Raising chickens can be a rewarding task that you and your family can do together. So, how do you go about raising backyard chickens?
There are several things that you need to know before you go ahead and start raising chickens, including:
- What they eat
- How often chickens lay eggs
- The types of chickens that you should get
- How long chickens live
Before we go into the reasons why you should consider raising backyard chickens, let’s go over the answers to these questions.
What Do Chickens Eat?
Chickens are omnivores and try to and will eat just about anything they can get ahold of. This includes pests like insects, reptiles, and mice if they can catch them. However, it also means that they will eat any table scraps that you might have leftover. You can even feed them chicken feed if you want to.
How Often Do Chickens Lay Eggs?
A hen can lay one egg once a day and will sometimes have days when they lay no eggs. The reason for this schedule is their reproductive system. Hens begin to form eggs shortly after their last egg has been laid, and it takes about 26 hours for an egg to form fully. This all means that a hen will lay eggs later and later during the day, but you can expect a couple of eggs from your hens once a day.
Best Egg Laying Chickens
One thing that most beginners don’t know when raising chickens is that the type of breed you get has an impact on the number of eggs that you can expect to get in a single day. Here are ten of the types of chickens for laying the most eggs:
- Hybrid – you can expect around 280 eggs per year
- Rhode Island Red – you can expect a young hen to lay about 250 eggs per year
- Leghorn – you can expect around 250 eggs per year
- Sussex – you can expect around 250 eggs per year
- Plymouth Rock – you can expect around 200 eggs per year
- Ancona – you can expect around 200 eggs per year
- Barnevelder – you can expect around 200 eggs per year
- Hamburg – you can expect around 200 eggs per year
- Marans – you can expect around 200 eggs per year
- Buff Orpington – you can expect around 180 eggs per year
How Long Do Chickens Live?
If chickens are properly cared for, they can live a relatively long time – longer than dogs sometimes. It’s common for a backyard hen to live for eight to ten years, but some chickens can live longer.
Reasons to Raise Chickens
Here is a list of the top ten reasons that you should raise backyard chickens:
Fresh Eggs
You might have noticed that egg cartons that you find at the grocery store often carry labels that say things like cage-free, Grade A, free-range, all-natural, humanely raised, antibiotic-free, and vegetarian-fed, but not very many people know what all of that means. By raising your chickens, you’ll know that your family has the freshest eggs that are not just delicious but healthy because they are low in cholesterol and higher in beta carotene, omega three fatty acids, and vitamin E.
Pest Control
Chickens are omnivores and love to eat beetles, earwigs, flies, grasshoppers, worms, spiders, weevils, snails, centipedes, slugs, and other insects. If it moves, chances are they’ll probably eat it. If you want to have a pest-free yard, raising chickens is the way to go. They’ll even eat snakes, mice, and frogs if they can catch them.
Chicks are Cute
This shouldn’t be the only reason to have backyard chickens, but chicks are incredibly adorable. They’re also fun to interact with and hold, especially if you have children. Remember that chicks are only cute for about month, but soon after that they will start to show their unique personalities, and you’ll love them for a ton of other reasons.
Mother Hens with Chicks Are Cute
Chicks don’t need to have a mother to raise them – they learn what they need to know by themselves. However, if you have a hen that decides to act like a mom, then you can often get her to adopt some newly hatched chicks from an incubator of from a feed store. This is taking chicken ownership to a whole new level, but watching a hen take care of her chicks is a heart-warming and educational experience that you and your family will love.
They’re Quiet
Chickens go through the day, making soft clucking noises and pecking at the ground. Some hens might raise their clucking to a higher level after they’ve laid an egg so that everyone notices their accomplishment or for some other reasons. However, once dusk falls, and they go into their coop for the night, they are completely silent until the coop is opened up the next day.
Lap Chickens
Chickens can make great pets, especially if you’ve raised them from chicks and talked to and held them frequently. Each chicken has a diverse personality, and it can be entertaining to see how they interact in their world. If you hold the chicken a lot, feed it treats, and spend time with it, the chicken will become tame and will truly bond with you. These types of chickens are often referred to as lap chickens because they will jump into your lap when you sit down.
Free Natural Fertilizer
If you have a garden, then fertilizer is something that you often have to think about. Clean fertilizer can be difficult to come across, and it’s not always cheap. However, if you have chickens, their waste can become a wonderful choice as a fertilizer because it’s high in potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorous.
Fewer Table Scraps
We’ve mentioned earlier that chickens are omnivores and will eat anything. So, they are more than happy to eat any table scraps that you might throw their way. Of course, you shouldn’t be feeding them any junk food or anything rotten or moldy, but lots of scraps that you would normally throw away your chickens will be happy to eat and turn into more delicious eggs.
You Understand Where Food Comes From
The harsh reality is that not many people know where their food comes from. Especially with all of the processed food, GMO’s, antibiotics, pesticides, and the horrors of the egg production and industrial meat sectors.
Self-Sufficiency
There is power in knowing that you can provide something for yourself that might be better than what you can get at the store. Raising chickens isn’t going to eliminate your need to go to the grocery store; however, it does make it so that you’re a step closer to having the knowledge that you can take care of you and your family.