Garden Features: Chickens

that’s wonderful.
Thanks XO. I love “one stop shopping” :)

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Thanks XO for the additional information on care of chickens.
Sharad

-- Bagwan-- “If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they have never tried a new thing in their life”.-Albert Einstein

I keep swaying “get chickens / don’t get chickens” “think of the benefits / think of the work” .. sigh

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Eh.. I did the math how much eggs are costing me per dozen.. This does not count in the $12 50# bag of oyster shells, nor the $9 bag of grit I need to buy once in a while (every 4-5 months?)..

Also doesn’t count the $1k for the building (estimate.. I gave up keeping track.. For the sake of my sanity).. Also doesn’t count the cost of chicks, lamp, feeders and all that other stuff to get started, or the 5-6 months of food till they start laying.. ;)

A 50# ($8) bag of feed lasts 19 days…......
That’s 2.63 lb a day between 12 chickens….....
Total of 78.9 lb in a month gulped down….....
Cost is about $.16 per lb…..
At 30 days, that’s $12.63 a month for chicken feed…...
11 laying hens, we get 6 eggs a day on average…....
6 eggs a day over 30 days is… 180 eggs…....
Those 180 eggs cost us $.07 each…..

That makes it $.84 a dozen.

We got 7 eggs today.. :)

As far as work goes.. It’s really not much… So long as the shavings are DRY and stay such, you can leave them in place… I’ve got 6 or 7 bags of shavings down.. I just add more when I think the poo is getting thick..

I get up… I go outside.. I open the pop door… I get eggs..

I get bored while working, take a break at lunch and go outside, collect more eggs.

Before supper I wonder out, go pester the rooster… Get more eggs if any.

Sun goes down, I go outside… Go in and harass the rooster some more, loving him up and ruffling his feathers while he’s roosting… Close the pop door.. Get any final eggs.

Now and then I need to feed and water them.. It’s really been less work than I’d have expected.

-- Planting Daylilies in Kentucky, zone 6b

only a fool would put their chickens in the garden…...............like me.

-- Central northish Ontario

oh sure.. add that bit about “less work than you thought” ...

I chuckled at the “didn’t count this.. and didn’t count that.. and didn’t count this.. ”
all those items are regarding the fun of it all … you’re right – they don’t count in the price of eggs.
thanks for calculating it..

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

There was a time I only ate free-range, fresh-from-the-farm eggs. It was easy. The egg lady came to the office every week with her wares. One day, she did not come so I decided to drive to her farm and pick them up myself. It was a hot and humid August day. I drove up the long driveway to her house. When I rolled down the window and took a whiff, I almost passed out. Chicken poop stinks to high heaven. You haven’t smelled poop till you’ve smelled chicken poop. From that day forward, I bought my eggs at the supermarket.

Rabbit rearing is far nicer. They are easy to feed – they love grass and lettuce and stuff like that, they multiply like there is no tomorrow, their poop – nice little pellets – don’t smell and make perfect fertilizer, and their meat is so lovely and tasty. Plus, you can use their pelts.

Kill the Easter Bunny, you say? Well, don’t think of it that way. You have to kill a chicken too, if you want it for supper.

I know all this because my mother used to raise rabbits in our back yard. I must say the kids at school were horrified when I told them we had one for dinner. I’ll never forget the way they looked at me – like I was a murderer or cannibal.

-- Erika, Hastings, ON

LOL! Erika, I don’t know who was more truamatized….the children who found out that people eat the Easter rabbit or you…....having to live with that ‘look’ planted in your mind.
My father was a hunter and trapper. When I was growing up, we had rabbit, squirrel, deer and whatever else was in season on our supper table——sometimes even bear or moose. Youngsters today do not have a very realistic view of makes their life so good. :-)

-- 'To plant a Garden is to believe in Tomorrow'

I get a little miffed at the people who keep chickens in this condition thus making chickens the blame for something that is a human error….Dog poop smells, cat poop smells worse and chicken poo smells but if they are kept clean and in sanitary conditions then there are no smells…Nobody has ever smelled anything on my chickens.

-- Xploreorganics, 5b Canada, LFD 06-20

liquid chicken manure is even worse than fresh/decomposing.
I don’t mind the aroma of manure – typically – but I draw the line at liquid c.m. GAG

We raised/ate rabbit for many years. A friend of mine said that we ate bunny. No we ate rabbit.
(The rabbits were named BBQ, Charcoal, cinnamon, ... ) It was our source of food.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Oh Iris43, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. What I smelled was the poop, not the chicken. They were running free so they pooped all over the place. In any case, I just meant to say that rabbits are easier to raise – less troublesome – lower maintenance – than chicken. Of course, they don’t lay eggs, either.

And yes, what do kids nowadays think? Where do they think the ingredients for their burgers come from? Or their hot dogs? I think it would be a good idea to send them to live on a farm for March break. Much better than getting wasted on some beach in Florida or wherever.

What say you?

-- Erika, Hastings, ON

Ha Erika, I don’t feel bad, just don’t like the bad reputation chickens get because their owners don’t clean their poop. Had a neighbor with 5 dogs Free range too lol) and he only cleaned their yard once a year…way worse than chicken poop ;)

-- Xploreorganics, 5b Canada, LFD 06-20

i would love to be able to have a few chickens, citiy hall is agains it :)))))

-- south shore montreal, zone 5a, whish it was 9

Try a few of these Mario…My Blog

-- Xploreorganics, 5b Canada, LFD 06-20

wow this is hilarious….thats a goodlooking bird that silkie….maybe…..

-- south shore montreal, zone 5a, whish it was 9

Rick’s taking care of the neighbour’s chickens this week…. does he feed them once a day or twice a day? (the neighbour didn’t mention that bit of information)

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

When I had them, I used to fill the hopper in the morning, and then collect the eggs. That was all. Every operation is different though.

-- jroot

thanks Jroot .

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Do you get to keep the fresh eggs? I feed them morning and evening because that is when they do the most eating. I just give them enough so that food is not left around after they stop eating to attract other animals to a free dinner. Maybe Rick will enjoy it so much you will be getting a few chickens soon…. : )

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

that’s what I said—we’d get to see whether we wanted to have some or not :)

thanks for the info. I’ll pass it along to Rick.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

I have 6 hens, I love them all, they will never be dinner. There is nothing wrong with eating your animals, It’s just that I am not that into it. You are basically all right about how to keep and feed them.
One thing, correct me if I missed someone saying this, but they destroy your garden. Last year I started to let them out of their fairly large pen to walk around, big mistake. Within one hour they were digging up all the grass they could find. Ok that was not so bad, when they got into the raspberry patch I figured they can eat the bottom and I get to eat the top there’s plenty to go around.But, Today I found them jumping to get last years dead ones. so funny.
But when they got into the tomatoes I was livid, they love tomatoes and I would share but they want them all and I want to warn you, they keep pecking at each and every one of my tomatoes until they find one they like. I did not have many tomatoes without little holes poked in them.
Their whole life is scratching, if they don’t want to eat the plants they scratch at, they scratch around the plants and actually rip them up out of the ground to get to our precious worms.
This summer, and very soon I am going to put the fence back up and contain them on one side, they are not going to like that but too bad, let them grow their own tomatoes. :o)

-- If you always do what you always did, then you will always get what you always got!...Lanoka Harbor, NJ 6b

“let them grown their own tomatoes” – -love it!
Someone said that they let their chickens out about half an hour before dusk and then they don’t stay out of their pens very long – just long enough to eat the bugs in the garden.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

I’m afraid to check my plants now—one of the neighbour’s chickens was out of its pen and visiting my gardens.
I wondered what happened to some of my plants. I thought it was my fault – now I’m not so sure. hmmm chickens…

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan

Although I never have and never will raise chickens I find these blogs on them very interesting.Thanks to everyone for sharing their info and pictures of them.

-- Bon,Hastings,Ont.....zone 5a....Always room for one more

rose wood I had the same problem with my chickens in the garden, they took a piece of everything, like a littlke kid in a new box of chocolates,, I keep them penned, I need to build a chicken tractor so they can munch on new grass and such every few days, but my new ones arnt ready for that yet, I just built a new pen for them in a section of my barn, I figure in 3 weeks they will get to see outdoors, as its starting to warm up a bit

Maples, I like that photo of the pullets in the pot. Beautiful colors! That’s a nice looking little pen you built for them too.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi