Is 300 chickens enough?

[Zinjifrah]

Another small interjection - if you do keep your birds until they die of old age, will you be getting them veterinary care as their health and quality of life deteriorates? Even with thirty birds, that would be very expensive, but it would be sheer cruelty to let them linger on while suffering rather than get them medical care or terminate that suffering by killing them. Take a look at all the chicken health problems that are posted on this site. I've seen way too many situations - with cats and especially dogs, rather than chickens - where people kept an animal alive, even though it was suffering horribly, not for the animal's welfare but because they 'couldn't bear to lose their beloved pet'. Sometimes, death is the greatest kindness that can be given. Also, if the birds are the same age, there will probably be a large amount of death in a fairly short time, when they do start dying of old age. Make sure you are prepared for that, and have plans in place for dealing with the bodies.

One of the hardest things I've ever had to do was make the choice to end the life of a young Kingsnake I'd fought with for a year, trying to get her healthy. The final prognosis was a deformed digestive tract. Nothing I could have done would have fixed it. That was discovered by necropsy after I killed her. I did that myself, because the only humane way to kill a snake is to destroy the brain with a single, quick blow. Decapitation can result in a brain that remains active for up to an hour afterwards, in reptiles. Some people say freeze them, but tests have shown that the snake is still conscious when its blood starts to freeze. My reptile vet confirmed what my previous research had said - that giving them the usual shots is visibly agonizing to the snake, since it doesn't kill them immediately the way it would a mammal. But I made that choice, because stopping her suffering was my responsibility, as her caretaker.

 

[lazy gardener]

Excellent post by @Zinjifrah. Not to mention that production breeds will succumb to reproductive illness long before they approach old age. This is a painful way to go if a merciful culling is not provided.

 

[Redhead Rae]

My question is how do you get the building inspectors to pass it/

You live in an area where homeowners aren't required to pull permits, like where I live.

 

[duluthralphie]

[QUOTE="Zinjifrah, post: 19938916, member: 509944" with cats and especially dogs, rather than chickens - where people kept an animal alive, even though it was suffering horribly, not for the animal's welfare but because they 'couldn't bear to lose their beloved pet'. Sometimes, death is the greatest kindness that can be given..[/QUOTE]


Do you mind if I quote this to put it on a DUX thread........I agree 100% with them for sure...

 

[Zinjifrah]

Do you mind if I quote this to put it on a DUX thread........I agree 100% with them for sure...

Quote anything you'd like. Public property!

 

[adstowe]

I think the needing to cull the older birds has been beat in the ground. No point in hammering on it more. I don't remember ever seeing how much land you were working with. You said 1/4 acre for the birds, but how much total? If you're wanting to homestead and be self sufficient, you're going to want to branch out. Just eggs and some gardening isn't going to cut it. I'd say expand into your own little supplier of natural foods to your area. Incorporate bee keeping and sell the honey, goats and sell goat milk, of course the eggs and herbs etc too. Put a sign out front advertising what you have and maybe set up a road side stand to attract new customers every other sunday (or whatever works, but keep it consistant) If you can present yourself as a local, all natural source of a variety of food you can probably build up a pretty good customer base. I really think offering a variety of products will considerably help differentiate your "homestead products" from the dude up the street who sells his extra eggs. That's my two cents

 

[alexa009]

Don't have much to add, except I would buy and raise only sex links. They'll give you the most eggs and die earlier than other breeds.

I agree with gator75 about the sexlinks. If you are looking to put a lot of money into your business sexlinks have short lifespans and have excellent production behind that.

 

[Ahavati]

Big goals. But goals are great! Some advice from a fellow new homesteader (2 years), def start small. Esp if you haven't ever done any of this. (I am not sure on your past experience)We have goals of selling extra eggs, goat milk, goat babies etc, but mostly to supplement feed and maybe a little extra. We got 15 chicks over a year ago, and got 15 more 2 weeks later lol. We've kept between 30-50 chickens for the last year and a half. It is a lot of work for sure. We have 11.5 acres here. We soon got some turkeys. A couple geese, a couple peafowl (because they're my favorite animal) and some goats lol. With the turkeys, a tom and 3 hens, we are hatching their eggs and selling poults for $10 a piece. Helps pay for feed. With the chickens, we sell any excess eggs we have as well as old layers. We also sell chicks. With the goats, we breed them, keep babies on them for 3 months but separate at night so we can milk in the morning. Then babies stay on moms all day long. Babies can be sold here after 2-3 months old. We started with 2 goats and now have 5. We're actually starting a breeding program to perfect mini-nubians. For my own joy as well as selling registered and great producing minis. We are starting small and growing. We do have a big garden and for now have given away produce (and eggs) because we just feel blessed with abundance. But we have thought about selling our excess produce at times. In the future we're getting bees and sheep.

I think starting out small will help you get a grasp on what it would take. Figure out how you want to handle things. I wish you lots of luck and success! Oh and I love earthbag houses! Would love to see pics when it's done!

 

[Kessel23]

I am not reading through every post so I am not sure if someone has thrown this out there yet buuuuuut sexing chicks is not 100% I think it is about 90% but some hatcheries claim it is 95 or higher... SoOoooOOooo if you get 300 birds you can expect to get quite a few roosters, even if you plan to have all sexed pullets. Also, 300 chickens will take up a ton of space and it will take a ton of time and lots of hard work to maintain a flock of that size. Your coop would need to be like 600 square feet and your run would need to be like 1200 square feet. Also how do you plan to brood this many chicks, you need to calculate how much the chicks will cost, for me, if I ordered 300 RIR sexed pullets from McMurray it would cost around $900 plus shipping and I only live 4 hours from that hatchery. Along with the cost of chicks you need to add up the cost of feeders, waterers, bedding, and heat lamps. You can expect your electricity bill to go up when you are brooding a flock of that size.

You still need to calculate the costs of more than just feed, how much will adult bedding cost, how much will medication and vaccines cost, how much housing costs. Along with that you will need to be able to clean out this massive chicken coop often and I don't think you are going to be doing that by hand twice a month.

About the eggs, first off you will need to raise these birds for around 6 months before they give you any profit so that is not gonna be cheap. Second, chickens are only profitable for around 3 years so you are going to have to do something with 300 non profitable birds in 3 years. It might be beneficial to turn them into food but you clearly don't want that. It would be very hard to rehome 300 birds and you should not expect to get paid for hens older than 3 years because again, they are not profitable. And with the actual cost, you might get $3 per dozen at first but that amount of eggs would completely crash the market for eggs in your area, it would lower them down to store price (1.75 I think) within a few weeks. And I am not sure who you would be selling these eggs to, I mean no neighborhood is going to consume that many eggs per month.

I think that you should not skip from level 1 to 100, a small flock to a flock of 300 is a massive jump and I remember when I was younger I tried to jump from 50 birds to 100 and it totally failed, lots of dead birds in that chapter...

Conclusion; No, Also I used the word Also to much.

 

[WhiteWyan]

I am not sure if this was mentioned yet but I'm feeling like OP might be better off raising chickens that are show quality and selling the fertile eggs for hatching. I bet if you got the right breed and good stock you could sell hatching eggs for much much more than eating eggs.
Just my 2¢.