Category Archives: Chicken Yard

Back home in Florida with 28 baby chicks

It has been a long time since I have had chickens to write about.
In 2013, we went to NC to take a turn taking care of my mom. We were there till Aug 2015 and then went back in 2017 till May 2020. My mom passed away August 10, 2022 so we are now home for good. I miss my mom but she was ready to be with the Lord. She was 98.

I ordered 25 Americauna (hen) chicks in May of 2020 and I sold part of them but still have 14 laying hens. I never had even one die. I always get McMurray Hatcheries to vaccinate for the two chicken diseases.

So I ordered 27 (two roosters) Americaunas that were delivered Aug 23 this year. My plan is to raise them and then sell them as laying hens and make a little money. I really enjoy baby chicks so it is a fun hobby that I can make a little money from, too. McMurray sent one extra hen so I plan to sell about 20 for 25 dollars each. I paid 120 for the chicks. The variable will be the feed costs since everything is more expensive right now. But, even if I broke even, it is still fun. Plus I got roosters this time so I can hatch out chicks.

We built a 24×48 chicken yard with 5 foot tall fencing. We bought an 8×8 shed with no floor for 1300 dollars and put it on the edge of the rectangular fenced in yard. We put 2x4s attached to the studs so there are two perches across the back. Then we put the 4 nests, which are milk crates, in the front, two on each side. Then we had an extra set of wooden mobile home steps that we put in the center so the chickens can get up on the perches. The large door allows more air flow and if need be, we could close the chickens up at nights and even lock them in.
We need to put some vents in the walls first. We also bought a 25×50 foot net and covered the entire yard. Chicken hawks are our only real threat. We let our chickens out to free range every day. I like to keep them in their yard till about 4pm to make sure they lay in their nests.

I hope you find a breed of chicken you enjoy raising. I love the colored eggs from sky blue to olive green.

Purchased chicks from McMurray Hatchery

I haven’t had much luck lately getting my two-year old Barred Rock hen’s eggs to hatch out except for a couple chicks out of the 8 that I would put under a Silkie hen.

So, I ordered 25 chicks (plus the free rooster) that are Barred Rock hens.  The BR hens seem to sell pretty well here.  I want to keep maybe 5 for myself and I will raise the other 20 to sell.  The first of June 2016, they will be four months old.  I should be able to get $15 each.  That is 300 dollars and I am paying $95 for the chicks. I will make a little money out of it.  I will have to pay for four months of feed plus a little extra on the electric bill for the heat lamp during the cool nights.

I just enjoy raising the chicks so much that I am not really trying to make money out of the deal.  I would love to make some extra money, don’t get me wrong.

My Barred Rock chickens are at least two years old and I still get 2-4 eggs daily from the 8 hens.  I hatched out BR hens on September 10 and two more on November 14 of 2016 so I do have four more hens that will start laying.

I also have two Cochen/Silkie mix hens that just started laying in the last couple months.

My five Silkie mix hens are still pumping out the eggs daily.  They have been laying for about 17 months.

So even though it is winter in Florida, I am getting between 5-10 eggs a day which is a gracious plenty (as we say in the South) for just me and my husband.  It was 71 degrees here today.

So, just a thought, maybe buying about 25 hen chicks might work out well for you, too.  I do have 2 acres so that makes a difference, too.  Lots of room to keep the chickens healthy.

Isn’t it amazing that they can mail baby chicks to you thru the post office?  I know the chicks can last three days without food or water because they have absorbed the yoke from the egg as food.

I will go to the post office on Jan 30th when the chicks will be mailed off and give them my phone number so they can call me as soon as they come in.  I don’t want my mailman to deliver them to my house.  I think it is mandatory for a phone number to be provided to the post office to call you to pick them up. I expect I will get them the 31st or Feb 1 at the latest.

I am so excited.  Good luck with your chickens.  Keep their water clean and their yards clean and it is not hard to have healthy chickens.

Update:  12 May 2017, added comment.  Unfortunately, I ended up with four roosters out of the 25 chicks I received that were suppose to be all hens.  I called McMurray and they credited my credit card for the four roosters but it still remains a problem that now I have to find homes for the roosters.  That sucks.  I did manage to give one away to a person who purchased 5 hens from me.

I ended up selling the chickens earlier than I expected  because I needed to go out of town.  So, I sold  3 sets of 5 hens for 50 dollars so I made $150 off the chickens.  I put them on Craigslist for 12 dollars each or 5 for 50.  I am keeping five of the hens for myself.  So, I made about 55 dollar plus the 11 credited back to me and I got the five hens free basically.  Since I have not gotten ride of the roosters, I am thinking of processing them myself and putting them in the freezer.

 

More Barred Rock chicks hatching

My brother-in-law’s chickens stopped laying so he needs more hens.  I put six eggs under one Silkie hen and six under another Silkie hen about a week later.  Silkie number one hatched out two chicks yesterday and two were throw away a day or two ago that we could smell were not viable …. rotten.  yuk

We usually check the eggs about day 14 to see if they are fertilized and going to grow into a chick.  I know after day 16, you are not suppose to move the eggs.

So far, Silkie momma #2 is still sitting on six eggs and hers are due to hatch on Thursday, six days from today. I didn’t plan this too well because I don’t really have two nurseries.  Unfortunately, I am recovering from hip replacement surgery so building something right now is impossible.  I figured out something to do temporarily until I see how many chicks the second momma has.  If the first one only has the two and the second momma only has a few, I will give them all to one momma.  Usually, all my eggs hatch out from my Barred Rock so I am a little puzzled why two went rotten and two still haven’t hatched out.  My rooster definitely has his favorites out of the 8 hens he is with.  The hens are about 18 months probably.

Well, I will update this post as the chicks hatch out.  Don’t you love baby chicks.  And these Silkie moms are the best.  I hated hatching in an incubator….adjusting temperature and moisture.  Made me crazy!

Coffee cans are great for scooping

I have barrels that my daughter got for me in NC that fit a 50 lb bag of chicken feed in them perfectly.  I believe they came from a medical factory or something to do with prescription drugs, I think.

I use the plastic coffee cans with the handles for use in my barrels to scoop out chicken feed.  I have chickens in four different yards so it is nice to scoop out half a coffee can full of corn and walk along throwing the corn to the chickens.

I often turn them upside down and hang them on the fence posts if I am busy with other jobs in the yard.

Added a fluffy Silkie rooster to my flock

I love the fluffy Silkies.  I only have four girls and they are probably 2-4 years old but I can’t decide if I want to have more of them or not.  I may buy about 4 more females to breed with my new rooster.

The lady I bought Bernie from raises show Silkies and travels the country getting ribbons for them, I guess so if they are not show quality, you can get them cheap.  I only paid 5 bucks for Bernie.  I asked about buying some of her hens but she said 50 bucks and I said no thank you.  They are just pets for me.

I picked out Bernie among at least 20-25 roosters that were about 7 months old because he was hiding behind the others and acted like he was shy and scared.  He is brown with a lot of other colors mixed in (mostly reddish and blondish).

I brought him home and put him in a yard with the four Silkies and the five Silkie mix hens.  He acted so scared for over a week.  We have had him now for probably 6 weeks and he has fit in perfectly and we actually heard him crow about a week ago.

I wanted to take all the roosters home because the lady we bought him from has over 200 chickens and she said if they don’t sell, she uses them for dog food.  That broke my heart.