Raising Chickens - The Golden Eggs from your Very Own Backyard Chicken Flock

Organic Eggs are Healthy and Nutritious

Credit Gary Adams

The best methods

Raising chickens can help save on your grocery bill and provide more nutritious food for you family in a self sustainable spirit.

Have you ever thought about how fun it would be to go out to your backyard, greet your very own flock of pretty chickens and joyfully collect eggs for breakfast and the days recipes?

Do you feel calmed by the sound of the country rooster crowing out his gentle reminders in the distance? You are not alone. People are increasingly in need of natural elements in our daily lives, which are often far removed from the family farm.

Plus, we all need to save money wherever we can, and raising chickens for free eggs is the best reward!What kind of chicken would you pick? Check out our Chicken Breeds.

Credit Mike Damkier

Why Chickens?

• This is serious fun.
• It's different too.

• People will adore your pluckiness (excuse the pun) and will remember you fondly when you give or sell them colored eggs they are rarely treated to.

• Backyard Chickens are friendly pets, quite amusing to watch.
• They parade around in every color and pattern, they are truly beautiful and you will find yourself picking them up, stroking and petting and naming them.
• If you plan on eating yours (the chickens, not the eggs) don't make friends. More on this later.
• Organic eggs are healthy and nutritious
• Organic eggs are readily available for free, saving your family much needed money.
• Raising chickens is easy
• Anyone who can read can set up a flock. They are also inexpensive to maintain.

Check out more about Hatching Chicken Eggs.

• Chickens will gratefully eat almost anything you can clean out of your fridge or stale leftovers. Bread crumbs, crackers, vegetable scraps, even their own egg shells are beneficial to their health. Your chickens will begin following you everywhere!

Credit Jason Young

• Free Range Chickens eat bugs and pests, control those weeds and provide free fertilizer too. So organic we go and free to boot. Win-win!
• Don't support factory chicken farming. You don't need to be an activist to see that the factory conditions are appalling, terrifying to the birds and just plain wrong. Keep your own flock and send them the message.

Where to start? Let's get our chicks!

Credit Leoncillo Sabino

You can order day old baby chicks from feed stores in early Springtime, but in communities that love their chickens, you need to ask the store in advance and place your order before they arrive.

You can also hop on the internet and find chicken hatcheries that will send you a batch of chicks. They come in a box via UPS or other shippers.

There is usually a minimum order so the chicks can keep each other warm, and some hatcheries will send as few as six and use a heating packet to keep them warm. The reason day old chicks can be safely shipped is that all the nutrients and fluids they need for the first three days is in the egg yolk absorbed through the navel.

You can even join an egg swap after you get your own flock started. Many people are catching on to this so you can find and trade the beautiful varieties not available to you locally.

For example, Bantam Chicken Breeds include some of the most colorful and fun breeds in a small package, but they may not be available to you locally, making an egg swap an attractive option.

Credit Leoncillo Sabino

Raising free range chickens is a labor of love. Weather you are breeding chickens, incubating eggs or just feeding chickens, you will find all the nutrition information you need to keep them happily laying eggs for your family!

Learn all about Feeding Chickens Here

Incubating the Eggs comes before the Chicken! Learn how Here

Part Two: Raising Baby Chickens

Properly Feeding Chickens is crucial if you are going to be raising chickens either as pets or you are raising chickens eggs as part of your families diet.

Without proper chicken feed, they won’t lay eggs, and getting eggs is generally the whole point of having a chicken flock. When raising free range chickens, there are a lot of things you can do to improve their laying and health.

If your birds are allowed to run around your yard and property, you are raising free range chickens. They are not cooped up all day, and this is better for their health as they are able to get grass, weeds, bugs and small bits of grit, among other things.

Raising free range chickens is considered the ideal in that you will have excellent deep orange eggs with much better nutritional content than factory fed chickens on poultry feed.

Baby chickens need a special chicken feed called a chick starter mash. If you have not made it to the feed store in the first days you can feed mashed hard boiled egg and soft oatmeal in the beginning.

Give them a very small bowl of sand for grit and do not forget the water. Baby chickens will throw themselves in the water bowl and drown in the first week of life, so add marbles to the bowl.

Back To Top

Raising Chickens to Family Security through Frugal Living
Raising Chickens to Chicken Breeds