Chicken tips for beginners

When we moved to the homestead we knew one of the first things we would try would be chickens.  As luck would have it someone we knew was looking to get rid of some backyard chickens they had.  We received 3 roosters and 4 hens along with a small coop the November after we moved in.

And so our journey with chickens begins...

It has been almost 2 years and we are still learning and perfecting the art of keeping chickens.  We have lost several over those two years and each time we re-evaluate what we're doing and how we can make it better.  So here are a few ideas to keep in mind if you're considering chickens. (DISCLAIMER....I am no chicken expert.  These tips are things we have learned over the years.  Always do your own research before starting your flock.)

1.  Know where your birds come from.  There are many reputable hatcheries that will send you day old chicks via mail.  You can pick your breed and delivery date.  I recommend Murray McMurray hatchery. They will also vaccinate against very serious contagious disease that chickens often carry for pennies per bird.

2.  Know what breeds are suitable for where you live.  Certain breeds tolerate temperature change better than others.  Do some research and find out which birds are going to work well with the climate you live in.

3.  Know which birds will work well with your house hold.  Different breeds have different temperaments.  We chose all docile breeds (Black Australorps, White Rocks, Buff Orphingtons, Rhode Island Reds and Wyandottes) since we have children.  Again, do your research to see what breeds will mesh with the rest of the family.

4.  Choose birds for their intended use.  There are certain breeds that are excellent for egg production (Ameraucana, Australorps, Brahma, Rhode Island Reds to name a few).  You can also pick the breed based off of what color egg and productivity.  For example Australorps lay brown eggs and are excellent layers. Ameraucana will lay blue/green eggs and are also excellent layers. Leghorns will lay white eggs but their productivity is very low. Egg color is a preference.  The nutritional value is the same whether the egg is white, brown or green.  If you are wanting birds for meat choose birds that mature faster, like cross rocks.  They are ready to butcher anywhere from 6-8 weeks.

5.  Be very cautious when introducing new adult birds to your flock.  We had several issues when we tried to do this.  I will never mix flocks again.  Should you decide to mix flocks quarantine the new birds for a week or so to make sure there are no signs of illness.  I would also recommend worming them before introducing the new birds to the rest of the flock.

6.  If you can free range your chicken do it!  Our flock always does better when we are able to let them roam free.  When they are cooped up in small spaces the chance of illness spreading increases significantly.  For those who can not free range, consider a portable coop that can be moved often.

7.  Keep your feeder and waterer off the ground.  Chickens are filthy animals.  They poop everywhere, which includes their feeder and waterer.  My husband made this handy dandy waterer out of a 15 gallon tank, wood, pvc and chicken watering nipples (check amazon or farmtek for the nipples).

8.  Expect to lose some chickens.  We have a friend of a friend that raises meat birds for a living.  He always says a chicken wakes up in the morning and thinks "How can I kill myself today?".  It's true.  Sometimes chickens will die and you will have no idea why.  You can chalk it up to heat, cold, possible illness but sometimes you just never really know.

9.  Chickens are likely to get worms at some point.  My vet recommends worming once every 6 months should you choose a chemical wormer.  Chickens naturally have a small amount of worms in their gut at all times.  If those numbers get too high then the chickens will become ill and spread the worm infestation to the rest of the flock.  I have been using a natural wormer (diatomaceous earth) for our chickens over the past several months and it has worked really worked well.  It is in powder form and I add it to the feed once a week.  I also add apple cider vinegar to the water, which is supposed to be good for the chickens all around health.

10.  Roosters are the spawn of satan.  Ok, not always, but they can be extremely feisty when he's protecting his girls.  I would, however, suggest having one especially if you're live somewhere with a lot of predators.  It's pretty cool to watch the rooster round up the girls when he sees a hawk or neighbor dog that likes to hang around.

11.  Start small.  It's easy to go chicken crazy and take on more than you can handle.  Start with 3 or 4 hens and go from there.  When you get a good system set up then order more baby chicks to add to the flock later.

Those are my few tips to get you started.  There are many books out there that will also give you a good start to chicken keeping.  We liked The Joy of Keeping Chickens by Jennifer Megyesi.

Good luck and happy chicken keeping!!

A quick tour...

Here is a quick glimpse of the few projects we have going around the homestead.

These are our chickens!  We have 5 full grown hens and 21 hens almost ready to start laying.  We also  have a rooster.  He's the big white guy with the bright red comb in the front of the picture.  The small shed in the background is our coop equipped with 5 nesting boxes where they lay their eggs.  We also have a smaller coop with a run attached for smaller chickens that are vulnerable to hawks.  We typically let them free range through out the yard, but seeing as they were eating all the red tomatoes off the plants, they are staying put until after we can the tomatoes!  I will get more specific about chickens/chicken care and tips on another blog entry.

(Here is Little Girl...the kids favorite chicken!)

Bees, bees everywhere!!!  We have 3 hives going at the moment and will be receiving our 4th from a great man that's mentoring my husband on bee keeping.  These little creatures are absolutely fascinating and very easy to care for.  I'm going to have my husband do some guest blogging in the near future.  This time next year we should have some amazing posts about honey extraction and bottling!!

We have a nice size garden in our front yard.  We also have young fruit trees, berry bushes and an herb/asparagus garden.  We are finishing up our main harvest and have planted our fall plants.  Future gardening blog entries will include easy food preservation and canning and common plant ailments we have battled this year and how to prevent them. 

Here are a few other tidbits about the homestead!

(This is our food plot for the deer.  It ensures that the deer stick around and we have an ample meat supply for the upcoming year.)

(My beloved bottle tree!  I have a thing for bottles of all shapes and sizes.  We are always coming across old bottles in our woods.  If its in good condition it will make it onto the tree.  It also has an assortment of wine and whiskey bottles.)

(This is my huge backyard.  We often golf, play baseball, shoot clay pigeons and target shoot here.)

That concludes the tour of our happy little homestead!

Facts about country living.....

1.  Everyone waves to each other when you pass them in their cars/trucks/four wheelers/tractors ect.  If you ever pass someone who doesn't wave back you know they are not from the country.

2.  There is an excellent possibility that at some point you will have to get out of your vehicle to help an old farmer wrangle his cows/horses/sheep ect.

3.  You will see an abundance of wildlife....everywhere.  It won't just be a deer or two, it will be an entire herd....in your backyard.  Sometimes its a turkey or maybe a couple coyotes.  It could be a snake and you may even mistake that snake for a poisonous one.  Then you might go out in your pajamas with a 22 pistol and try and shoot that snake.  You will probably miss it and you will spend the next month or so googling poisonous snakes in your area.  You may have a random pot belly loose in your woods and you may try and coax it into a huge pen attached to your garage/barn.  Everyday is a wildlife adventure! (As I'm writing this a deer just came out of our woods.  Just wanted you to know that)

4.  You can't go outside without getting poison ivy or ticks.  You will randomly find ticks all over your house.  The closets, on furniture, in your fridge...seriously...EVERYWHERE!  Then you will google the signs and symptoms of lime disease until your husband makes you stop obsessing.

5.  People shoot guns in their backyard all day long.  Sometimes at night and typically through the entire year.  It will sound like they are shooting at your house, but they probably aren't.  I'm sure you'll be fine.

6.  Just because you live in the country does NOT mean you can walk around naked or in your underwear without the possibility of a stranger seeing you.  You are always taking a chance.  Your husband probably won't care.  He will garden/mow/whatever else in his underwear.  So if guests decide to pay you an unannounced visit, they are also taking their chances.

7.  The church down the road is going to come visit you.  They will not like your wine/whiskey bottle tree.

8.  You will have a nice big out building.  You will call it a barn.  Your husband will say "It's not a barn.  Animals are in barns and we are NOT having anymore animals here".  And you will say "We'll see about that".

9.  If you're lucky the hay bail truck will drop a bail or two by accident at the end of your drive way.  There is a limitless amount of things you can do with a hay bail on the homestead.

10.  People will still hear you yelling at your kids/husband.  Noises carry well in the country.

The Roaring 20's....the final months in suburbia

Over the next 20 months or so C and I kicked around the idea of moving.  I think the only thing that kept us there was the fact that we LOVED our neighbors and we didn't think that anyone would love the little bungalow like we did when we found it.

One evening at one of our many spring/summer cookouts with our amazing neighbors they dropped the bombshell.  They had been searching out houses in the area.  They were going to move!  A fire had been lit under our butts to get out of dodge.  We met with our realtor and got the process rolling.  Improvements were made and cleaning was underway to get things ship shape.  We honestly didn't think it would sell.  Although we tried to update things there was still so much to be done.  We put the house up on July 31st.  We had TWO offers 2 1/2 weeks later.  We were floored!  We got our list price and only had to make 3 small fixes from the inspection.

Then we remembered that we had no where to go!  We hadn't even began to look for houses.  We set up a day to go house hunting with our realtor.  We went to a house 10 minutes south of us.  It was on 10 acres and it was move in ready.  C was in love!  I was a little reluctant.  We looked at a few more that night, but none were going to work for us.  That next week we looked at 2 houses in a neighborhood.  They were nice, but I highly doubt they would appreciate us hanging and butchering deer in our garage.  They were out.  We looked at a house right around the corner from my sister.  It was on 12 acres, had a creek and an out building.  It needed a few updates, actually it needed a lot of updates.  C was not impressed.  I was disappointed.  Being right by family is so nice.  We went back and looked at the house on 10 acres one more time.  A peace came over me that I can't explain.  I knew this is where we needed to be.

One month later we closed on our little bungalow and bought our new house in a matter of hours!  It felt amazing.  Friends and Family volunteered to help us move.  They had our house packed in a uhaul in a matter of 2 hours and unpacked it with us the next day!  We couldn't have done it without them.  We felt so loved!  We spent the next couple days getting settled in.  The girls started at a new school.  They were little troopers.  The adapted well and made many new friends.

A few days later C and I put the kids to bed and started a bon fire in the backyard.  We looked up and could see every star in the sky, something we couldn't do in suburbia.  We heard the grain bins drying grain at a farm down the road.  We couldn't believe it was ours and we still can't!  Sometimes I have nightmares that we have to give the house back and move back to the bungalow on .3 of an acre.  That little house gave us a great start, but after being out here you could never get me to move to a neighborhood.  We were made for this!

So if you would have told my childless, city loving self 13 years ago that one day I would have 4 kids and love country living I would have said you were nuts.  All the things I said I never wanted are now the same things I can't live without!  

Since we have been on our little homestead my interest in self sufficiency/ natural living has peaked.  That is the ultimate goal, although it will be a long road.  This blog is all about the journey!

Roaring 20's part 5 (we're getting there, I promise)

That winter was filled with activities that normal 4 person families do.  A few sicknesses, a trip to Florida and Disney World then we were headed into spring.

Around March my husband began his seasonal work doing the irrigation thing.  One morning I woke up to pack his lunch, which is not something I did all the time.  I was probably just feeling extra generous.  I opened the lunch meat bag and I started gagging.  "Oh no, this is NOT good", I thought.  There was only one reason I would gag from the smell of perfectly good lunch meat.  I took a test and it was positive.  Baby number 3 would be here that December.  I cried for 2 days, which seems silly now, but at the time I thought it was perfectly acceptable.  I didn't think I was capable to taking care of 3 humans at once to be quite honest!  That December our son, CJ, was born.  I was in love my little man.

Fast forward about 13 months later.  Similar situation, except this time I opened up a bag of frozen chicken.  I took a test and the all to familiar double line appeared.  Instead of crying this time I actually laughed.  My God has a sense of humor.  I'm probably the last person on Earth that should be taking care of 4 children, but alas, my son HK came into the world.  Again, it was love at first sight.  His birth was quite traumatic (maybe I'll blog about that someday) and I was told not to have anymore children.  So there I was, 27 years old with 4 children under the age of six.

The next few months were a haze of exhaustion, but the fog eventually lifted.  We rearranged the house to fit the six of us and prepared for another gardening season.

The roaring 20's part 4

We still had a few boxes here and there to unpack when C and I had a conversation that we hadn't had up to this point.  How about one more baby?  One month later we were expecting our second child due that next February.

The next several months went faster than expected.  We moved A into what was supposed to be C's office and prepared the nursery for the homecoming of our second daughter.  February arrived and so did baby H!  She looked so tiny, weighing in 1 1/2 pounds less than her older sister.  She had a ton of hair with dark curls.  So beautiful!  We took her home and began the transition from one child to two, which was much easier than expected.

That spring was the beginning of anything remotely close to homesteading, our first garden.  I remember looking out the window while C began to rototill the ground where we would plant.  He started the machine and it jolted him forward several feet.  He looked around to make sure the neighbors hadn't been watching.  I literally laughed out loud and told him later that I had watched the whole thing (I love that man so much!!!).  We (I use WE loosely.  It was mostly my husbands deal) planted the usual first garden-y things, tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, jalapenos, habaneros and a couple other easy plants.  Note to gardeners..do NOT plant habanero peppers next to jalapenos unless you want your jalapeno poppers to rip your stomach apart.  The garden did amazing!  We were able to can tomatoes and jalapenos to have for chili, pasta dishes and anything else that required stewed tomatoes.  It felt good to be even just slightly self sufficient.

Hunting is also a huge part of our lives.  C is an avid hunter and so is my father, along with several other family members.  I can't even begin to tell you the amount of money we have saved over the years simply by hunting and butchering our own meat.  Again, I use the term WE loosely.  My husband should be the one writing this blog!!  We joke and say that I'm the brains behind the operation and he's the muscle!  He processes all the meat he hunts.  The only thing we do not do is grind our meat.  We take that to a local butcher and we pay about 90 cents a pound, which is a fraction of what it cost to buy a pound of ground beef.  Not to mention it's leaner and healthier than cow.

So at this point we have a few homesteader-y things under our belt.  Once we canned that year and prepared for winter, we settled in.  We were content with our 2 kiddos, our little home and our little garden in suburbia.  Funny how things can change in a blink.........

Roaring 20's part 3

We unloaded half our things into a storage unit and the other half into my parents basement.  They were, yet again, so gracious to let us stay with them for a few months while we saved up some money.  We put our bed downstairs and tucked A's crib in a large closet off of the main room.  I know that sounds terrible, but the closet was the size of the master bedroom of our old apartment!!  My husband began working with my father, learning the ropes of residential irrigation.  He was a quick learner.  He was able to install a system basically on his own within the first month and a half.  His smarts mixed with his confidence makes things effortless for him.  He truly amazes me.

We enjoyed the time with my parents but after several months it was time to venture out on our own.  We began the search for our first home.  I knew I wanted an older home and it HAD to have character. We went to look at the first house, which would end up being the one for us.  I LOVED IT!  A bungalow built in 1920 in a little town not far from where I grew up.  It had the original woodwork and hardwood floors under the dingy carpet.  We looked at a few others, but my heart was set on the little bungalow.  We bought the home in February and began work to make it our own.  My in laws (who are fantastic!!!) gave us some money to get everything the way we needed it to move in.  That May we were finally ready to move into our little house.

C and A sanding down the hardwood floors!

Roaring 20's part 2

We settled into our 2 bedroom apartment on the south side town.  There was not much moving and lifting for me being just 6 weeks shy of having a baby.  I was excited about the weeks leading up to the birth.  It would be the only time we would have just the two of us.  We made the apartment as home-y and comfortable as possible.  I washed baby clothes and cleaned things up while he attended his classes and worked on his off days.  6 weeks flew by and we found ourselves in the delivery room.  9 short hours later our daughter was born.  She was beautiful!  I just remember crying and not believing how big she was!  My husband was over the moon for his little girl.  I'm not sure that his smile ever left his face over the next few days.

Over the next several months we struggled like all new parents do.  Lack of sleep, learning how to be parents and spouses, it was absolutely a roller coaster of ups and downs.  Luckily we had some dear friends in town that had their baby boy just 5 weeks before us.  Our time there would have been so much harder without them.  I honestly think God placed our friends there and in the same situation so we would be able to have that support system.  They are some of my favorite people on this planet to this very day!  My husband finished up his senior year that next summer.  Decisions now had to be made about where we were going.  He had a few job offers, but nothing felt right.  He and my father discussed the possibility of joining the family business in hopes of one day taking it over.  Although the other jobs would offer more money, joining the family business was what felt right (another God thing).  That August we left our little apartment and moved home.

The Roaring 20's...Part One

I was 20 years old.  I had just finished my first semester of clinicals on the GI floor of a major downtown hospital.  I decided to take a job as a tech on the same floor over my winter break and into the beginning of my next semester.  Things were going just as planned with only a year and a half to go until I received my nursing degree.

My plans/dreams took a dramatic turn when my boyfriend and I found out we were expecting our first child.  I was dizzy and little numb when the test came back positive.  After the shock wore off we began to play 20 questions (more like a million questions).  How would we tell our parents?  How would they react?  What about college?  Marriage? And so on.  After much discussion we decided that we didn't want to raise this baby apart.  We would get married and he would finish his degree.

We were married in May.  The small county hospital down the way from my parents is where I worked through the summer.  My now husband took a job with a large construction company in the city.  My parents were gracious enough to let us stay with them until the next semester began.  That august, a few days after my baby shower, we packed up the car and headed north.  I watched the big city get smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.  My emotions can only be described as a roller coaster.  Excitement for what was coming.  Sadness for what I was leaving behind.

kidless and high rises....the former me

Before I tell you about my present undertakings, I wanted to give you a glimpse into my former self.  It may explain why I think my desire to homestead/homemake is quite comical (is homemake a word?)  anyways.......

I will take you back about 13-ish years.  I was almost 17 and my sister was expecting her second baby, who would actually end up being born ON my 17th birthday!  My sister flew me down to her Florida home so I could baby sit her oldest child while she and her husband were in the hospital.  My nephew was an angel!  Smart, funny and obedient.  There was only one problem.  That kid got up at 5:30  Every.  Single.  Day.  That is complete ridiculousness.  I was used to sleeping in to at least midmorning/early afternoon.  Is this what all kids did? I wasn't sure if I would make it.  The only thing that got me through is Veggie Tales.  If I popped in one of those tapes that would give me an extra 45 minutes or so.  It was then that I decided that kids were not going to be in my future.

Fast forward a couple years....

I was a college student at a downtown school.  I was accepted into the nursing program and played on the tennis team.  I lived on the 10th floor of a high rise apartment building just north of the heart of downtown Indy.  The building used to be a well-to-do hotel that they turned into apartments.  It had so much history and character.  I loved that.  I also loved the hustle and bustle of downtown.  The people, restaurants and shopping.  Downtown seemed to ooze excitement.  Just what I wanted! I formulated a plan.  I would become a night nurse in the NICU at a downtown hospital and live in my high rise loft apartment.  I would work three 12 hour shifts to pay the bills. That would leave me plenty of time for....me.

That, my friends, is what I like to call the "it's all about me" years.

Next blog....The Roaring 20's