City Chickens

[Killer]

My wife every 3-6 months suggests we get chickens. Every time, I walk her through what it costs in excel, and we update pricing together.

3 minutes later we decide to get our eggs from HEB or one of her co-workers. LOL

They are cheaper if you can get them!

[tps7742]

I heard something wry similar to the quote below listening to Michael Berry show a couple of days ago pertaining to chickens. I don’t listen to him normally but the truck at work just happened to be on his show.
“ Like all animals, they have a set number of potential eggs in their bodies at birth. You cannot make a bird lay more eggs than nature intended. Most breeds get through their quota after three years.”

[Boyd1212]

I have 4 chickens. 2 Rhode Island reds and two Plymouth Rocks. I average 3 eggs a day. Some days 4 and some 5. They are messy and destructive, but I enjoy having them.

[Mitchell8]

I’ll rent you 4 chickens and a coop for $500 a month

[justletmein]

How good are they at cleaning deer skulls?

[peterp63]

How good are they at cleaning deer skulls?

This. Anyone??

[mikeyb_23]

My wife every 3-6 months suggests we get chickens. Every time, I walk her through what it costs in excel, and we update pricing together.

3 minutes later we decide to get our eggs from HEB or one of her co-workers. LOL

I keep trying to talk my wife into chickens. She won't budge though.

[tkuehn5410]

How good are they at cleaning deer skulls?

Terrible! They will peck and eat the eyes and easy stuff, but we do feed ours pretty good so they may not be as hungry. Now put a red 5 gallon bucket or a mirror and they will peck all day at it.

[Yak blue]

How good are they at cleaning deer skulls?

Never thrown in a deer skull. But I have thrown in filleted fish carcasses (sand bass) they will pick it clean to the skeleton. Just this past Sunday I threw them some raw boned out dove breasts. Picked every flake of red meat off then broke the breast bone up and ate it too.
They love the red stripe out of sandbass. Remember that chickens supposedly descended from dinosaurs. Sometimes watching them fight for, tear apart and devour meat they resemble little velociraptors…

I myself have chickens but it’s not entirely because eggs are expensive…hen scratch and layer pellets are expensive but you can stretch those out some if you let them forage in the yard and supplement. They are the worlds best composter and garbage disposal. every fruit core, veggie peels or table scraps, egg shell, etc goes to the chickens. I Feed them all all fruits and veggies scraps with exception of citrus peels and onions. I clean out the coop regularly and let their poo break down in large tubs. Then that gets slowly put back into the garden or around all of my trees/landscaping. I don’t buy synthetic fertilizers..chicken poo is extremely hot so a little goes a long way.

Lastly, for what it’s worth, in my opinion, after 35 years of watching my family run chickens and raising my own,, the best breed for Texas is black austrolorps. They have a survival instinct it seems, they die less frequently than any other breed, both from the scorching heat in august when other varieties can die of heat stroke, and also from predators. We’ve had less die from hawks/coyotes/stray dogs than any other variety.
I also like the Easter eggers (americauana) especially if you have small kids that gather eggs, green/blue eggs are fun for kids to collect. They also are pretty good at survival but don’t lay as well as austrolorps.

I need to start selling some. Think I’m sitting on 8 dozen in reserve and filling a dozen every 2.5 days.

[justletmein]

Lol awesome

I bet if I boil down a deer skull and let it cool then dump it out they'd have a hayday. I can definitely keep them fed up on fish carcasses.

[WItoTX]

I’m spending $1 a dozen in feed. My initial start up cost was $500. So after 500 days I’ll finally make it to the eggs averaging around $2 a dozen. Definitely not some way cheaper way to get eggs and e we did it about the cheapest way possible. Most people buy a $1,000 coop

Then factor in bedding. And reinforcing fences to keep dogs out. Then the cost of your time to change bedding, put out feed, pick up eggs, clean up poop if you let them out. And you have to wait a certain period to start getting eggs.

It get's a lot more expensive quickly, especially when we could just work an extra hour, not do any of the above things, and make enough $ to buy a dozen eggs from the store, plus about $95.

[DRT]

We have purchased a coup. Last fall actually. We're going to pick up some birds and get started. As mentioned it's not about the eggs. Although my daughter and the grandkids are egg eaters.
When I was a kid not a lot came from the grocery store. A large garden produced the food for year round. Chickens all summer produced eggs. Those same chickens usually were in the freezer in the winter. Grandpa had a barn and a ton of em so start up in the spring was no issue.
I want my grandsons, who live next door, to have a little country life experience here in the city. Even though their lives will be F'ed up with video games and Pokemon I want them to get something of an immersion in the real life cycle. And maybe learn some responsibility in the care of the chickens as well.

Maybe I'm going to be disappointed. But I'll try anyway.

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[RiverRat1]

Then factor in bedding. And reinforcing fences to keep dogs out. Then the cost of your time to change bedding, put out feed, pick up eggs, clean up poop if you let them out. And you have to wait a certain period to start getting eggs.

It get's a lot more expensive quickly, especially when we could just work an extra hour, not do any of the above things, and make enough $ to buy a dozen eggs from the store, plus about $95.

It's not that expensive. I use hay or grass for bedding. Built my coup out of all scrap wood I found laying around (bought chicken wire).

But chickens are actually fun. It's not just for eggs. My wife didn't want them either until my buddy gave us 4 hens (he had too many). Then my wife wanted more.

[powderburner]

if you have bedding you have to clean it up. If you are putting them on the ground I would not use bedding. If you have them in a shed then you will need bedding. We used eco flake from from the feed store. We tried hay but it was a pain to clean out.
Once very few years I pull the coop out of its spot. Bust up the ground and add sand. Then put the coop back in its spot. Been there 5 years now and going strong.
My mom took them over and she switched up their feed and they shut down so we are working on getting them back to laying regular.

[Hogmauler]

If you’re good with below then carry on. This is based on backyard setups.

Weekly coupe clean outs and disposal of a lot of crap.
Changing water every other day if not daily cause they crap in it
Feeding and caring for 20+ weeks for egg production to start
Feathers all over yard when molting
Expensive feed
Flies by the thousands all during warmer months
Crap all over your porch, chairs, etc if you let them out
And hens can/will be loud and annoying for long durations throughout the day
If you get 6 hens expect about an average of 3-4 eggs per day mostly

Not trying to discourage you just stating what comes with them.

My sister in law and husband live on 39 acres in Iola. They have chickens and a couple of turkeys. They can’t let them range too often or too far out because of hawks and ground predators. There is chicken shat everywhere!