Chicken Season!

It's that time of year again!

It's chick season! If you have ever thought about owning chickens, here are some thoughts for you:

You don't have to live on farmland to own them. I live in the oldest part of a major city, and I had three, but now two, lovely ladies who give me nothing but fabulous eggs every day.

This is chick season. You can easily go to a farm or feed store and get itty bitty fuzzy chicks and raise them to chickens, and have eggs by summer time.

Chicks mature pretty fast. You just need a box, some bedding and a lamp while they mature.

Then you need a coop. You can see my full setup from the first picture. This will cost a bit. We hired a guy to do it. It's fence posts, chicken wire, then the covered hen box so they can have warmth and a place to lay eggs. That whole set up probably cost us about $300-$400 dollars.

Don't panic! Once that was done, we pay about $8.00 every three months for chicken feed. We pay about $16.00 twice a year for hay. Eggs are now approaching $3.00 a dozen. Our chickens have paid for themselves just in egg production alone. We have had them for five plus years now.

Plus, their manure is better than any fertilizer I have seen. You don't just want to throw it in your garden. You want to put it in your compost pile first and let it break down. But that is what we do all winter long, and when spring comes, we have great compost for the garden.

What if you aren't in the mood for raising chicks? The three ladies that are pictured above are no longer with us. The black and white one was the last to go this last weekend. They are in chicken heaven. But I do not want to raise chicks, I have enough on my plate. So just today, I checked craigslist, and someone is moving and has a chicken she is willing to give me. We just need to connect this week. It will look exactly like the black and white one pictured above.

People are always giving away roosters on craigslist. Why? Because you can't have them in the city. In my city, I can have three hens without a permit. No questions asked. I also check my feed store, sometimes they are selling pullets, which are teenage hens. Perfect!

Safety! I just had a friend tell me her neighbor, who had chickens, burned down the back of her house. How in the world? During the winter, you need to keep a light bulb in your enclosed hen box for warmth. Chickens don't take bone chilling cold well. You only need about a forty watt bulb secured to the inside. This person took another step. They put a 60+ watt on one of the metal dome warming things. It looks like a silver cone with a light bulb in the center.

My seventh grade science comes back to me quickly. That will get hot--quick! That silver doo hicky magnifies heat fast. And in a hen box, you have lots of combustibles. Hay and feathers. Sadly, some pretty major house damage. Luckily no one was hurt except the chickens perished. Just a low watt light bulb secured to the inside lid of the coop, nothing else.

I also love that my kids get to take responsibility for some more of our pets. They help feed them, gather the eggs, and scoop poop after the rain goes away.

I have friends who specifically ask me, "Do you have some extra eggs?" Once you have had homegrown eggs, store bought ones seem awfully bland.

One question I get a lot, how many eggs do you get? Generally, an egg a day from each hen. Not so much in the winter. But in the summer, we get overrun with eggs, and start making quiche a lot and giving them away. I also make a yummy lemon curd and can it for gift giving at holiday time.

One last thing, chickens are the fastest growing household pet in terms of popularity. I have my little ladies, and I have several neighbors who have them as well. So you might think I am little crazy, but I like to think I am being trendy.

I'll keep you updated when our newest hen arrives in the coop.