Raising chickens

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Glad to meet you, Sam. Good planning to build first, then chickens.

Have you guys seen the chicken coop (and tractor) selection on the pages, as well as articles here? There are folks here on BYC who are serious homesteaders and there is a forum to discuss self sufficiency issues and problems here. Browse the Forums to also find Gardening discussions, and to locate other BYC members in your area, so you can get help, do swaps and trades, or sell things locally. (to locate others near you, use the WHERE AM I/WHERE ARE YOU forum)

Best wishes with your building, your flock and all your plans!
 
Samt1961 said:
My son and I are new to raising chickens. We don't have any chickens yet. We want to build their tractor before we purchase chickens. My son is raising 3 boys as a single parent and I'm on disability so growing our vegetables and herbs are almost
a must for us.
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:welcome Welcome to the BYC forums. It's great to hear from you. I think building the chicken tractor before you get your chicks is a great idea. It's too easy to get all excited about getting chicks, then building a coop under the gun to house them.

Chickens and gardening go great together. I recommend having your chicken coop and run as close as possible to your garden. Your garden weeds can feed the chickens, and if you use the chickens to make compost in the run, it will feed your garden. Very nice.

Having said all that great stuff about chickens, I am concerned that if money is short (growing our vegetables and herbs are almost a must for us), that you will probably find that the money you invest into your backyard flock will never pay for the beautiful backyard eggs you will get later on. Where I live, I can buy a dozen large eggs at the big box store for $1.00 or less (well, prior to COVID and this recent inflation jump). But I could have bought eggs, as needed, from the store for much less than it costs me to raise my backyard flock.

I have had laying hens for 3+ years now, and just bought a batch of new chicks. So, I obviously feel all the benefits I get from my chickens is worth it to me. But, I have never thought that my homegrown eggs are cheaper than store bought eggs. I use my chickens to make compost for the garden, which in most ways, is more valuable to me than the eggs I get as a bonus. In the past 2 weeks, I have sifted out about $100.00 of compost from my chicken run. In comparison, I only got maybe $3.00 worth of eggs in that same time.

:old If money is tight, but you still want to have a backyard flock for any number of great reasons, I would encourage you to look into chicken composting to increase your garden's productivity - especially since you are already growing food for yourself. I can tell you that my chicken run compost has really boosted my raised bed garden productivity and I had a bumper crop of food from my beds covered with chicken run compost last year. Probably provided hundreds of dollars of equivalent food if purchased at the big box stores. In my case, the chickens more than pay for themselves in making compost which I use to grow people food. Eggs are just a bonus.
 

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