For years, my wife has wanted to get some backyard chickens. I know that it will NOT be saving any money, as we can buy organic soy-free eggs for $5 per dozen.
The main reason is I am just tired of hearing her discuss this.
No, we are not newlyweds, at the end of the month it will be 38 years married, so I guess I can give in on this one.
Is this going to be a giant PITA or will it be ok? Looking at the coops and brooder stuff... yikes it's a money maker for someone, just not me!
Then there's the feed. Non-GMO, Non-Soy, Organic. I bet that stuff is not cheap.

Of course we'll have some very happy coyotes, unless I make the back yard a fortress.

I never thought of chickens as expensive pets.

I grew up having about 20-30. My brothers have around 30,000. Now their chickens are expensive!


I bet one can build a coop for a reasonable price. We built ours back then. I don't remember chicken feed being much of a budget killer, but that was long ago.

How many is she wanting?

When I was young we had a few chickens. They ate bugs, cracked corn, grain they picked out of the cow shit and anything else they wanted. Probably couldn't do it here now because of the coyotes and the hawks made a comeback. And coons too.

We didn't know about Non-GMO or any of that stuff back then we just had chickens and they laid eggs and we ate them.

Check farm auctions for old chicken coops and nesters, buy the rest (feeders and waterers) at Farm & Feet or TSC. You may not need water heaters for winter in NC. My GF just told me she found a 10-hole nester on Amazon for $199 and free shipping if you have Prime.

I built a coop that looked like something out of a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, and it took a long time since I didn't have any power tools then.

Fencing was the toughest part, since it had to withstand coyotes, so I had to bury the bottom of the fence in the ground. It held for about a year without any attention from me, but didn't keep out all the predators.

Would I do it again? No. Trying to protect them from predators was a losing battle, and it broke my heart to find more of them killed each morning. Chickens can withstand a Midwest winter with temps of -20, so long as they have shelter from the wind, unfrozen water, and feed. Not predators.

I have chickens (about a dozen) as a wife hobby (meaning I'm not really raising them for anything but my wife). They are pretty low maintenance. You need a coop and some sort of an outdoor run. Both can be built for very low cost. You need some feed, water and if your climate is cold some form of heat for water in the winter and potentially the coop. Pretty easy to deal with predators, unless your wife wants free range chickens in which case that's simply another reason to buy another rifle and gear. Depending on type you will get eggs as a benefit. You will learn to clean the coop which is a PIA but not an expense item.

If she has to deal with their manure it may well reduce her enthusiasm for keeping chickens.

If my wife wanted chickens I’d get them, again.

We had chickens growing up, also a number of years ago. Once you are set up, taking care of 8-12 laying hens isn’t a big deal. Chickens make the most sense usually, if one wants to get some type of fowl or livestock.

Of course many critters want to make a meal out of your chickens, including yours or neighborhood dogs.

You can build a ‘coop’ or buy prefab, they really need protection and in at night. Say you get 10 chickens and something doesn’t jive right, ain’t the end of the world, easy to give away, or eat.

My last were Rhode Island Reds, big brown eggs.

quote:

Originally posted by djinco:
For years, my wife has wanted to get some backyard chickens. I know that it will NOT be saving any money, as we can buy organic soy-free eggs for $5 per dozen.
The main reason is I am just tired of hearing her discuss this.
No, we are not newlyweds, at the end of the month it will be 38 years married, so I guess I can give in on this one.
Is this going to be a giant PITA or will it be ok? Looking at the coops and brooder stuff... yikes it's a money maker for someone, just not me!
Then there's the feed. Non-GMO, Non-Soy, Organic. I bet that stuff is not cheap.

Of course we'll have some very happy coyotes, unless I make the back yard a fortress.

You’re probably both. PITA. It looks and sounds cool, but soon the reality sets in.

Raised/kept several hundred in my youth. Time, cost and shoveling manure. Tough for vacations-someone has to feed and water every day.

Shoot, I would love to have some chickens but the wife has a coronary every time I bring it up. We have plenty of places to keep them here on the farm but she is adamant. You just can't beat farm fresh eggs.

My only hope is to get my 5 year old granddaughter hyped on the idea and if she whines enough old grandma just might give in. Right now Orschelin's has chicks and she begs me constantly to take her down there so she can look at them. It might work.

Having chicken is awesome! They are fun to listen to and have around. The main expense is the chickens, coup, and feed. They generally do their own thing.

Keeping chickens is easy.

Keeping chickens in a designer coop and raising them to yuppie vegan/organic/non-GMO/Soy-free/Gluten-free standards is expensive and (IMHO, your mileage may vary) silly.

In either case you can buy eggs at a fraction of the cost of producing your own.

What you can't do is beat the taste and quality of homegrown, pasture fed, fresh eggs. Absolutely no comparison.

Google 'chicken tractor images'.

Do it, I miss not having them. They provide lots of entertainment and fresh eggs are wonderful. You are not getting any younger.

Chickens are probably one of the most low maintenance pets around. Provide some shelter and water and they will roam around and find much of their food. They will need some supplementation if you want healthy/ frequent eggs. A coop that you can move would be ideal, then you can just move the coop every so often and all the chicken crap is fertilizer for your lawn.

After 26 years of marriage I finally wore my wife down and we got chicks last spring, she wishes we would have gotten them years ago. I built a big coop with attached run and spent way too much building it but that's what I usually do. The birds have been very easy to care for. Food is cheap, I think I spend more on treats than food, mine are a little spoiled.
My 8 girls moved into the cool last July and I haven't cleaned the coop out yet. I decided to try hemp bedding to see if it was as good as I've read and it seems to be. There's a slight odor now if they're closed up all day but I wouldn't say it smells at all. The hemp is expensive but if it lets me go all winter without having to clean the coop it's worth every penny. I'll clean it out spring and fall just for good measure but it won't need to be.

The coop can be as crappy cheap or fancy expensive as you want it to be.

In an urban setting or high predator setting you will likely want a run. That keeps them confined to a specific area. Without a run, you can free range them. Typically they will stay within a reasonable distance of the coop. Each flock differs in how adventurous (distance from coop) they are. If you choose to free range the flock, you will eventually lose something to a predator.

They tend to be fairly low maintenance but it is also possible to fret over them and get emotionally tied to them. Decide going into it if you are keeping livestock or pets. Don't be surprised if the original decision changes over time.

Go to where the eggs come from and learn that it isn't all loli pops and bubble gum. Big operations have caged birds that don't move, they produce eggs and are discarded when production dwindles.

So you think, great, I'll buy cage free. Now your chicken is in a pen with eleventy hundred others with maybe a foot of floor space, nor a lot better than the cage setup really.

As for the organic vegan non gmo soy latte frappe well, spend some time around a free range chicken. They eat all sorts of stuff, here's a list that isn't to be considered all inclusive: (in no particular order)
grass
weeds
worms
bugs of all shapes and sizes
mice
lizards
moles
grain/seeds
food scraps

They aren't natural vegans.

In the end, they can be entertaining, calming, frustrating, annoying. You'll get back what you put in.

Two years ago I didn't know anything about chickens. I don't consider myself an expert. I am still learning.

I worked part time in a feed store for a while. We sold lots of chicken feed. I can tell you that if you decide you want organic or non GMO feed, it will be expensive. When most people who thought that was the way to go heard the price, they quickly changed their minds.

I've always kind of wanted to try chickens, and I could do it where I am now. I would be a little worried about predators, though. We are kind of out in the woods.

What is wrong with soy foods?

If you buy chicks from a breeder make sure they’ve been vaccinated. They can get some weird diseases and die easy. They are not tough animals. We’ve had a few flocks of chickens for about 10 years they have a caged in run that protects them and birdnetting over that area as we have hawks in our area but in general they have the run of the entire yard. In the summer when I’m on my patio often I pressure wash the crap a few times a week. My patio currently is not attractive as we don’t sit out there in the winter. Wife will pick them and cuddle them. I just want the eggs. The taste of fresh eggs can’t be beat. The dogs want nothing to do with them and they leave each other alone