Is 300 chickens enough?

[lazy gardener]

Don't forget income tax (15 - 30% of your net) , liability insurance, any permits? cost of egg cartons.

 

[Casastash]

I have a 1 acre pen for 8 ducks 2 geese and 30 chickens and it is tight. Even though they free range during the day and are only penned at night the upkeep in the 1 acre pen is astoundingly intense. Keeping waterers clean and feed filled and poop managed takes about 1 hour a day with the amount of room they have being locked up for 10 hours. This doesn’t include my grow out pens and chicken tractor which house about 30 More birds. With 100 birds I spend 440.00 on a 2500 lb tote of fees that lasts 3-4 months. I also struggle with regular egg customers and competing with grocery store egg prices.

For you I would think you might want to consider trying to raise 100 birds at a time and see if you can A: manage it and B: get enough egg customers.

You should also consider your pen size, that many birds in that amount of space is disease and illness looking for a place to happen.

These suggestions are coming from
A humble hobby farmer who most certainly does NOT know it all but the do currently have 100 or so birds and the work and space requirements can be very overwhelming

 

[BYC910]

Well first off welcome to BYC . And I can't add to what's been said . Well but I just have to . You will start out behind and stay behind for years . It is a lovely thought for sure . But realistically it just can't happen .Perhaps if you fenced in a hundred acres and free ranged all the birds. Give up the thought of a meat free world . Find a place to market spent layers . I make more money hatching and selling birds than selling eggs . I use flea markets . Big roosters are easier to sell than laying hens unless you sell them cheap .

 

[Zinjifrah]

Got to go with everyone else here - 1/4 acre is way too small for that concentration of birds, unless they're kept in process warehouses. I've got several acres, about a third of it is fenced for the horses, four dogs have full run, and I'm figuring 20-30 bantams, with access to the entire plot free-ranging once they're grown.

 

[lazy gardener]

I have 4 acres, 500 s.f. of closed run, 30ish birds, and way more poop than I desire when they are out to free range. My neighbors do well to put up with my 30 birds on 4 acres.

 

[Casastash]

We have 60 birds on 10 acres free ranging and like mentioned above.. the amount of poop is mind blowing!

 

[Redhead Rae]

I keep 60-70 of my birds on just over an acre, rotating them between 4 paddocks. I could probably have 100 on there easily.

Seriously, build up gradually. Build your customer base. Another thought, most birds stop laying over the winter. I had 30 hens and pullets that were laying before winter. For 2-3 months we were getting less than 10 eggs a day. For one of those months, we got less than 5 a day. We don't provide supplemental light because we believe that is too hard on the girls' systems and they need a rest period. If you are going to sell eggs, you will likely lose customers over the winter because, even with supplemental lighting, your egg supply will drop.

Also, if you are doing this for profit you'll end up feeding 7-800 birds in a few years and having most of your profits eaten by unproductive birds. It's a lovely thought to provide them a "forever home" but it isn't practical as a business model. One thing you could look into doing, is buying a breed that is known for its long laying life. I know Joel Salatin doesn't breed his birds to a breed standard, but he purposefully breeds his chickens so they have a long laying life by only hatching eggs from birds that are 5-6 years old.

The only way I could see this working is if you found a way to feed them for free. Here is some info about how a guy, whose main business is compost, maintains 100+ birds without grain. https://permaculturenews.org/2013/12/06/grow-chickens-without-buying-grain-feeding-compost/ Another way to do this is to go to all the grocery stores and farmers markets and ask for their refuse produce and feed that to your chickens.

Honestly, if you are doing the vegetarian option to be humane, you really aren't being completely humane. If you buy only pullets (female chicks), you are contributing to the slaughter of all the cockerels (male chicks) that were hatched with the pullets but are culled, often in horrible a horrible manner, by the hatchery. Also, if you get as many birds as you would like to... you are DEFINITELY getting a few cockerels in there. Most hatcheries only guarantee their sexing to be 90% accurate.

I personally feel it is more humane to give a chicken the best life possible and balance its needs with my needs and make sure it only has one bad day.

 

[moon_cocoon]

I want to thank everyone for all of the advice I've been given! I guess my excitement and dream is bigger than reality.

It's always been our dream to homestead full time. We're fixing to build a small earthbag house for ourselves and we're trying to come up with ways to earn an income from the stead.

I guess we will start out with 30 hens (15 RIR and 15 Australorps) and see where things are a year from now or sooner if things go well.

 

[Redhead Rae]

I want to thank everyone for all of the advice I've been given! I guess my excitement and dream is bigger than reality.

It's always been our dream to homestead full time. We're fixing to build a small earthbag house for ourselves and we're trying to come up with ways to earn an income from the stead.

I guess we will start out with 30 hens (15 RIR and 15 Australorps) and see where things are a year from now or sooner if things go well.

A caution about RIR, I have one hen that is half Hatchery RIR and she is MEAN. All of her offspring (who have been 1/4 RIR) have been mean too. I've heard a lot about hatchery stock RIRs being that way from others as well.

 

[moon_cocoon]

A caution about RIR, I have one hen that is half Hatchery RIR and she is MEAN. All of her offspring (who have been 1/4 RIR) have been mean too. I've heard a lot about hatchery stock RIRs being that way from others as well.

Thanks for the heads up. Might look into another breed then. And thank you for your advice above.