Chickens and Eggs

For us the chickens came before the eggs (lots and lots of eggs!).  In June 2009, we got an early morning phone call from our post office that a box of very noisy chicks was waiting on us and could we please come pick them up?  Twenty-five 1 day old female Black Australorp chicks from the Murray McMurray Hatchery had arrived.

June 2009

In August, we processed 19 hens into the freezer.  The largest, healthiest 6 hens were kept for egg production.  We got our first eggs 5 months after the chicks arrived.


November 2009

Our 6 birds give us about 3 1/2 dozen eggs and eat an average of $1.50 worth of feed a week.  This gives our family a nice surplus beyond what we can eat to give away, sell, or trade.  Organic eggs go for $3 a dozen, so selling only two dozen a month pays the feed bill and gives twelve dozen eggs a month profit.  Feed costs go down to almost nothing in the summer and up in the winter due to changing levels of wild forage.  They will eat almost any kitchen and table scraps.  The only things we've found they won't eat are citrus and onions.

A daily occurrence

The hens are very low maintenance.  In the mornings they let themselves out of the hen house and spend the day eating insects, seeds, and grass.  They are a joy to watch scratching and pecking around the yard.  In the evening they put themselves up and roost on their roosting bars.  The house gets cleaned out twice a year.  This job takes about 15 minutes.  Our hen house is much larger and more complicated than turned out to be necessary.  In a future post we will tour the hen house and discuss what we think is the ideal small hen house for a backyard flock.  We have been very pleased with our return on investment with our backyard flock.  

Hen house