12 reasons to raise chickens on your homestead

Do chickens have a place on your homestead? We have many chickens, ducks and Guineas running around our backyard and they each have a specific job. All are breeders and some are more like pets....but they all are mini garbage disposals! Let me explain. We have 5 breeding groups. All these groups provide us with:

Why you should raise chickens

1) Food, obviously! Eggs from backyard chickens are so much much higher in nutrition than store bought eggs, and they taste better too! Plus it's really nice knowing what goes into your food supply. Also, you can easily raise your chickens organically if you want and you're eggs are guaranteed cruelty free! For every happy backyard chicken you raise, that's one less chicken living on a factory farm.

2) Bug control. Chickens will demolish the grubs in the garden! They love cabbage worms and can destroy an earwig nest in seconds. I've often found an ant nest while digging in the garden and the chickens have attacked it scarfing down every single egg they can find. They're not as fond as the adult ants, but we had a lot of ants and they have made a huge dent in the population. 

3) Fertile hatching eggs which I incubate all spring/summer long. I sell their children. I'm evil like that! 😉 No, but seriously. You can make some serious money by selling hatching eggs and/or chicks.

4) Extra eggs to sell. You can also make some extra money selling eggs for eating. Especially in the summer when production is at an all year high and feed expenses are at an all time low. Save that money for winter feed and you can take some pressure off your winter budget. 

Feeding your chickens egg shells instead of oyster shell

Sometimes the thriftiest tips are right at my fingertips, they just require an extra bit of effort. Such is the case with eggshells. I feed my chickens their own eggshells instead of purchasing pricey Oyster Shell supplements. Hens need calcium to make an egg with a nice strong shell. Eggshells have lots of calcium, plus we have a lot of them on hand. It just makes sense. 

I do keep some Oyster Shell on hand in case I run out of egg shells, but I much prefer to use eggshells when possible. I don't actually run out of eggshells often, in fact I usually have so many that I came up with 12 ways to reuse eggshells to deal with all the extras!

Every few weeks I clean out the back egg stash and cook the eggs for the chickens. Then I wash and prep the shells to use as a supplement. The whole process only takes a few minutes of work....although there is some setting time. 

I've been doing this for years and in that time I've seen it done many ways. This is the method I prefer...

Giant rubber ducky visits Pittsburgh!

It's with a heavy heart and great fondness that we say goodbye to the giant rubber ducky. He left Pittsburgh this week after spending a month calling the Allegheny river his bathtub! Thousands of people flocked to the point at the three rivers to see this 40 foot tall quacker. I only got this close:



Twice! lol Though I live in the country now, I am a native Pittsburgher and as such, knew better then to brave the crowds and parking mess at point park. Since my photo is so bad I invite you to visit ducky's Pittsburgh page on FB: Rubber Duck - Pittsburgh, Pa

and see all the fabulous fan photos and official photos of our ducky mascot.

Ducky sat across the river from PNC Park and must have brought an amazing string of luck to our Pittsburgh Pirates . We had our best season in 17 years! Way to go buccos!

Ducky was a lot of fun. People can from neighboring states to visit and it was just a really cool thing to see. He was huge! Like a 4 story building huge! lol Picture a giant blow up yard ornament....40 foot tall. That was ducky. Awesome, right? He's moving on to the next city and hopefully one day he'll be back. Bye ducky! Thanks for visiting!

~L

Chore schedule for my day 'off'

Today I had the day off. By off I mean I didn't have to go to the place that gives me a paycheck. So on my day off I would like to relax but unfortunately, I'm a chicken farmer and farmer's never truly get a day 'off'. We have chores every day of the week. There's always some animal that needs fed or cleaned up after. Thankfully my daily chicken chores are pretty easy. 

It takes about 1/2 hour every morning to feed/water the chickens, switch out dirty bowls and let everyone out. In the evening it takes about another 1/2 hour to feed/water & count every bird then lock them all up for the night. Usually youngest son does afternoon feeding so I get to sit that one out. When I find some time during the week I scrape poop boards and fill feed bins. I clean out brooders at least twice a week. It only takes a few minutes here and there. Nobody really wants to come home from work and start cleaning coops, so the big cleaning comes on the weekend.

Chicken farm chores

This is what I did on my day off:
Morning chores: 1/2 hour (feed, water & open doors)
Met with customers, gave farm tour: 1 hour
Moved chicks out of Silkie coop to grow-out pen, fixed led light in silkie coop: 1/2 hour
Cleaned Guinea coop (20X12 building): 1 hour
Chased Guineas back into coop: 15 minutes 
Washed food and water bowls that have accumulated all week: 1/2 hour
Cleaned out the brooders in the garage: 15 minutes
Evening chores: 1/2 hour (fill waters, lock up & count them all)

The training of the roo....How to raise a friendly rooster

I think everyone has a mean rooster story or two to tell. It seems that some roosters can be downright evil. Others though can be real sweethearts. Unfortunately, roosters are one of those animals that you only really get 1 chance to raise them right. Luckily, it's pretty easy to train a rooster to be nice if you start early. 

If raised wrong, you can end up with a cranky, mean, vengeful beast...but if done right, you can end up with a powder puff! Rooster training is best started young, like 1 day old if you can! 

Usually that's not so terribly tough since most of us have a hard time keeping our hands off the chicks anyway! It's important to handle him daily. It doesn't have to be the same person, several people can get in on it. Even the kids.

Actually, the more people that chip in and help train the rooster the better! That way the rooster is used to lots of different people, to just one favorite person.

18 Chicken facts you didn't know

A few years back I accumulated this list of interesting chicken trivia for my very first website. I'm rather fond of this list so I thought I would add it to the blog here for you all to read! This is a collection of random chicken facts that most people don't know. It includes everything from flying chickens to headless chickens.

Of course many chicken keepers will read the list and find that they do in fact, know some of these. However, I've been raising chickens for 4 years now and many of these came as a surprise to me! 

Here is the original list:

Amazing chicken facts

1) There are more chickens in the world than people. In fact, globally chickens outnumber people 3 to 1.

2) History indicates that fowl were domesticated as far back as 3200 B.C.

3) Chickens absorb vitamin-D through their combs from sunshine.

4) Shell color is determined by the breed of hen and has no effect on its quality, nutrients or flavor.

5) The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

6) Hens take about 24-26 hours to produce one egg. Thirty minutes later they start the process all over again.

7) A fresh egg will sink in water, a stale one will float.

8) There are nearly 200 breeds and varieties of chickens worldwide.

9) The average hen will lay 227 eggs a year.

10) An egg shell has as many as 17,000 pores over its surface. 

September recap

September was a busy month, that's for sure! We wrapped up the breeding season with a few more Guinea hatches and the Mother Earth News Fair. The Guinea flock was pared down by a few mate-less males and a few keets were selected to add to the group. Only time will tell if they are the right sex or not. If not, you'll be seeing them up for sale as adults...a very rare occurrence for us! We have added a new color to our flock for next year. Slate. We also pared down the pearls and added more lavender, royal purple and white to keep up with the demand for colors.

Mother Earth News fair was awesome as usual. The Brinsea booth was way too cool! I got to check out the Clifton coop and the various incubators and brooders they make. Our chicks hatched in the incubators and hopped around under the EcoGlow all weekend long. Thanks to the fabulous Brinsea crew for letting us join them again this year!

I picked up a few giveaways for the blog this month and we started our first one. It ran for 1 week and finished last night. The winner of the Purina feeds egg basket is Jennifer E. Congratulations Jennifer, your basket will be in the mail tomorrow! 

The chicks in the brooder showed me that just when I think they can't get into trouble....they do! Lucky for this little Marans chick I check on them every hour. She was happy to be unstuck and ran off to play as soon as I set her free!

Lastly, I started blogging for Backyard Poultry Magazine's blog! My first post goes live tomorrow so make sure you head over and check it out. I'm so excited to be working with them. I'm joining a stellar team of bloggers over there and I just know you're gonna love the blog. Go check it out!

That's it for September. I'm filling boxes with shavings for the auction in the morning. The last of the keets are leaving tomorrow. Big decisions are currently being made about the future of our hatchery. To stay the same or to grow? I fear that we've grown all we can without shipping.....but that requires quarterly blood tests, yearly inspections and more. Decisions.....decisions...stay tuned for the outcome!

~Lisa