Hi all! I'm just doing a drive-by pop in to see what's up on the board and saw this thread. Hope you are all doing well! (Heads up this is going to be a long one - I love talking chickens!)
I cannot recommend chickens highly enough - I *love* our chickens. We have the newest batches of chicks in brooders in the basement. This is our third year doing chickens and I enjoy it greatly. Not only are the eggs tasty (and even three years in I still grin when I walk by the eggs in the grocery store), but I love watching my little dinosaurs. They're fascinating! We have the new chicks down in the basement. I actually built new brooders this year (I had been using a "puppy playpen", but it was inconvenient, hard to reach across, and didn't have enough room). The cool thing is they're modular, so when I take them apart after the babies move outside they'll stack flat.
We get our birds from Murray McMurray. We order online and the post office ships. The last two years shipping has been great, easy and quick. This year it took two days and we lost two chicks. I think my mistake was picking delivery after Easter weekend - since it's not one of my holy days it never even occurred to me that that date was a holiday. So between the hatchery and the post office likely being closed that weekend, I'm sure that was the delay. But everyone else arrived peeping and hearty.
This year we have 14 layers (would have had 15, but lost one yesterday - no idea from what, that's the hard thing about chicks) and 20 broilers. Last year we did straight run heritage chickens and butchered the roos, but they took over three months to get to butcher weight and even then some of the carcasses were only a pound. This year I got a Cornish Cross for our broilers, aka Frankenchicken. I had to call my farmer mentor who raises this breed for market and check in to make sure there was nothing wrong with these chicks. Unless they're eating, they're laying down - apparently it's totally normal for Cornish X, but for the heritage breeds with which I am familiar it's bizarre behavior. They also really can't live much past 12 weeks, at least not comfortably/in health. However, they should butcher our at 3 - 4 lbs at 8 weeks (though I may give it 10 weeks and then we'd get 5 - 7 lbs).
As for egg layers, I cannot recommend Easter Eggers (aka Americaunas or sometimes wrongly identified as the purebred Arucauna) enough. They're flighty birds, meaning they can be a little hard to get a hold of if you need to give meds or check something, but they're reliable layers and pretty self-sufficient. We have two in the coop right now and three babies in the brooder. I am also a huge fan of Buff Orpingtons and Black Australorps for their good dispositions and reliable laying. These are some seriously friendly birds and their eggs are good sized. Do be aware that both breeds can get broody, though (want to sit on eggs), which can be dangerous to their health if it goes too long. Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks were both decent breeds, too, though not nearly as friendly as the Orps and 'Lorps.
Breeds I'm not so fond of: Silver Spangled Hamburg - these are tiny birds and they lay tiny eggs. I was looking for a white egg layer and wanted to try this pretty heritage breed, but found out they're darn near bantam size! (We're trying the rose comb brown leghorn for white eggs this year and we'll see how they turn out.) Delawares - these had a great reputation online, and ours have been decent, but they're not as friendly or as reliable as I was given to expect.
We've had a few other breeds, but they're not really notable for either being exceptional or problematic, so not worth pointing out, IMHO, except for the Golden Wyandotte and the Salmon Faverolle, both of whom were just beautiful birds and beauty isn't exactly a necessary trait for a homestead bird.
I highly recommend hand raising your hens, and letting a hen raise any roo you might want to keep. I hand raised my first flock and the roosters were the meanest sons of bitches (pardon my language) it's ever been my misfortune to deal with. It was a joy to butcher those two - I still have scars from being attacked by them. However, my hen-raised roos didn't imprint on me and therefore don't see me as a challenger when I go in the coop/yard. I am going to butcher at least one of my roos - since we're not free-ranging they're really not necessary. I may keep one in case I get a wild hare and try to raise our own next spring instead of ordering, but two is too many for the number of hens we have and my poor girls are showing it.
Free-ranging is awesome, but dangerous. We lost four hens in two months to a bloody hawk and I was seriously tempted to shoot that bugger, but a) it's a felony, and b) there's a mated pair and I just couldn't do it when it might cause some chicks to be abandoned. We also have a bald eagle in the neighborhood - it flew across the road right in front of me the other day! We're keeping our flock in a large, comfy run, and we get some high-quality, soy-free feed from a farmer about 45 minutes away, so the eggs are still pretty tasty, but not as good as free-range eggs.
I do recommend a walk-in coop like Kbop was describing - mine is similar. Yeah, you get dusty, but you can keep a much closer eye on your flock's status and you know when it's time to change out the bedding.
For the broilers I use what's called a chicken tractor - it's a movable coop. I built it from 2x4s for the base and the roosts and PVC for the frame. I attached a rope and drag it from spot to spot so the birds have fresh grass every day. I should move the broilers out to the tractor at around 4 weeks, from what I've read. We'll see how soon they feather out.
As for the garden, we've had an cold spring here, after a run of lovely warm weather. I've got lots started in our sunroom, broccoli, peppers, asparagus (I'm planning on putting them in a permanent bed), celery, and tomatoes. I also have lots of other stuff that will be direct seeded as soon as it's warm enough. I have some berry bushes that I planted during the irrational exuberance of the warm spell. I've had soda-bottle cloches on them since the cold snap started, and so far I think they're still alive. We'll see. We're doubling the size of the garden this year by adding three raised beds to the existing three. I'm amending the soil of the existing with a manure/compost mix we purchased (thanks to the bloody hawk, our compost pile won't be usable for at least six months since I buried my hens in the compost and they need time to decompose/turn into dirt). We also ordered a top soil/mushroom soil mix and have a big pile of it to fill up the new boxes once they're put together. We have the wood, but as soon as we got the wood, the bad weather set in.
I'm doing well, as are Mr. WPW, the dog and the two cats (I rescued a kitten last summer, so we're a two-cat household now - it's been an adjustment for all of us
. Work has been keeping me busy, and I've been doing lots around the farmstead to get the garden ready for the spring. I've also finally implemented the physical fitness program I'd wanted to do and have lost nearly 100 lbs. I'm having a lot easier of a time doing farm chores and I can walk five miles and be only a little tired after. (I've even run a couple 5K races!) Definitely one of the best preparedness things I've ever done! Anywho, that's the report from Windy Acres. Hope you're all well! I'll putter around a few other threads - I don't know how often I'll be back on the board. Life keeps me hopping, but I do check in on occasion.
