A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens
Raising chicks is exciting! Knowing how is just as important. This beginner’s guide to raising chickens is the first article in our Raising Chickens series. Let us help you “start from scratch,” so to speak!
Why Should You Raise Chickens?
There’s a lot to like about raising chickens in your backyard. The eggs are a real temptation—tastier and fresher than any store-bought eggs, and better for baking, too. The shells, along with the chicken poop, can be tossed right into the compost pile.
Most of the day, the birds entertain themselves, picking at grass, worms, beetles, and all the good things that go into making those yummy farm eggs. Plus, with their keen eye for insect pests, chickens make for great gardening companions.
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Remember, though: Nothing good comes easy!
Things to Consider Before Getting Chickens
- First, check local town ordinances to ensure that keeping chickens is even allowed in your neighborhood or if there is a limit to the number of chickens you can keep at once. The last thing you want is to invest time and money into preparing for chickens and then find out that you can’t even keep them!
- Make sure you have the space for a henhouse or a full-size chicken coop. It has to hold a feeder and water containers, a roosting area, and a nest box for every three hens.
A proper coop should be large enough that you can stand in it to gather eggs and shovel manure comfortably, but a simple henhouse can be quite a bit smaller. Plus, any housing must be sturdy enough to keep your chickens safe from all the predators out there! Here’s how to build a chicken coop in your backyard. - Chickens need food (and water) daily. Feed is about $20 per 50-pound bag at my co-op, but prices vary depending on your location and the quality of the feed. How long a bag lasts depends on the number of chickens that you have.
- Hens will lay eggs through spring and summer and into the fall, as long as they have 12 to 14 hours of daylight. Expect to collect eggs daily, or even twice a day.
- All year ‘round, you’ll have to shovel manure. Yippee!
- If you go away on vacation, you’ll need a reliable chicken-sitter—and they can be scarcer than hens’ teeth!
How to Raise Chickens: Flock Size, Spacing, and Start-Up Cost
How Many Chickens Should I Keep?
Chickens are sociable creatures, so plan to keep three to six birds. With this amount, you’ll always have a steady supply of eggs, since an adult hen lays about two eggs every three days, on average.
Chickens are most productive in the first two years of their lives; after that, egg production will slow, so you’ll need to think about replacing your flock with younger birds eventually. Young chicks can be bought from suppliers quite easily, or you can hatch your own if you have a rooster (which we do NOT recommend). Read more about raising baby chicks here!
How Much Space Do Chickens Need?
Ultimately, it depends on which breed of chicken you’re raising. According to the University of Missouri Extension, one medium-sized chicken needs at least 3 square feet of floor space inside the coop and 8-10 square feet outdoors. The more space, the happier and healthier the chickens will be; overcrowding contributes to disease and feather picking.
The birds will need a place to spread their wings, so to speak: a sizeable chicken run, for example, or a whole backyard. (Our hens have lots of outdoor time. They have places to take a dust bath and catch a few rays.)
Either way, the space must be fenced in order to keep the chickens in and predators out. (Predators include your own Fido and Fluffy, too!) Add chicken-wire fencing to your list of equipment.
How Much Does Keeping Chickens Cost?
All of this costs money, of course. The materials to build and furnish a coop and a 20x5-foot run—including wood, fencing, and hardware—are going to set you back at least $300. If you can’t do this work yourself, you’ll also be buying skilled labor.
Overall, expect to spend between $500 and $700 when just getting started, depending on the size of your flock, coop, and run.
Gardening with Chickens
Most folks who keep chickens do so largely for the constant supply of fresh eggs, but did you know that keeping chickens can be also be beneficial for the garden?
When the gardening season has finished for the year, let the chickens into your gardening space and watch them go crazy! They’ll uproot the stems and stalks of weeds and gobble up any damaged or overripe vegetables that remain. They’ll eat any weed seeds or insects they find in the soil, and will peck apart and digest vegetable remnants, especially broccoli stems, carrot tops, chard, and kale.
After that, they’ll scratch the ground and peck out hidden worms or insects, mixing up the soil in the process—all with endless enthusiasm and curiosity.
Chickens don’t only provide a constant supply of fresh eggs—they produce an endless amount of manure, too. Luckily, chicken poo can be composted, aged, and eventually added to the garden. In about 6 months’ time, you will accumulate about 1 cubic foot of manure per chicken.
During your daily cleaning of the coop, collect and pile up the chicken poop and used bedding materials. The best decomposition occurs when the pile is 2 parts poop to 1 part bedding materials. Lawn clippings and fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps, as well as leaves, twigs, and shredded paper, can also be added into the mix. Soak the pile and, over the next year or so, wet and stir it regularly to add air. A temperature of 130°F to 150°F is recommended to eliminate bacteria.
More of Raising Chickens 101
Still interested in raising chickens? See more of our beginner’s guide below:
Chris Lesley
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Someone here says 700$ is off putting, that it won’t cost that much. Well..I say, oh, oh yes, it will cost so very much more than that. If you live on a farm and have structures built, sure, but suburban or in towners must build a secure, up to code structure, or purchase one, and it will add up quickly. You don’t want to do it halfway, then have them killed by predators or diseases caused by poor maintenance. Do your research! Cleancoops dot com can help with three different sized coop plans, I just built their largest, the Shiloh.
We have a pretty good flock of hens,geese and ducks that all live in the same barn like house that we built and there is plenty of room for all the animals to live comfortably together. I have 5 hens and they all started laying about a month ago. What I was wanting to find out is about just 1 of my hens. She is the same age as the other hens but she will go missing a day or 2 recently and then she showed back up for about a hour to eat and then she was gone again. Is she maybe brooding somewhere else or what other reasons can there be for her to leave and then come back and then leave again? We thought at first that something might had got her because she was the only missing hen until she came home 1 morning when it was time to be feed and as soon as she ate she left again.
I have a dozen pullets, that are just maturing. One keeps dropping her eggs from the roost. I have nests and have blocked access to under the roost but every day there is one egg under the roost. Does anyone have a solution to this?
Early spring my 3 year old rooster had gotten so mean that if you turned your back, you were getting spurred in the legs. I had enough of it and we had chicken soup. Well, the problem with not having a rooster is, hens don't have the best defense against racoons. Lost 6 birds in one night a week after our chicken dinner. Had I not heard the ruckus I might have lost them all. 3 years and I didn't lose a single bird, one week without a rooster and disaster. Now I have to seal my birds in every night and let them out each morning until my two new roosters can defend the flock...what a pain in the butt.
take wood blocks and make a playground and screw them into each other.
I think your estimate of 700 to get started raising chickens is a little ridiculous and will make people think it is too expensive. I am an old redneck, but using things I had laying around the house I was able to get set up for less than 100 bucks. It ain't the Ritz, but the chickens don't care. Got a 10 x 10 house which was already there but about to fall down, with a 2 foot by 4 foot box on legs I put inside of it for their sleeping place. A 15 x 10 foot outside run as well, with a chicken wire net over the top f it to keep the hawks out. Anybody with just a little bit of skill can build something to get started out of scrap wood you see everywhere (like dumpsters and peoples front yard), a $35 roll of chicken wire, and make some post out of small trees. If you want to keep chickens, you can start as cheaply as you want to. Don't let this article make you thing your gonna have to fork out a grand to keep a few chickens,.
What are things chickens can't eat? I was told tomatoes and onions ?
Correct. Do not feed chickens tomato leaves or green fruits, onion, raw eggs, avocado, rhubarb, butter, apple seeds or stone fruit (pits), chocolate, citrus, raw chicken (we know!), uncooked rice, uncooked potato, caffeine (including coffee grounds), dried beans, eggplant leaves, and more. Bread should be fed in moderation as it contains nearly no nutritional value. Same with pasta.
And when it comes to scratch, remember it’s not a whole meal! Simply a collection of cracked grains, it does not have a complete balance of any of the nutrients a chicken needs to live. It should only be thrown out as an occasional treat for the birds.
2 parts poop to 1 part bedding materials. That is way too much waste to bedding!
2 to 3 parts bedding material to 1 part waste is more ideal. I used to use a small two section yard outside the coop. Plant any kind of grass seed, wheat oats whatever. Keep birds off that half. Until the grass sprouts. Then turn the chickens loose on it. They eagerly eat the tender sprouts! Then you just water in the waste into the grass.
I have a question on my chickens. This time of year it is beautiful out and they are just learning to go into there little house and we leave it open all the time my question is during the winter cold weather when I plan on closing them in do I put there food and water in there with them or how long can they go with out eating and drinking???
