New member needs advice

[Cole72]

Hello,

I work at a food pantry and we are interested in keeping chickens in order to distribute the eggs to our clients. We can only keep 8 chickens in city limits, so our scope will be small. I am interested in advice on inexpensive chicken coops, feed options, and general care. We are located in Ohio, so weather is a factor. Also, which kinds of chickens yield the most eggs? Do they need to be in a chicken run or will they stick around as long as they are fed? Links to existing threads will be appreciated.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

 

[TwoCrows]

Welcome to BYC!

So glad you could join our community!! I think you need to do some reading in our learning center. All these questions and any others you may have, can be answered here....

https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center

As for housing your birds, they will need a good sturdy predator proof coop. You don't have to keep them in a run, however if you have a lot of predators, you will lose some along the way. They may also lay outside in their hidden nests, requiring you to go on Easter Egg hunts everyday to find the eggs!

Check out our coops pages for some good ideas. And look at the tractor section too as chicken tractors can be built relatively cheaper than larger coops....

https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/2/Coops

As far as purchasing a cheap coop, it is probably cheaper to build one yourself. You might also try your local craigslist in hopes maybe someone nearby has a coop for sale.

Good luck in this new adventure and welcome to our flock!

 

[chicmom]

Check out Meyerhatchery.com. They are in Polk Ohio. They have a Golden Buff hybrid that is a fantastic layer of large brown eggs. Mine started laying at 17 weeks and they lay nearly every day.

Do you have land somewhere or a farm that you will be keeping them on? I do allow mine to free range, but only for a few hours each evening before dusk. They know to come home to the coop, where I do a head count and lock them up for the night. If you leave them out, they will become a nice meal to any number of predators: hawks, owls, raccoons, possums, skunks, foxes, coyotes.......You name it. So they do need protection at night. The hawks would be a daytime predator. Not to mention neighborhood dogs.

Here in Ohio they need shelter during the colder months. I have a hen house for my flock, with an attached chicken run. That way, they can still come outside and they're safe. The chicken run has sand in it, so I can rake out the droppings.

In the hen house, which is an 8x12 building, I have either straw or pine shavings as bedding. I feed a good layer feed that you can buy at any farm store. Chickens eat a bit less of this feed in the summer if they can free range. Chickens like to scratch around, so I also keep a bag of cracked corn handy. I throw this into the run and call for them at dusk, and they come running for their treat. (Otherwise, they sometimes don't want to come in at night.)

 

[Kelsie2290]

Hello And Welcome To BYC! X2 on the Learning Center is a great place to start reading. If you are going purely for egg production and will replace the birds every couple of years when they slow down on laying the various commercial Red Sex Links like the Golden Buff for brown eggs or the White Leghorns for white eggs are the two most popular choices.
You will need a coop/run set up, especially within city limits, chickens will go where ever they can and are no respecter of property lines, also predators are a big concern, racoons are a big problem pretty much everywhere in Ohio.
You might like to check out the Ohio state thread for your chicken keeping neighbors, they might have some hints on local places to get coops https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/270925/find-your-states-thread

 

[gander007]

Alright

great to have you joining the BYC flock

BYC has a very useful learning center

Yes you will need a run to keep your chickens safe from predators & thieves

And you might look into locking up the chickens with a lock now I only say this as I have seen more then one church have their chickens stolen

Road Island Reds are a hardy chicken and good egg producers

 

[SternRose]

Check out my pet chicken. Great birds