How to keep chickens cheap?

[sean_wonder]

Will you be paying for the chicken feed?
..and the bedding?
...and the coop?

Not the coop or the chicks/chick supplies, but definitely bedding & feed. Pelleted pine wood is a great, cheap bedding-- sometimes free, but I've found 40lbs of it for $5. I'll go thru about 42 lbs of feed per week with seven hens, more or less, and I've found a 50 pound bag of layer feed for $28-- I mow lawns and babysit which easily makes me $20+, so if I only need to buy a bag a little less than once a month I'll be able to do it. My family goes thru a dozen eggs a week, so if I sell 2-3 dozen a week I could make $30 per month minimum through that.

My family has a system for birthdays/holiday gifts, and sometimes they allow us to put the allotted money towards a goal of ours. If they allowed me to get chickens, I probably wouldn't have any holiday gifts for a while... but it would be sooo worth it

 

[feathermaid]

Ok, if you want to try a business venture instead of raising pets just for bonus eggs, then you'll need a high production variety like leghorns or sexlinks as @rachelsflock mentioned earlier. The bonus for those breeds is they are lean birds that require less feed, are great foragers while free ranging and don't tend to get broody. Establishing a good flock rotation will keep you in a consistent supply of eggs. That means culling (rehoming or butchering) birds entering their first molt as their egg production ceases and having replacements ready to take their place. Here's a great article explaining the process:
https://nwedible.com/chicken-rotation-optimizing-for-year-round-laying-from-the-backyard-flock/

Chickens are super messy and expert food wasters. You need a feeder that won't allow them to scatter it everywhere. The best cheap solution I've found is a diy PVC gravity feeder and I've had absolutely zero spills. The important part of this one is the additional 3-4" attachment to the wye to make a longer "tunnel" reach.

Oh, and there's other styles too!
https://blog.mypetchicken.com/2015/10/05/diy-no-waste-feeder/

If you rotate your flock and always have mixed age birds, you'll need an all flock type feed and offer oyster shell on the side for calcium. Young birds can't have the additional calcium in layer feed and won't bother with oyster shells until they need it.

Also, here's another article to help get those yearly new babies integrated in the flock easily and sooner:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/integrating-new-birds-at-4-weeks-old.72603/

 

[sean_wonder]

Ok, if you want to try a business venture instead of raising pets just for bonus eggs, then you'll need a high production variety like leghorns or sexlinks

Amazing!! Great info!! Thank you so much!!! I'll be sure to write all that down in my never ending list I am leaning towards sexlinks since theres a guarantee none of them would accidentally be male. I've heard leghorns can be very aggressive.

 

[member 512732]

I have figured out many ways to lower the cost of keeping chickens, but I believe that there are still more things that I could do.

I am aware of the mother heating pad, deep litter method, fermenting feed, free ranging, and sprouting. Most likely, i will have to keep my chickens in a small coop, with roughly 2 1/2 sq feet per bird, and I know I can find cheap scrap pieces to make feed and water tins, nesting boxes, and a moveable run, but they will have an acre of supervised free range every day when i get home from school since our yard is fenced in.

The only thing I am welling to spend real $$$ on is just the coop & the chicks themselves, since there are no local breeders. Any tips on how to save money on everything else?

Well I am probably not the most knowledgeable chicken owner but I do spoil them. I shop at the 99 store like I did this morning and got them cheeze nips and fruity pebbles or something like that...it had fred flinstone on the box. I crumble them all up and throw some in their turtle pool. I also lay down boards and old feed bags on the ground and after a couple weeks pull them up and they feast on the larvae..i.e. maggots or something and the occasional scorpion which they rip apart in less than ten seconds and fight over them. About four days later their eggs are really orange which I was told shows that the eggs are very healthy..probably from all the protein of eating those poor little creatures. I also got some honeydew melons for 99 cents each...a can of pumpkin...and a pumpking for 1.99 that had absolutely no meat inside. When I picked them up I thought they were fake..they were so light. Nothing for the chickens to eat so I gave it to the donkey and pony. Both ignored it and ate the honeydew. Then my shepherd ran up and took the pumpkin and ran off with it. Its a friggin zoo at my house. You dont need tv here....just grab a beer and a chair and watch the antics.

To keep chickens cheap, stick to production hybrids or leghorns, only get as many as you need, replace them at 18 months mercilessly, feed a balanced feed as much as they want (pellet especially), but you may want to take it away once they've filled up to prevent pests from dining, and free range. Some producers also cull broody birds.

Not really what hobbiests want to hear, but that's how you do it. That's a lot of what I don't do.

Now in regards to that shed, I think you might be able to build better for cheaper. That plastic guy is also going to need a ton of ventilation unless you only intend to get two or three birds. No deep litter in that guy. Find a buddy with scrap wood and tools and build something tight. People also love pallets as building materials. For a reference, my first shed cost was free made of scrap wood in a few hours. My next shed...well, the husband got to that project. It was not cheap. My goat house is a 6x6 shed with a dirt floor and lots of ventilation yet is tight and secure and it was $200 because the husband wanted a real roof on it. It would have been less than $90 otherwise.

I'd also just get a metal feeder from your feed store and build a nipple waterer with a 5 gallon bucket and horizontal nipples. If they're good enough quality and you keep the metal feeder out of the rain and wet they will last for years and years (at least the feeder, I'm still testing my nipple waterer). Hang the feeder in the coop, put the waterer on a cinderblock outside. 2x4 makes an excellent roost. Plastic colored tubs from the hardware store with chicken sized holes make great nest boxes. They can be weighed down with a brick and filled with shavings.

I'd also always remember to lock up the birds at or before dark. Replacing eaten birds is expensive.

That's all I can think of. I'll follow this thread for ideas on what else I'm not doing.

 

[member 512732]

So let me get this straight...remove them....aka kill them.. before they are 2 and reach full maturity and cull the brooders. I think it would be much cheaper to just set the building on fire and go to kfc for the all you can eat buffet...oh and when you come back you can have some cheap bbq for the rest of the week. I think I am in the wrong forum to learn about how to raise them and more like how to kill them. I think I need a forum for people that love chickens as if they were their own family...a better version that the ones I was given by nature. I cant say I learned a lot here in my short time...but I did learn that no matter where I go....there i cruelty everywhere and I chose no to be apart of that. Tak Cau.

 

[member 512732]

Craigslist can be your best friend as well as any buy/sell/junk/swap facebook groups for your area. For my coop build I purchased hardware (screws, hinges, latches, etc.) and that's about it, also a gallon of good exterior paint (you can get mis-tints free or cheap from the hardware store and sometimes even have them re-tinted to a color you want). Scrap from construction sites. You can get pallets from almost any store (most receive shipments on them), any "container" can be a nest box if it's the right size. My girls have a wooden wine box/crate and a milk crate. Old windows are often free or cheap. Much of my wood came from a deck that someone tore off. You might be able to find an old dog house/play house/swing set/shed on Craigslist that you could get free or cheap if you haul it away. A tree branch or old ladder can make a roost or just a scrap bit of wood. Get creative!

Forget craigslist unless you want to get murdered...go to Offerup.com. Much better.

 

[sean_wonder]

You dont need tv here....just grab a beer and a chair and watch the antics.View attachment 1568007 View attachment 1568007 View attachment 1568007

I love that!! Love those pictures too, what a grumpy looking bird! We always have crackers and fun foods at our house, but grass clippings won't be hard to come by. We have tons of grubs and bugs all over our yard, and one year I raised a worm colony & released about 700 in the backyard. They'll have no problem picking up their own treats haha. Ive got quite a knack for gardening and I like grow bell peppers every summer. I might even start sprouting lentils over the summer, but I'm sure they'll love both of those

 

[sean_wonder]

I think I need a forum for people that love chickens as if they were their own family...

Everyone here loves their animals! Every single one of mine gets a name, a pets, and kisses, and treats, (and maybe some favoritism if they're really opinionated), no matter if its destination is the slaughterhouse. My favorite cow at my grandparents' is a steer named Hambone. He's so spunky and adorable. Truth is, these animals aren't really domesticated, like dogs, but they're dependent on humans enough that they'd be slaughtered far, far more cruelly and painfully by animals in the wild.

 

[aart]

My family has a system for birthdays/holiday gifts, and sometimes they allow us to put the allotted money towards a goal of ours.

My family did that too, it's nice.

I'll go thru about 42 lbs of feed per week with seven hens, more or less,

Not sure where you're getting our numbers but.....My 22 birds go thru 50# in about 2 weeks.

and I've found a 50 pound bag of layer feed for $28--

Organic? I pay $18 for 50# of Flock Raiser.

 

[feathermaid]

So let me get this straight...remove them....aka kill them.. before they are 2 and reach full maturity and cull the brooders. I think it would be much cheaper to just set the building on fire and go to kfc for the all you can eat buffet...oh and when you come back you can have some cheap bbq for the rest of the week. I think I am in the wrong forum to learn about how to raise them and more like how to kill them. I think I need a forum for people that love chickens as if they were their own family...a better version that the ones I was given by nature. I cant say I learned a lot here in my short time...but I did learn that no matter where I go....there i cruelty everywhere and I chose no to be apart of that. Tak Cau.

My post was offering insight on how to raise them to make a profit, by keeping the flock as productive as possible, not individual birds as pets. That's entirely different. This type of raising is not for everyone and if you read the link you would know. Rotating and culling a flock doesn't necessarily mean "killing," it means "removing." There are plenty of people who raise chickens for meat and their life (while they are living) is happy and healthy... much more so than factory raised meat birds.

And yes, there are many other threads and articles on how to pamper your pet chickens and keep them around long after their production years.