Why do you think you’d like to raise chickens? For the best eggs ever? For healthy meat? You want to raise them as pets? You’ve heard they’re fun to watch?
You realize they poop everywhere, right? Are you even allowed to keep them where you live? Do you have any idea what you’re getting into?!?
This time, we’ll list the pros and cons, and discuss the pros. Next time, we’ll get into the detail of the cons so you can decide for yourself if raising chickens really is for you…before finding yourself knee-deep in hens!
Pros
- Great tasting, healthy eggs
- Meat? …maybe
- Pets
- Fun
Cons
- There’s work involved
- Cleaning the house and pen
- Daily cleaning of waterers – their water gets very dirty very fast
- Cannibalism – they can peck each other bloody
- Egg eating – bad habit
- Mite infestations
- Rodents attracted to chicken feed
- Diseases, conditions, or injuries
- Predators – you need to make safe accommodations
- Frostbite of combs
- Aggressive roosters – yes, they’ll attack people with those spurs and beak
- Expense
- If using mail-order, you may wind up with more chicks than you really want. More on that later.
Since I raise my chickens strictly for eggs, let’s answer one question right up front. Are home raised eggs better than store-bought? From personal experience as well as what my egg customers tell me, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!!!”
One lady told me the eggs from my chickens are the best she ever has eaten. Another loyal customer tells me that even though he buys expensive organic eggs from the store when my hens aren’t laying, my hens’ eggs are much better – he can’t wait to get home from work and fry some of them for dinner. Can you tell the difference between store-bought eggs and home-raised? Absolutely!!!
Are home-raised eggs so much better that it’s worth the effort – and potential fun – to raise a few hens of your own? It’s worth the effort for somebody to raise them at home – whether that somebody is you, the reader, is for you to decide. And it may be worth the experience – for a little while. If you decide it’s not for you, you still can enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor of love by finding someone local who raises hens at home and sells eggs.
Is home-raised chicken meat better than store-bought? What do you mean by “better”? In my one experience, it was no more flavorful, and it was tough; but it might have been healthier. From my one experience with home-raised chicken meat (not from my own chickens) as far as the actual eating experience, I’d actually say, “no.” I don’t raise chickens for meat, but a lady traded me a few of her home-raised chickens (“processed” and frozen) for some of my laying hens. The meat was tougher than what I find in store-bought chicken, and I didn’t notice that it had any more flavor. Let me reiterate: that was my one and only experience with eating home-raised chicken – yours may be more remarkable. At least if you raise it yourself, you know where it has been, what it has been eating, and how it was processed.
How many eggs will you get? The maximum a hen can produce is one egg per day. The norm may be 3 or 4 eggs per hen in a week, but that can vary widely depending on breed, individual, and conditions (both external and internal to the hen). That being said, once a young hen begins laying, her most productive years will be the first two or three years, with production dropping off after that. Additionally, hens will not lay if they are ill or overly stressed. They stop laying when they molt (spring and fall). They stop laying if they’re brooding. Brooding is not a case of the chickens’ going into a funk or philosophical depression. Brooding is when the hens sit on the eggs to incubate them, turning each egg occasionally, in order to keep them equally warm all the way through. The length of incubation for a chicken egg is 21 days. During this period of time, the hen sitting on the nest will quit laying new eggs, and her comb will become less bright. And they don’t lay for most of the darker, colder portion of winter, though reportedly they may lay if provided with supplemental lighting to extend their “daylight” hours. How long can a chicken live? I have about 15 right now that are still going strong at nine years, and I had a rooster who lasted for ten. Mine have averaged more in the range of five to seven years.
That covers a brief “pro” discussion for flavorful eggs, and a maybe-yes-maybe-no regarding meat birds. Some people claim it’s financially advantageous to raise their own eggs. I found home-raised eggs to be much more expensive than store-bought. Maybe my feeding habits are extravagant, but I don’t think so. I don’t even buy organic feed.
Who makes the best moms? Silkies, in my experience.
Do chickens make good pets? Some more than others. A few can be very personable, even affectionate. I suspect the love and attention showered upon them would positively affect their personalities, but some just innately lean more toward human interaction than others; others (most) remain quite independent. I had touching experiences with Faverolles , Brahmaputras, and hens I purchased locally whose breeds were unspecified.
We’ve discussed some Pros; next time we’ll get into the list of Cons.
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