Complete Beginner Guide to Raising Backyard Chickens
Backyard chickens have gone from a rural tradition to a suburban staple. Across the United States, millions of households now keep small flocks in their yards. The reasons are practical: fresh eggs every morning, natural pest control, and a surprising amount of entertainment from birds with their own personalities. Believe me, just the idea of raising backyard chickens for the first time feels like a daunting task. If you’re wondering how to raise backyard chickens successfully, the process is actually simpler than most beginners expect. There are breeds to choose, coops to build, feed to buy, and local rules to research. This guide covers every step so you can start with confidence. Chickens are forgiving animals. Most beginners get it right, and the ones who struggle early usually do so for avoidable reasons that this guide will help you skip. Why Raise Backyard Chickens? The most obvious reason people start raising chickens for eggs is the steady supply they get from their own backyard flock. This is possibly one of the best reasons for having a productive backyard flock. A healthy hen lays roughly 250 to 300 eggs per year during her peak years, and you can’t beat food that goes directly from source to kitchen. Store-bought eggs spend days in transit before even reaching a shelf. Backyard eggs go from nest to kitchen the same day. Then there’s the plus side of the rich, dark yolks, because you control what your birds eat. The benefits of owning backyard chickens go far beyond the breakfast table. Chickens are your own personal pest control, eating beetles, grubs, ticks, and fly larvae. A small flock working through a garden bed significantly reduces pest control pressures. Plus, you have the added benefit of mixing their droppings with bedding material like straw, along with vegetables and other plant materials. These break down into one of the best garden fertilizers available. Gardeners who keep chickens often stop buying fertilizer entirely. We’ve owned chickens for years, and our children have always found them to be engaging pets. Each bird behaves differently and has a very distinct personality. Some breeds are calm and easy to handle, others are bold and curious. Children who help care for your flock learn responsibility in a concrete way, while the chickens provide a tangible return on the feed you buy. Just another reason to own a backyard flock. Check Local Laws Before Getting Chickens Before buying a single chick, spend an hour checking your local rules. Many cities and counties allow backyard chickens with restrictions, and some ban them outright. Getting this wrong means rehoming birds you have already bonded with. Here is what to look for: Your city or county website usually lists this information under zoning or animal control. A quick call to your local zoning office confirms anything unclear. This step takes less than an hour and prevents serious problems later. ⬆ Back to top How Many Chickens Should Beginners Start With? Three to six chickens is the right range for most beginners. A flock of three gives you enough eggs for a small household and enough social dynamics to observe. Six birds produce more eggs and give you a buffer if one hen stops laying or gets sick. Chickens are social animals. A single chicken kept alone will be stressed and unhappy. Two is a minimum. Three or more is better. If you want enough eggs to share with neighbors or family, four to six hens is a practical target. Here is a rough guide to weekly egg output based on flock size, assuming healthy hens of good laying breeds: 🐔 Number of Chickens 🐔 Estimated Eggs Per Week 3 12 to 15 4 16 to 20 6 24 to 30 These numbers reflect prime laying years. Production drops in winter, during molting, and as hens age past three or four years. Start with the number that fits your household needs, and plan your coop space around your target flock size. Best Chicken Breeds for Beginners 🐔 Chicken Breed 🥚 Eggs Per Year 🐔 Temperament Rhode Island Red 250–300 Hardy, confident, sometimes assertive Plymouth Rock 200–250 Friendly, calm, family-friendly Australorp 250–300 Quiet, gentle, excellent layers Buff Orpington 180–220 Very friendly, docile, great for children Sussex 230–250 Curious, active, adaptable Breed choice is a key factor in building a backyard flock. Some breeds are docile and easy to handle, while others are flighty or aggressive. For a first flock, know what the best chicken breeds for beginners are, and pick breeds known for calm temperament, consistent egg production, and adaptability to your climate. Rhode Island Red Rhode Island Reds are among the most popular backyard breeds in America. They lay large brown eggs reliably, often 250 to 300 per year. They tolerate cold well and adapt to both confinement and free-ranging. They can be assertive in the flock hierarchy but are generally manageable for beginners. I do not recommend keeping Rhode Island Red roosters, as they can be bullies in the pen. The hens can sometimes have aggressive spells, but they are worth any extra work of separating them if that happens. You just can’t beat this breed for their ability to lay large, brown eggs. Plymouth Rock Plymouth Rocks, often called Barred Rocks, are calm, friendly, and dependable. They lay around 200 brown eggs per year and handle cold weather well. They are one of the best breeds for families with children because they tolerate handling without much fuss. Australorp Australorps hold the world record for egg production: 364 eggs in 365 days from one bird, but on average, the Australorps lay 250 or more eggs per year. They are gentle, quiet, and do well in small backyards. Buff Orpington Orpingtons are the golden retrievers of the chicken world, and another favorite of mine. They are large, fluffy, calm, and friendly. And even though they are large birds, I consider them among the best to have around children. Buffs lay around 200 brown eggs per year
Feeding Chickens for Better Health and Better Eggs
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. New chicken keepers tend to overthink feeding. They buy expensive supplements, specialty feeders, and bags of products they’ll never finish. The only three things your chickens need are food, water, and shelter. You don’t need a fancy gravity feeder. Just a dish that is deep enough to stay upright and keeps birds from walking through it. Chickens are simple creatures. There is no need to get fancy. But simple doesn’t mean dump a bag of commercial feed and forget it. And actually, you might only use commercial feed to supplement their diet and not be the main factor. Those rich orange yolks that people associate with farm-fresh eggs don’t come from grain pellets alone. They come from a varied diet of greens, insects, kitchen scraps, and yes, some commercial feed when the season calls for it. What your chickens eat shows up directly in the quality of their eggs and their long-term health. Five Dietary Essentials Chickens are natural foragers, and when left to roam, they’ll eat insects, worms, grass, seeds, and just about any green thing they find. As a chicken parent, your job is to mirror that variety, even if your birds spend most of their time in a run. Five categories cover what every laying hen needs to stay healthy and to continue producing eggs worth eating. Protein Egg production runs on protein. Free-range chickens get plenty from worms and insects while foraging. When foraging isn’t an option, especially in winter, you’ll need to fill the gap. Mealworms and crickets are a great alternative. Fish oil and fish meal are good year-round supplements. If you garden, chickens love those big, fat, green tomato worms you pick from your plants during the summer. One thing to avoid is feeding your chickens raw meat, as it can trigger cannibalistic behavior in the flock. Greens One of the best-kept secrets to great-tasting eggs is greens—lettuce, kale, beet greens, carrot tops, whatever leafy scraps come out of your kitchen. Grocery stores and farmers’ markets often toss produce that’s wilted but still fine for chickens. Ask around. We have arrangements with some of the restaurants close to us to save their vegetable scraps for our girls. Neighbors with gardens are another good source. The more greens your flock eats, the richer and more nutritious the eggs. Grass and hay We keep one of our compost piles inside the chicken run. Our birds do half our work by turning it while eating bugs and plant matter from the pile. Standard composting takes close to a year. Chickens cut that to 4 to 6 months, and they mix their own fertilizer in as they go. It’s free labor and good nutrition at once. Dried Corn and grains Use these as a supplement, not a main course. A little whole corn adds richness to the yolk. Scatter a handful in the yard and let the birds scratch for it. It doubles as a treat and a way to keep them active. We feed our chickens a small handful of corn or grains every other day, keeping it less than 10% of their diet. Since corn and grains are high in energy but low in protein, overfeeding may cause reduced egg production and obesity in your birds. Calcium Laying hens burn through calcium fast. If a hen doesn’t get enough, she will produce thin, brittle shells, and her health will suffer over time. Oyster shells from a feed store work, but eggshells are a free and natural alternative. More on that below. Water Matters More Than Feed This is the feeding topic most articles skip. A chicken that doesn’t have clean water won’t eat. A chicken that doesn’t eat stops laying. And since about half of an egg is water, egg production drops or completely stops. Eggs become smaller with weak or soft shells, and prolonged dehydration can cause permanent damage to a hen’s laying cycle. Chickens need a lot of fresh water, so keep it available all day, every day. In winter, move the waterer inside the coop to prevent freezing. I keep a waterer inside the coop and one outside year-round. In summer, check it twice a day. Birds dehydrate fast in heat. During the summer, we buy our girls watermelon. They love melon, and it helps ensure they stay hydrated. How to Feed Eggshells to Your Hens Feeding eggshells back to your flock is a practice that goes back centuries. If your hens eat mostly table scraps and foraged food rather than calcium-fortified commercial feed, they need extra calcium. We have a large flock, so we freeze-dry any eggs we don’t sell or give away. You can find out more about my home freeze dryer on The Prepper’s Basement. Will it turn them into egg eaters? Probably not. In the 20-plus years of raising chickens and feeding eggshells, I’ve had only two hens that ate their own eggs. If eggshells caused that habit, every hen in the flock would be doing it. The more common reason hens eat eggs is that they’re not getting enough calcium in the first place. There is a process for prepping egg shells for your hens. Collect and store As you use eggs, crush the shells roughly and toss them into a bucket. I keep mine in the pantry. Bake When the bucket is about half full, spread the shells on a baking sheet and bake at 350°F for 8 minutes. The heat kills bacteria and dries out the inner membrane, which makes the shells easier to crush. Crush Break the toasted shells into small pieces, roughly the size of glitter. Small enough that they don’t look like eggs. You don’t want a powder. You want tiny chips that a hen can pick up and eat. Serve separately Put the crushed shells in their own dish rather than mixing them into the