Parmesan Ranch Oven Fried Chicken Tenders
Workday Chicken and Rice
Buttermilk Fried Chicken
Creamy Smothered Chicken Casserole
Raising Meat Chickens
Even though the first day of winter was only a short time ago, it is time to start planning to raise meat chickens during the coming spring. If you’re still straddling the fence, I hope this article helps you decide if raising meat chickens in your backyard is for you. Even if you live in an urban area, chances are good you can still raise chickens for meat. First Things First Food processing, whether fruits and vegetables or meat, increases self-reliance. It also ensures your chickens are raised humanely in a clean, cage-free environment. Supplying your family with natural organic meat, free from growth hormones and antibiotics, is essential for raising meat chickens in a backyard. Add the fantastic taste of farm-fresh chicken meat, and you’ll wonder why you never raised your own. Not everyone wants to or can raise meat chickens. Some cities and suburban areas may not allow backyard chickens; if they do, the number of chickens may be limited. Others may not have the space or have neighbors who object to raising chickens. Then, there is the last aspect of raising meat chickens. After putting the work and effort into preparing your chickens for the table, can you process them? You can take them to a processor, but even this might not be easy. I won’t lie to you. The first butchering is hard for most backyard chicken farmers. Some find it more difficult than others do, making it the first and most important consideration before raising meat chickens. If your area allows chickens, you have the space for them, and you’re okay with the emotional aspect of butchering, consider giving it a shot. For many of you, you’ll be glad you did. Let’s Begin Once you’ve decided raising meat chickens is for you, research the breeds. There are different meat breeds and dual-purpose breeds that are good for egg laying and meat production. Deciding which breed to buy is an essential first step. For your first batch of meat chickens, start small, keeping your group to no more than five or six. A good rule of thumb is to buy one or two extra chicks since it is common for a chick or two to die. Keep your choices simple by staying with a well-known breed like the Cornish Cross. They are inexpensive and available at most local feed stores or online hatcheries. The Cornish Cross There is a lot of negative discussion about this breed, causing most first-time backyard chicken farmers to pass them up. I’ve seen many horror stories about the Cornish Cross. There’s a lot of concern over the birds supporting their weight and heart attacks. From experience, if done correctly, Cornish Cross chickens are easy to raise without any health issues. We’ve successfully raised many Cornish Cross flocks and consider this bird a great meat flock for beginners. The two mistakes flock owners make are overfeeding and not butchering soon enough. When our Cornish reaches three weeks old, we only feed them during the day, removing their food at night. If food is left out, these birds continually eat, causing them to gain too much weight too quickly. The Cornish Cross’ constant eating contributes to their rapid growth, making them ready to butcher at eight weeks. Removing their food at night helps slow the growth process. While you can butcher any time you want, we recommend eight weeks. You’ll get a bigger bird by waiting longer than eight weeks and not cutting back their feed, but they’ll also have health problems. The 8-week butchering time frame is two weeks less than other meat chicken breeds and at least one or two months before the dual-purpose breeds are ready. By following these suggestions, you should do great with raising the Cornish Cross. The Cost of Raising Meat Chickens in a Backyard No matter which breed you buy, keep costs under $10 per bird. Costs include the cost of the bird, shipping, and feed. By choosing the right breed, raising meat chickens in a backyard costs much less than you think. If your backyard chicken farm is already set up, the only cost is your chicks, feed, and possibly the brooder. If you don’t have a brooder, you can make one reasonably cheap using repurposed items. Your basic brooder needs are a container to keep the chicks in, a heat light, bedding, feeders, and waterers. For the container, anything with high sides to keep the chicks in and provide a safe environment will do. We bought a used stock tank for $25 at our local feed store. The tank gives us a safe place for all our new chicks for years to come. You can also use plastic kiddie pools or a sturdy cardboard box. Brooder Supplies Whatever you use, all brooders must have the following characteristics: ? Brooder Supplies Checklist ? Enough space for each chick to easily move around Safe from any sharp objects or safety hazards Easy to clean or discard, like a cardboard box (Cornish crosses poop a lot) Easy to move Heat source – I recommend the EcoGlow for low-cost operation Easy to reach food and water* Brought to You by thebackyardchickenfarmer.com ? Water containers must not be too deep because your chicks can drown. For new chicks, I recommend a water nipple system or a drown-proof waterer made explicitly for young chicks, like a mason jar waterer. As an Amazon Associate, I earn commission from qualifying purchases which helps with website upkeep. After Cornish Cross chicks are past the brooder age, about three weeks, you can move them to a larger area as long as they are not showing any signs of illness. For other breeds, usually, six weeks is an excellent time to start moving them. No matter what breed you choose, you must separate young chicks from older chickens and give them time to acclimate with the flock before mixing them. Our chickens are part-time free rangers. However, we rarely let the Cornish free range
Raising Backyard Chickens 101
Many people in the inner city suburbs are starting to realize the benefits of raising backyard chickens. They are easy to take care of, produce fresh eggs for the table, and are a great learning tool about farm life for children growing up in the inner city. This article will give you the inside scoop on raising backyard chickens 101. Raising Chickens in the Backyard Inner city life brings with it a lot of pros: you’re close to the action and work, you don’t miss out on anything, and you don’t have to sit through hours of peak hour traffic, but it also holds you back from having the backyard of your dreams. Many of those who live in the inner city do not have much space in their yards; many only have courtyards, but if you have enough space to install a chicken coup, you get the best of two worlds: city and urban. ? The Backyard Chicken Movement Timeline ?️ Early 2000s: Rise in urban chicken-keeping as part of the sustainable living movement. 2009: “The Backyard Chicken Revolution” book by Gail Damerow boosts interest in keeping backyard chickens. 2010s: Increase in city ordinances allowing backyard chickens in urban areas. 2016: “The Chicken Whisperer’s Guide to Keeping Chickens” by Andy Schneider becomes a bestseller. Present: The backyard chicken movement continues to grow, promoting self-sufficiency and sustainable living. Brought to You by thebackyardchickenfarmer.com ? Chicken Coop and Run A coop and run is essential for your flock of backyard chickens. Plenty of shed companies supply well-sized chicken coups for backyards, so you can benefit from raising chickens while living in the inner city. For those who enjoy doing things yourself, build your chicken coop from any designs found at Easy Coops, like this small chicken condo suitable for most backyards. All the Easy Coops plans have a chicken house design with enough space for the number of chickens they are built for, and all provide adequate light and ventilation for a healthy flock. I suggest having an outside run area large enough to allow good exercise for your chickens. This may mean adding extra space to your plans or building a coop bigger than the suggested number of chickens for the coop design. You can make any of these coop designs using used lumber from a second-hand building store or with pallets. Add a coat of paint, and no one can tell. Your chickens need a bare area to take a dust bath in the run. They rid themselves of mites and bacteria, not with water but dust. They need an area of dust approximately 2′ by 2′ by 16″, either bare ground or a low-sided box filled with dust. If you use the ground in your yard for their dust bath area, you might want to consider one of the moveable chicken tractors. As its name implies, this coop is a portable pen that you can move from one area of your yard to another. These unique coops have wheels on one end and handles or a handlebar on the other. The Cost of Raising Chickens Chickens are easy and inexpensive to maintain, compared to your average pet, and they are your very own chemical-free bug and weed control; they make an excellent fertilizer, and your kids will love them. There are two costs associated with raising chickens: startup costs, like the coop, equipment, and the chickens themselves, and ongoing costs for food and other essential supplies. Maintaining a chicken flock of three chickens or less costs approximately $30 monthly. If you are up for a little nature experiment, you can raise your chickens from an egg by making an egg incubator. You can watch your chicks hatch and raise them from birth to be the big, healthy, egg-laying chicken of your dreams. Your chicks will eat crumbs and drink water from a drip. Encourage your kids to play with the chicks to get them used to being around people from an early age. If you haven’t spent much time around chickens, getting to know them from when they are chicks is a great way to acclimate yourself to them, as it can be a little daunting to start with adult chickens, and it helps you learn the temperament of each chicken. If you plan to raise baby chicks, I suggest using pine shavings for the flooring of your chicken coop. It is non-toxic, making the coop easy to clean, whether you are raising babies or not. Just sweep everything out of the coop and bag it for trash collection, or let it sit and use it in a compost pile the following season. Final Thoughts It is also important when considering raising chickens to check with your local council to see if it’s legal in your area; this may be an issue if you have a small yard, but it may be possible to keep one or two. In addition, if you live under the regulations of a Home Owners Association, you must check their rules and regulations once you have verified your city or county allows you to raise chickens in your backyard. While the government council may say yes, the HOA may look differently at raising backyard chickens.
Raising Free-Range Chickens
Raising free-range chickens is a hotly debated topic with many things to consider from both sides. Before deciding what to do, evaluating the pros and cons of letting your chickens roam free is best. Several of our neighbors raise chickens, and most of them do so with coops surrounded by fully enclosed runs. In some cases, they don’t have the 2 acres to homestead with like we do, often only one half-acre, so keeping free-range chickens from straying to the neighbors is much more difficult. Then there are those backyard chicken farmers like our neighbors to the north of us, who breed show chickens and heirloom breeds to sell. The last thing they want is a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, mixing with their girls. On our little urban homestead, we raise our chickens differently than many seasoned chicken farmers. We are not experts, and our system is imperfect, but it has worked for us for several years. But as with anything else, it does have its drawbacks. The Benefits There are many benefits to having free-range chickens. When chickens roam free, they are exposed to fresh air and sunshine, which benefits most living beings. But more than that, free-ranging allows your chickens to forage for their food, which is a natural instinct. The Drawbacks While I wish I could tell you everything is great about letting your chickens free range, it’s not. You must consider some negative points before deciding if free-ranging is for you and your flock. A Middle Ground to the Debate The issue of free-range chickens versus a caged run is not so black and white and has several options for both sides. There is a middle ground that incorporates a little of each side of the debate. Fenced In Yard This is the middle ground we chose: the fenced-in chickens. Our backyard is bigger than most. With two acres, we have one acre in the back, completely fenced in, with 6-foot privacy fencing on all sides. This gives our flock lots of room to roam and forage for food. In addition to having a huge, fenced-in area, we only part-time our free-ranging. Even with a fenced-in yard, our chickens only free-range while we are there to keep an eye on them. Sometimes, this may be all day, or other times, just a few hours, and not always every day, though we try to let them out at least a few hours. This is because even in our suburban area, we have a lot of predators like coyotes, raccoons, and neighborhood dogs. When our chickens are free-ranging, we leave the gates to the chicken runs open, allowing them to go inside the run if they feel threatened for any reason. By nature, chickens are homebodies. As much as they love to forage, they have the instinct to stay close to their protected roosting areas where there is protection and plenty of food and water. When the sun sets, they head to the coop without our encouragement, and then we lock the gates for the night. Occasionally, we may have to track a stray down, but that is rare. While this is not a fool-proof way to free range, it works well for us. Unfortunately, our world is not predator-free, and even with all the barriers and being close by when the flock free-ranges, losing part or all of a flock is still possible. Predators can find a way into the most secure areas even when humans are near. The lure of a food source is stronger than the fear of human contact. The choice of free-ranging and how to do it is an emotional decision that needs careful consideration. Using a Mobile Chicken Tractor If you decide to let your chicken free range is not for you, the next best thing is the mobile chicken tractor. A chicken tractor gives the benefits of foraging for their food while being protected in an enclosed environment. A mobile chicken tractor keeps your flock out of the garden and is moveable to new areas daily to prevent overworking one area, keeping your grass and foliage healthier. Chicken tractors can be purchased ready-made in various shapes and sizes, depending on your needs. The cost will set you back anywhere from $150.00 to $1,000.00. You can make your mobile chicken tractors for a fraction of the cost. I highly recommend two resources for chicken tractor and coop plans. One of the most versatile sets is called Green House Style Chicken Coop. Easy Coops offers this fantastic tractor plan and a vast selection of other moveable and stationary coops. They also offer a free basic and deluxe plan that includes material cuttings, additional blueprints and illustrations, and more. These plans are great for the small backyard chicken farmer to the full-production poultry grower. The cool thing about these plans is they are multi-functional for uses other than chickens. In addition to using them for raising meat chickens or egg layers, they work great as a cold frame or a fort for the kids. Conclusion Whether you are raising free-range chickens or not, most backyard chicken farmers can enjoy success. Not everyone can free range because of space, predators, landscaping, or neighbors. Providing a safe, clean environment and enough fresh water and food is all you need for a happy and healthy backyard chicken flock.