My gradual transition from gardener to small-scale farmer took another step forward recently when the U.S. Post Office in Tower called early one morning just over a month ago to tell me that my chicks had arrived. For years, I had contemplated adding chickens to the homestead, which seem a natural fit with small scale agriculture. They’re relatively easy to grow, they provide both meat and eggs, and their manure is like gold for a gardener like me.
Yet, there’s a lot involved. At a time when my work life is busier than ever and I’m helping to care for my elderly parents, did I really have time to build a chicken coop and make sure they had food and water every day, including in the winter?
The answer was no. I didn’t have the time and I still don’t, but I’ve taken the plunge anyway and, just as I suspected, they’ve been a lot of work, but also kind of fun. They’re only a little over a month old, so we haven’t enjoyed any eggs or meat just yet, although the manure— which is conveniently combined with bedding straw that helps balance out the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio for good compost— has been piling up. In fact, it’s been piling up faster and faster as the chicks have grown.
They outgrew their brooder, which had been their home for a month, and are now in the chicken coop, or as I call it, the chicken Taj Mahal. I figured if I ever got tired of raising chickens I could turn the coop into a solar greenhouse, so I used the same design as my other greenhouse, but that involved a structure that’s a fair bit bigger than the typical chicken coop. I figure all the glass on the south face should help keep the chickens warmer and feeling brighter on those short winter days and that might encourage them to lay later into the season. We’ll see if my theory holds.
Because we’re off-grid, there’s more of a challenge to raising chickens in a place where it hits minus-40 or colder most winters, but I know others up here are doing it so it’s definitely possible. It’s going to be a trial-and-error thing, I suspect, until I can figure out how to keep their water in liquid form when it’s below zero outside. No livestock tank heaters will be possible. The greenhouse is well-insulated so it will definitely hold heat and the chickens themselves should provide some body heat as well.
We opted for a couple hardy breeds that are good layers, so we ordered six Rhode Island Reds and as many Barred Rocks. We ended up with a bonus mystery chick that we haven’t firmly identified at this point, although we think he’s a rooster just based on his attitude. Regardless, we plan to keep him around. He’s got spunk.
We also ordered ten Cornish Crosses, which are strictly meat birds. They don’t have the personality of the other chicks, but oh, my god, do they grow fast. They were the same size when they arrived and I swear they’re three times the size of the other chicks now and they’re just crazy at feeding time. Woe the poor chick that gets between them and the feed tray. I now try to put two trays out at the exact same time so the other birds at least get a chance. I also sprinkle food in other parts of the coop so the smaller birds have a chance.
I’m sure I’m making plenty of mistakes, but they all seem to be developing fine and we haven’t lost a bird yet. We are scheduled to lose ten of them in three weeks, come butchering day, and I suspect the other chicks will be pretty happy to see the big clumsy oafs gone. I had a hard time believing that a chick could go from hatching to butchering in eight weeks, but after watching the Cornish Crosses I’m now a believer. These things grow so fast even their feathers can’t grow quickly enough, so they end up looking half bare. That might be part of their breeding, I suppose, since it will make the plucking easier. They are true examples of just what selective breeding can accomplish. You could call them freaks of nature but nature had little to do with it. They’re really products of human ingenuity.
I know someone will ask the question, so I’ll answer it now. No, we have not named any of our chickens although my wife Jodi calls the mystery chick “Hairy” because we think he’s a male and because he has feathers on his legs, that looks like something like fur. We may eventually have names for some of them, it can be useful for purely management purposes. I worry, however, that once you name them, they become pets rather than livestock. And even though I suspect we’ll become attached to some of our laying hens, there will come a time when they cease pulling their weight and may have to be retired to the stew pot. Hopefully, that’s a few years down the road.
My guess is, they’ll provide a few more interesting stories— and lots of eggs and manure— along the way.