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15 Feb ’12
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I am thinking of chickens as well.
What are the down sides of raising chickens?
Also, what kind of chicken is best for a beginner that is a good combination of eggs and meat?
I assume some breeds are better for eggs and others for meat? Lastly, will I need a rooster if I only want eggs?
you can get a meat bird which puts on meat very fast, like 8-10 weeks and can barely walk cause their breasts are so big but are poor egg producers, good egg producer but don't put on alot of meat and dual purpose which do ok on eggs and ok on meat. We went with dual purpose this year because we weren't sure how many we were going to keep over winter. We Got 12 rhode island reds and 2 brhamas. We ended up slaughtering 9 and keeping 5 overwinter, this year we will change and get straight meat and keep our 4 surviving for eggs. The ones we slaughtered only started producing eggs about 3-4 weeks before we slaughtered them, so we basically kept them as pets and over invested in feed for those 9. If we went with meat birds we could have brought them to weight and slaughter much faster.
everything you want to know about breeds
19 Feb ’12
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We have 3 chickens that lay, they just walk around my front yard all day. They have a heated box i built for them at night. we have some happy chickens.
we are trying to buy a 2.3 acre lot and I also wonder what animals I should get.
21 Feb ’12
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i have rabbits, chickens, pigs, ducks, fish, worms, dogs, cats and probably something i haven't thought of yet. i will probably end up with an elephant or two if i can swing it.
imo chickens should be first on the list. i've had over 2k chickens at one time but not really interested in going that route anymore. chickens are like gold coins, and they keep making new gold coins each day.
the way i see it, look at your family size, tally up the amount of chicken, egg, beef and pork you eat each day/week/month/year, then more than double if not triple that amount to account for bad weather, disease, etc. and you'll know how many you need to have day in day out to feed your family and have an equal amount left over for trade.
my family of 7 will eat anywhere from 1-2 dozen eggs each and every day. likewise we can also easily eat 2 whole chickens in a day. fortunately for me they are all thai so they will eat all the parts of the chicken that i won't eat (i'm a breast man haha).
personally i think rabbits are the easiest to keep, once you've figured out the fencing. maybe it's because i don't have to deal with any cold weather here, they tunnel so they spend all of the hot part of the day underground. but you really don't have to do shit for rabbits in my situation. i've got 6 adult males and around 15 females. they sort themselves out. my oldest boy goes out every morning before he gets on the school bus and picks several hands full of the weeds, grasses and vines that grow 24/7 around here and drops it into their "rabbitquarium" along with a few bowls of grass pellets. we keep rabbits because we garden, rabbit poop is number one (imho) for the home garden, and the parts of the garden that we don't eat just go right back in to feed the rabbits.
thai's won't eat rabbit though, and i've never tried one myself although once i get ahold of the right breed i'll be happy to. right now we just have a wide assortment of market rabbits, lops and dwarfs and probably a few in between by now.
really looking forward to moving north some day so i can make a real homestead with all of my animals, gardens, ponds, orchards etc.
21 Feb ’12
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Chickens and rabbits could use the same setup, right? I could use the same heat lamp in the winter? How much meat do you get off of one rabbit?
chickens and rabbits work great together, provided you don't crowd them. in fact, they actually help each other out because chickens scratch for bugs and rabbits love to eat roots. rabbits are very social and reasonably smart, chickens not so much.
i don't know about sharing the heat lamp, never had to use one.
22 Feb ’12
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I was going to recommend the backyard food production video that Kvr posted. Excellent video that walks you through everything from raising the rabbits, to how to kill and processes them.
I think rabbits and chickens are great starter animals. Both a pretty easy to care for, and both give you a lot of "bang for your buck." One thing I would tell someone just starting to raise animals, is that you need to understand you will have failures, and you will lose animals. Don't let it get to you, it's all a part of the learning curve.
17 Feb ’12
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I have 1.5 acres and my neighbor has almost 2 and has a coop and several chickens and I'm jealous. I wont be here in Mass much longer as I'll be relocating to Houston for work so I cant build my coop yet, but as soon as I get to Houston I'm digging right in.
25 Feb ’12
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very disappointed not to see pigeon mentioned here. I'm a huge fan of squab and it seems to me they would be extremely easy to raise. I mention this because I have been trying to buy squab here in PA. and the only place I can find them is from California for $18 per bird. If you have never eaten squab you are missing one of the best tasting fowl on the planet.
16 Feb ’12
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you should be getting more than just one meal out of that chicken, B, one good chicken should be contributing a good percentage of the daily protein for that family of 3 or 4, stock for soup, some people (butcher, neighbors, workers etc) will eat the organs, gizzard, neck etc.
any offal that isn't eaten sold or traded should be going right back into the compost pile to start the cycle all over again. i guess i'm lucky that i live in a developing nation, they see my chickens and their heads explode. all of the neighbors will joke about what will happen to my chickens if they get out. never have a problem trading a chicken for something else. meanwhile my job is dealing with multi millionaires every day. fucking weird man.
Well there are three of us in my fam and then my parents, so a chicken doesnt go that far.
We cant trade chickens like that either, which would be cool.
I will try and get some pics together of my compost pile soon.
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