Prepping for self sufficiency as it involves Chickens (aka prepper)

[jdeoliveira74]

I live with in city limits now and I am trying to find some land. I cant find something fast enough it seems..

 

[cuppycake]

We lived in our stupid condo for 2 years before finding the place we're at now. I'd prefer to be a little further out of town, but that would make commutes to work a huge pain for DH.

There are a lot of things you can do to prep while living in the city. Even just learning new skills will give you a huge leg up. We started a pretty decent food storage rotation while still in the condo, mostly dry goods in mylar bags. I would buy the discounted produce at the grocery store and taught myself how to can food. We weren't allowed to have chickens in the old neighborhood but I did get away with having a tiny 4 hole rabbitry in the garage. I also used that time to read, Read, READ and then read some more. everything I could get my hands on. We also spend quite a lot of time (and money) going to an indoor range and target shooting to stay sharp. Glad to finally be out somewhere that we can target shoot for free out back.

 

[jdeoliveira74]

Except now ammo is hard to come by these days. We have started food storage and growing what we can. Canning too. So we are ahead of most in city limits.... I am pretty good at building stuff... I just got a secondary grow out coop amostdone ... I will post some pics later

 

[ocap]

with ammo scarce it is nice we do not need to shoot our chickens.

 

[ocap]

I just found another great BYC thread for this prepping group

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/713334/growing-fodder-for-chickens

 

[erinszoo]

Just found this thread and read through the whole thing so let's see if I can remember everything I wanted to say.

1. We have Wyandottes in Northern Oklahoma, in basically the same growing zone as KC and they have done great so far. They are a larger type bird but not necessarily the friendliest of birds. They like to roost up high.
2. Silkies, while they have a reputation for being good broody birds and sitting eggs well, they can be tricky to raise. They are more susceptible to disease and need supplements to make sure they are healthy. They are incredibly friendly though. (yes, friendly is important in a breed because you will at times need to handle them and collect eggs from them and keep them safe ... friendly at those times makes a huge difference)
3. Solar heaters for your chicken coop are easy to make with used soda or water bottles. Look on You tube for videos of them. You can even modify them to heat water in the winter too without using electricity or gas at all.
4. Fodder is a great feed source. We use deer plot spike grains for growing and all of our birds LOVE it, even the babies.
5. Rabbits are tricky in summer heat. In winter they are great and easy to take care of but in summer they can be problematic, plus the saying "Breed like rabbits" is just a saying. They don't breed like rabbits and can be finicky and difficult to get through gestation. I would love to have some bred especially for growing on pasture. That would be interesting since they have such particular nutrition needs. You would also have to have some kind of mesh in the ground to keep them from digging out.
6. Other than fodder and stuff from our garden our birds pretty much don't get green stuff any more because they have killed off all the grass in their range area but they do love pecans. We've never had medical issues with them at all. Having a solid coop and protected yard is in our opinion more important than sticking them on new grass every day. Predator death is far more prevalent than disease we've found.

If you want to venture into ducks, khaki campbells are actually better egg layers than most chickens. They breed well too but aren't known for sitting on their eggs, however, swedish blues are good mothers so if you raised a mixed flock of them they should be self sustaining. They are very predictable and can be trained to a routine of when to go out and when to come back to the house with little effort.

 

[noitulover]

Great thread! We're working towards flock diversity. We've got 2 roosters over just under 20 hens. We've got a bantam rooster that has protected our flock from EVERYTHING (coyotes, hawks, foxes, you name it), and standard sized rooster. Our hens include production type hens, larger egg layers (like australorps), and a CornishX (Tyson truck chicken that fell out!), and a few bantams and mixes. We're looking to get a bunch of silkies, as we recently lost ours, for broodies, and a maybe a few Cornish (not X's, purebred) to breed Cornish X's. I'd also like to get some heat specific (thinking penedesencas/more leghorns/hamburgs/etc.) and cold hardy birds (maybe a buckeye) , just for flock dimension.

We've also been considering a meal worm farm to supplement their feed and free range, just in case, and especially in cold weather months.

 

[ocap]

I did contact polyface farms and they no longer sell the rabbit breeding stock, so I will probably start with two and see if I can raise on pasture only. must try and find ideas for rabbit tractors.
fermented feed thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/644300/fermenting-feed-for-meat-birds
is a great way to stretch the feed according to what I have read on this thread, I am going to try it next month with Kefir as the starter

 

[Spifflove]

My thought is to only have one type of chicken. Comparing White rocks and Buff Orpingtons:

I noticed that rocks are significantly more meaty than Opingtons. Better layers too. So so far the front runner for me is Rocks. I decided to go with an expensive heritage breed but if they don't work out I definetly would go with some variety of Plymouth Rock, probably buff.

 

[Spifflove]

I found this article that is helpful:

http://www.survivalboards.com/2012-11-06/best-chicken-breed-for-shtf/