Some random thoughts on our year one into chicken ranching

It’s been one year we started raising chickens.  Last year (around end of March) we first acquired our first 6 baby chicks.  And now we ended up with 60 chickens (45 hens and 15 roosters).  That’s quite a drastic deviation to what was supposed to be just 6.  We did get carried away.  And when the chicks turned out to be 50/50 rooster to hens ratio, we figured a solution by adding more hens to improve the proportion instead of butchering the roosters.  We are still waiting for the butcher house to open around late May/early June for their first kill.  We will be sending around 10 roosters around that time.  And it’s going to be hard to select which roosters I have to get rid of as I raised them since they were just day old chicks.  I have about 2 months to choose.  And by then the chicks that are still in the egg incubator (expected to hatch in a week) should be ready to go outside.

Overall, it wasn't easy but it was quite satisfying to raise a chick and let them grow into an adult chicken.  We lost 9 chickens due to our own fault when our dogs played with them like a sport while we were out during the day.  Only one rooster died due to a hawk and another rooster died because it got beaten up by another nasty rooster.  And another very young chick just died during the heat of the summer for no apparent reason.  One hen was badly injured by horny roosters who would gang up and mount her and ripped her open.  I have nursed a few hens and most of them survived.  So in the last 12 months, we lost 13 chickens and we turned 4 roosters into meat.

I sometimes lose track of the counts of the chickens and it’s easy to miscount them at closing time.  Yes, I count them every night before they go to sleep.

We’re still trying to break even but the way I look at it is since it is just a hobby, it should be fine for now.  I will need to maybe choose smaller bantam sized breeds that eat less.  Just have 3 roosters.

Plus I’m dealing with the problem of some hens eating their own eggs.  I’m very worried the 20 new ready-to-lay young hens we recently added will quickly learn this nasty behavior.  Today, I’ve tried this other option.  I put some mustard inside the  plastic eggs so if they try to break it open they will have the mustard inside.  But for some reason, the hens are ignoring the plastic colourful eggs and still ate a couple broken eggs today.

I put mustard inside these plastic eggs so when hens try to break it, they will hate the taste of the mustard and hopefully stop breaking nad eating their own eggs.

Looks like she knows it's not a real egg.  She won't sit on it.

This hen won't sit on the blue plastic egg either.

Looks like the hens were not impressed with the plastic eggs.  Oh well, I may have to put back the marble eggs because they sit on it and helps prompt them to lay eggs.

This long weekend has been so busy with chicken chores.  Today is so special because I finally captured on camera one of my hens laying egg.  I’ve witnessed it a few times before while inside cleaning the coop but I didn’t have the camera then.  It takes the hen a long time before an egg is laid.  Below is the video.  She had been contracting for about at least half an hour before I took this video.

And the next video is one of my Black Australorp hens laying an egg but since she’s facing sideways, I cannot get it in more detail.  She could be a very good mother.  Very protective of her egg and constantly bites me everytime I pick her eggs.

Chickens have very rigid pecking order.  A few weeks ago, we introduced 20 ready-to-lay hens.  Any newcomers mean squabbling and confrontations that can get really nasty until the new order is established again.  And it took over two weeks before some tranquility returns again.  The Barred Rock hens are taking much longer to acclimatize.  The Columbian Rock hens are just easy going.  They are now even charging other hens.  Barred Rocks are still very much intimidated by the existing hens.  I hope they will be accepted soon.  They are definitely at the bottom of the pecking order right now.

Feeding them with carrots and green peas

Lesson learned after year one of keeping chickens:

Do not keep too many roosters.  Stick to the standard proportion of at least 5 hens to 1 rooster.  No matter how cute they turn out to be, before they reach their sexual maturity, I have to either sell the roosters or eat them.  Easier said than done.

Consider having a covered outdoor run during the winter so the chicken will not get bored cooped up.  If this is not possible, then reduce the number of chicken to about 20 in the winter.