Chicken coops.

[BarbaraClark]

Is there anyone here that maintains their own chicken coop in order to feed their dogs? Is it difficult? Cheaper? Easy? Do chickens breed quickly?

Also, I see people scoring free meat on Craigslist all the time...what section are you guys searching in?

[BarbaraClark]

Or rabbits....I know rabbits breed like crazy.

[xellil]

Well, I want chickens. I'm not sure I could kill them, though - I just want them for the eggs. I'm going to try to get to the feed store in the next couple of weeks and ask them about building a coop. Not sure I know how.

[DaneMama]

We have 27 laying hens and 2 roosters. We are getting at least a dozen eggs per day that go mostly to the dogs. The only time we will use them for meat is if the roosters are fighting in which case we will get rid of the meaner one OR if the hens stop laying or take a liking to their own eggs.

I'd think a much larger operation would be needed to sustain meat chickens as they take a few months to mature.

It also depends on what you feed your chickens. We feed ours the equivalent to a "raw" diet for them of whole grains (cracked corn, barley, wheat, black oil sunflower seeds, millet, flax seeds, lentils, split peas) as well as some fresh food everyday like spinach, lettuce, squash, kale, pumpkin, melons, etc and any food scraps we produce from meat, dairy, cooked foods, etc.

They're free ranged over about a 1/4 acre area and we let them out to roam the rest of the property later in the afternoon and they always put themselves to bed.

Our coop is rather large with a roosting area for sleeping and 6 laying boxes we made out of old cabinets. We use deep bedding for them with cedar shavings that need to be turned and added to every once in a while.

As far as spending $$ on them.... I would say like $100 per month for everything not including building costs.

[xellil]

i originally wanted chickens to eat the grasshoppers that come through here in the summer and eat all the leaves off the trees.

But my dad told me I would need 6000 chickens at least, to be successful. So I have lowered my sights to eggs and getting rid of a few of the grasshoppers.

So Natalie, the chickens don't lay an egg per day?

[BarbaraClark]

Hmmm, sounds like rabbits for meat would be a better deal?

[naturalfeddogs]

We have a rooster and hens for eggs at the moment. We have alo had meat birds as well, and the older they got the more they ate. They are eating machines, literaly more than layer breeds. 40 broilers were out eating our horses by the time they were 9weeks old, which is when Wayne slaughterd them. I don't think we will do those again. I'll just buy the best quality chicken I can find at the store.

As far as breeding and raising, they lay eggs daily and if you have a rooster you are likely to get fertilized eggs daily. Incubating takes some work as far as getting temp. and humidity just right for a good hatch. Then they stay in a brooder with heat lamps until they are fully featherd in. Meat birds don't have a long life even if not slaughterd, and I have heard they can be hard to get to live long enough to breed and lay. Our only experiance with hatching has been layers, not meaties. Look into it alot first, because it can be a headache. JMO.

[BarbaraClark]

How many fertile eggs do a breeding pair lay each month?

[BarbaraClark]

Tried to ask this on another forum and got flamed for being an "animal killer" wow.

[naturalfeddogs]

How many fertile eggs do a breeding pair lay each month?

A chicken will lay almost every day, with or without a rooster, and I see our roo jumping on the hens several times a day. When we were incubating, we collected eggs daily, and after five days candled them, and most were fertile.

A good site to go to to learn about only chickens, is backyardchickens.com. (I don't know how to post links!) They have forums on every kind of chicken related everything! They could probably tell you a lot more about them.