add to our flock this year so that we could raise chicks next spring and not have to wait another year. We came home with 6 more pullets, of what we thought were Buff Orpington. Turns out we ended up with 5 Buff Orpington and 1 California White.
April 1, 2022:
E's grandpa donated the frame of an old small 8’ x 10’ shed that had been sitting in his pasture (to eventually be made into a chicken coop for his chickens) for her chicken coop. Her uncle moved it up the driveway to our house, and construction began on the permanent coop and run.
April 16, 2022:
Coop and run are complete and pullets move in (none too soon, I was ready for them to be out of the basement!)
April 27, 2022:
Disaster strikes. While the pullets are free-ranging in our yard while we are gone (not normally done…we forgot to lock them back up before we left and didn’t have time to turn around when we remembered), one of the farm dogs gets under the gate and kills one pullet and scatters all others except 2, far enough that we can’t find them. We have one Buff Orpington and one Barred Rock left.
May 10, 2022:
With no luck finding the missing flock, we re-order new chicks to be delivered on June 8, 2022. We order from Ideal Hatchery and order the following:
4 California White pullets
3 Golden Star pullets
2 Blue Star pullets
6 Barred Rock pullets
2 Barred Rock Straight Run
2 Black Australorp pullets
3 Buff Orpington pullets
2 Blue Australorp pullets
1 Blue Australorp cockerel
We made these choices to guarantee we had at least one rooster to start our breeding, and potentially give us a couple roosters. Butchering chickens was not in the plans at this time, so we wanted to limit the number of potential roosters.
June 9, 2022:
The chicks arrive. One Barred Rock female is DOA, and we were shorted 1 Blue Star female as far as we could tell. We set them up in the kiddie pool in the living room, using a mama heating pad after I’ve done extensive research on BYC regarding the MHP.
This afternoon, farm dog strikes again, in 30 seconds while I ran inside to grab the phone and check on the new arrivals. Since the first event, the remaining pullets have only been free ranging in the yard under supervision. He gets the Barred Rock, leaving the single Buff Orpington left from the March batch. As soon as I get back outside and realize what happened, I immediately pull out rolls of leftover wire and reinforce under all gates so there is ZERO entry point to our yard. The remaining pullet will not be free ranging again until she is too large to fit through the squares on the field fence surrounding the yard.
June-July 2022:
I’m really wanting to do meat birds, so I’ve started researching Cornish Cross. I’m thinking that if I do meat birds, I want to take them to the local processer for processing, which means I’ll need a batch of 30-50 for the best cost. Not sure how to raise that many in our current facilities, and no room for a temporary chicken tractor. Also not sure on health issues, heat of the hot summer, and dealing with them during the busy summer. Putting that idea on the back burner for now.
I start making plans to expand our run area; with the pullets getting larger, they’re going to need more room soon. I stumble across the knowledge of big strong hawk-proof poultry netting on BYC threads and go ahead and order some; with that as the top of the run, I’ll be able to take the current wire that’s on the roof and significantly expand run area. Inspecting the run, it looks like a straight-forward job, and I plan how we’ll do it. Mentally plan to start the project the week after the county fair.
August 1, 2022:
E “shows” (we could not do live in person shows due to Avian Flu, so the kids all took 7-10 pictures of their birds and the judges judged the birds based on the pictures) her remaining March batch Buff Orpington, Firecracker, at the county fair and comes home with Reserve Overall Bird in the barn. She is stoked and immediately starts making plans for expanding the flock to include more breeds so she can show in multiple classes next year. I off-handedly remark to the superintendent that at this rate she’ll have 20 birds in the barn next year…E overhears me and makes that her new goal.
August 8, 2022:
I remove the run roof (it came off easily exactly how I envisioned). I put a tarp over it to keep the birds in during the day, and remind E that she absolutely has to close the pop door every night because the run is currently not predator proof at all.
August 9, 2022:
Freak rainstorm crashes in the temporary tarp on the run…I pull it off in the rain, and inform E that we’re just going to have to watch the birds closely to make sure they don’t fly over the run walls until we can get the run size changed and the netting up. With the run being outside our yard, its probably safer to spend more time free-ranging them, so they’re inside the safety of the yard…we do that today, with her and I taking turns keeping an eye on them (they can still fit through the fence holes, so sometimes wander outside the fence).
With County Fair behind us, I get serious about banding the blue australorps and blue stars; they’re two different classes at the fair next year, so we need to get them figured out soon, before they look totally alike. After research on BYC, I determine that if any have yellow feet, they are Blue Stars. Out of the 4, only 1 has yellow feet; we band her then look for differences and similarities between her and the other 3. We eventually discover that 2 of them have yellow/gold eyes while two of them have black/brown eyes – the eye color also matches with most similarities in comb shape/color/size at this point. The yellow footed one has yellow eyes, so both yellow eyed pullets are banded as Blue Star and the other two white footed/dark eyed pullets are banded as Blue Australorp.
While we’re on the topic of showing birds, E and I sat down and discussed what birds she wants for next year, and we placed an order at Ideal again, for shipment tomorrow. We are getting:
3 Leghorn pullets
2 Leghorn roosters
2 Buff Orpington pullets
1 Buff Orpington rooster
3 Easter Egger pullets
The Leghorns will give her something to show in those classes for both hens and roosters, and will also round out her white egg production so that she can sell white eggs as well. Added the Buff roo for the same reason – for breeding and so that she has one to show. The Buff pullets and the Easter Eggers were breeds she likes and served to fill out the minimum order amount. Sounds like I’ll be putting together a bachelor flock pen as well in the near future. Also talked about the fact that since we’ll be doing a lot of hatching eggs, we’ll also be doing a lot of selling (and/or eating) pullets and eating roos – she wasn’t happy about this but was happy about the compromise of being able to raise more baby chicks; and we also discussed that we will never eat Firecracker.
I’ve been contemplating meat birds strongly again this week. I found Tre3hugger’s thread about his New Hampshires that he bought from Freedom Ranger Hatchery and is crossing with Delawares for a sex linked chick. This bird sounds like EXACTLY what I’m looking for – grows pretty quickly, but not as crazily as the CX, can be free-ranged, and is something I could breed to not have to buy new meat chicks every year. I could also breed some sex-linked chicks and more easily raise just the roosters for meat birds and sell the pullets at a younger age. I put some New Hampshire in my cart at Freedom Ranger Hatchery, but they don’t have a ship date until 8/30/22 – assuming 10 weeks to processing, that puts me at the beginning of November for processing at the earliest, which gets us into the Thanksgiving rush at the processor. I still don’t have room to house 30-50 birds for that long, especially if the weather gets cold early this year at all or I can’t get a processing date at the processor in early November. I leave them sit in my cart.
Trolling around BYC (and also soon needing a bachelor pad) also got me to thinking again (as I have on and off ever since we bought the June chicks) about the fact that we probably need to expand our coop as well. Did some more research on BYC about hoop coops, and after reading about Blooie’s Motel Chix, I think I’m going to copy that idea for a coop (vs a run). If it can stand up to her Wyoming weather, it should handle my IL weather just fine, as she gets way more snow and wind than I do. A hoop coop will also help keep costs down, and allow me to build a second pullet/hen coop as well as a separate bachelor pad. I also really like the flexibility of being able to easily add on size later as needed. I spent hours tonight reading her post and looking closely at all the pictures, as well as reading about all the other hoop coops I could find.
August 10, 2022:
This morning I pulled the trigger on the New Hampshires. I just can’t get away from my gut feeling that tells me I really need to be self-sufficient on meat, like, yesterday. I need to act now if I want to be more self-sufficient in a few months. I ordered 15 of them, the minimum, and committed to processing them ourselves instead of taking them to a processor. My son’s girlfriend has experience processing her own chickens, so she can help teach me as needed. Might need my husband to do the actual dispatching, but I’m now committed. I’ll plan to keep 4-5 hens and probably 2 roosters to continue my flock with, and process the rest. This will also give E some of the birds she needs to fill out her classes for the show next year.
As I’m writing this up and thinking about the birds we banded yesterday, I’m coming to the conclusion that we must have been shorted a barred rock in the June batch, and not a blue star; because we banded 4 grey/blue birds yesterday, not counting the rooster. This makes sense because when we count birds we count by colors…but we count buffs, california’s, red stars, and all the black/greys together as one group. Going to have to go count barred rocks later today…I bet we have 6 instead of 7.
I wanted to start this thread to keep a history, so to speak, of our flock to be able to look back at going forward. Also, chicken math is real...in March we started with 8, with intent of max 15; when the new ones arrive tomorrow we will be up to 34 birds!
Our current goals (as of 8/10/2022):
1. Produce enough brown eggs for my daughter to start an egg selling business in our area
1a. Potentially also sell pullets and/or hatching eggs locally for other backyard chicken keepers who want a flock for egg production
2. Raise a self-sustaining meat bird flock that can supply at least half of our chicken requirements for our family within the next 2 years. Right now, chicken is the only meat I buy from the store, and I'd like to be completely self-sufficient on meat within 5 years, without having to buy meat bird chicks from a hatchery every year.
3. Raise a few birds of various breeds for my daughter to show in our local 4-H show, and eventually our state show.
3a. Potentially also sell chicks to local 4-H families for showing at the county and/or state level.
Timeline to get us to this point:
Late February 2022:
My daughter, E, asked for chickens when we saw all the cute fluffy chicks at Rural King during chick days. She’s been asking for years and I’ve always told her no because I knew she was too young for the responsibility. Since she’s now 10 and more responsible, I told her she could potentially get some if she researched breeds and how to care for chicks and chickens, and wrote a paper for her dad explaining why she should get them, how she would take care of them, why she picked the breeds she did, and how she was eventually going to make money at this endeavor. She did a bang-up job and he granted permission.
March 6, 2022:
We came home with 8 little chicks from Rural King, all Barred Rock pullets. They moved into the kiddie pool in our basement laundry room as a brooder.
March 8, 2022:
We started talking about E's plans for her chickens and found out that both of us really wanted to raise chicks, ideally using a broody. After realizing Barred Rocks don't necessarily go broody very often, we decided to add to our flock this year so that we could raise chicks next spring and not have to wait another year. We came home with 6 more pullets, of what we thought were Buff Orpington. Turns out we ended up with 5 Buff Orpington and 1 California White.
April 1, 2022:
E's grandpa donated the frame of an old small 8’ x 10’ shed that had been sitting in his pasture (to eventually be made into a chicken coop for his chickens) for her chicken coop. Her uncle moved it up the driveway to our house, and construction began on the permanent coop and run.
April 16, 2022:
Coop and run are complete and pullets move in (none too soon, I was ready for them to be out of the basement!)
April 27, 2022:
Disaster strikes. While the pullets are free-ranging in our yard while we are gone (not normally done…we forgot to lock them back up before we left and didn’t have time to turn around when we remembered), one of the farm dogs gets under the gate and kills one pullet and scatters all others except 2, far enough that we can’t find them. We have one Buff Orpington and one Barred Rock left.
May 10, 2022:
With no luck finding the missing flock, we re-order new chicks to be delivered on June 8, 2022. We order from Ideal Hatchery and order the following:
4 California White pullets
3 Golden Star pullets
2 Blue Star pullets
6 Barred Rock pullets
2 Barred Rock Straight Run
2 Black Australorp pullets
3 Buff Orpington pullets
2 Blue Australorp pullets
1 Blue Australorp cockerel
We made these choices to guarantee we had at least one rooster to start our breeding, and potentially give us a couple roosters. Butchering chickens was not in the plans at this time, so we wanted to limit the number of potential roosters.
June 9, 2022:
The chicks arrive. One Barred Rock female is DOA, and we were shorted 1 Blue Star female as far as we could tell. We set them up in the kiddie pool in the living room, using a mama heating pad after I’ve done extensive research on BYC regarding the MHP.
This afternoon, farm dog strikes again, in 30 seconds while I ran inside to grab the phone and check on the new arrivals. Since the first event, the remaining pullets have only been free ranging in the yard under supervision. He gets the Barred Rock, leaving the single Buff Orpington left from the March batch. As soon as I get back outside and realize what happened, I immediately pull out rolls of leftover wire and reinforce under all gates so there is ZERO entry point to our yard. The remaining pullet will not be free ranging again until she is too large to fit through the squares on the field fence surrounding the yard.
June-July 2022:
I’m really wanting to do meat birds, so I’ve started researching Cornish Cross. I’m thinking that if I do meat birds, I want to take them to the local processer for processing, which means I’ll need a batch of 30-50 for the best cost. Not sure how to raise that many in our current facilities, and no room for a temporary chicken tractor. Also not sure on health issues, heat of the hot summer, and dealing with them during the busy summer. Putting that idea on the back burner for now.
I start making plans to expand our run area; with the pullets getting larger, they’re going to need more room soon. I stumble across the knowledge of big strong hawk-proof poultry netting on BYC threads and go ahead and order some; with that as the top of the run, I’ll be able to take the current wire that’s on the roof and significantly expand run area. Inspecting the run, it looks like a straight-forward job, and I plan how we’ll do it. Mentally plan to start the project the week after the county fair.
August 1, 2022:
E “shows” (we could not do live in person shows due to Avian Flu, so the kids all took 7-10 pictures of their birds and the judges judged the birds based on the pictures) her remaining March batch Buff Orpington, Firecracker, at the county fair and comes home with Reserve Overall Bird in the barn. She is stoked and immediately starts making plans for expanding the flock to include more breeds so she can show in multiple classes next year. I off-handedly remark to the superintendent that at this rate she’ll have 20 birds in the barn next year…E overhears me and makes that her new goal.
August 8, 2022:
I remove the run roof (it came off easily exactly how I envisioned). I put a tarp over it to keep the birds in during the day, and remind E that she absolutely has to close the pop door every night because the run is currently not predator proof at all.
August 9, 2022:
Freak rainstorm crashes in the temporary tarp on the run…I pull it off in the rain, and inform E that we’re just going to have to watch the birds closely to make sure they don’t fly over the run walls until we can get the run size changed and the netting up. With the run being outside our yard, its probably safer to spend more time free-ranging them, so they’re inside the safety of the yard…we do that today, with her and I taking turns keeping an eye on them (they can still fit through the fence holes, so sometimes wander outside the fence).
With County Fair behind us, I get serious about banding the blue australorps and blue stars; they’re two different classes at the fair next year, so we need to get them figured out soon, before they look totally alike. After research on BYC, I determine that if any have yellow feet, they are Blue Stars. Out of the 4, only 1 has yellow feet; we band her then look for differences and similarities between her and the other 3. We eventually discover that 2 of them have yellow/gold eyes while two of them have black/brown eyes – the eye color also matches with most similarities in comb shape/color/size at this point. The yellow footed one has yellow eyes, so both yellow eyed pullets are banded as Blue Star and the other two white footed/dark eyed pullets are banded as Blue Australorp.
While we’re on the topic of showing birds, E and I sat down and discussed what birds she wants for next year, and we placed an order at Ideal again, for shipment tomorrow. We are getting:
3 Leghorn pullets
2 Leghorn roosters
2 Buff Orpington pullets
1 Buff Orpington rooster
3 Easter Egger pullets
The Leghorns will give her something to show in those classes for both hens and roosters, and will also round out her white egg production so that she can sell white eggs as well. Added the Buff roo for the same reason – for breeding and so that she has one to show. The Buff pullets and the Easter Eggers were breeds she likes and served to fill out the minimum order amount. Sounds like I’ll be putting together a bachelor flock pen as well in the near future. Also talked about the fact that since we’ll be doing a lot of hatching eggs, we’ll also be doing a lot of selling (and/or eating) pullets and eating roos – she wasn’t happy about this but was happy about the compromise of being able to raise more baby chicks; and we also discussed that we will never eat Firecracker.
I’ve been contemplating meat birds strongly again this week. I found Tre3hugger’s thread about his New Hampshires that he bought from Freedom Ranger Hatchery and is crossing with Delawares for a sex linked chick. This bird sounds like EXACTLY what I’m looking for – grows pretty quickly, but not as crazily as the CX, can be free-ranged, and is something I could breed to not have to buy new meat chicks every year. I could also breed some sex-linked chicks and more easily raise just the roosters for meat birds and sell the pullets at a younger age. I put some New Hampshire in my cart at Freedom Ranger Hatchery, but they don’t have a ship date until 8/30/22 – assuming 10 weeks to processing, that puts me at the beginning of November for processing at the earliest, which gets us into the Thanksgiving rush at the processor. I still don’t have room to house 30-50 birds for that long, especially if the weather gets cold early this year at all or I can’t get a processing date at the processor in early November. I leave them sit in my cart.
Trolling around BYC (and also soon needing a bachelor pad) also got me to thinking again (as I have on and off ever since we bought the June chicks) about the fact that we probably need to expand our coop as well. Did some more research on BYC about hoop coops, and after reading about Blooie’s Motel Chix, I think I’m going to copy that idea for a coop (vs a run). If it can stand up to her Wyoming weather, it should handle my IL weather just fine, as she gets way more snow and wind than I do. A hoop coop will also help keep costs down, and allow me to build a second pullet/hen coop as well as a separate bachelor pad. I also really like the flexibility of being able to easily add on size later as needed. I spent hours tonight reading her post and looking closely at all the pictures, as well as reading about all the other hoop coops I could find.
August 10, 2022:
This morning I pulled the trigger on the New Hampshires. I just can’t get away from my gut feeling that tells me I really need to be self-sufficient on meat, like, yesterday. I need to act now if I want to be more self-sufficient in a few months. I ordered 15 of them, the minimum, and committed to processing them ourselves instead of taking them to a processor. My son’s girlfriend has experience processing her own chickens, so she can help teach me as needed. Might need my husband to do the actual dispatching, but I’m now committed. I’ll plan to keep 4-5 hens and probably 2 roosters to continue my flock with, and process the rest. This will also give E some of the birds she needs to fill out her classes for the show next year.
As I’m writing this up and thinking about the birds we banded yesterday, I’m coming to the conclusion that we must have been shorted a barred rock in the June batch, and not a blue star; because we banded 4 grey/blue birds yesterday, not counting the rooster. This makes sense because when we count birds we count by colors…but we count buffs, california’s, red stars, and all the black/greys together as one group. Going to have to go count barred rocks later today…I bet we have 6 instead of 7.
