My Story Raising Backyard Chickens and Advice for You

Hey guys! Welcome back. On today's video I'm going to be talking about backyard chickens and this is the third video in my series on my self-sufficient life and you can also check out the playlist for the other videos that are basically a summary of everything I learned and took action on in 2021 and tips for how you can do these same things as well. So let's get into it. Getting backyard chickens was the easiest decision that I've made along this journey. Telling my two teenage daughters that we could actually take little chickies home from Tractor Supply was about the best day we had this year and the thing you need to know when you're buying them is the pullets are female hens. They're going to lay eggs for you. The straight run are pretty much a crapshoot. You don't know what you're gonna get and but for me they were actually the prettier of the two choices. So I got eight pullets and three straight run and my three straight run ended up all being roosters. I did a whole separate video that tells you exactly what I have done with my roosters. I moved them away from my hens for the winter but you can check out that video. I'll link it above. We started with a little brooding area in the basement. It was basically like a four foot by four foot wire pen that I put pine shavings in the bottom and that's where they learned how to eat and drink and grew for a couple of weeks and there are videos on how to raise backyard chickens online so just check those out. I actually had some old vertical blinds that I wove through the fencing and that created my protective area and then once they got a little bit bigger I hadn't made a decision about their coop yet so I moved them to my garage. I actually used a bed frame like a king size bed frame and enlarged my brooding area so that they could stretch their legs a little bit more as I was deciding on what kind of permanent shelter they would have outside. I ended up finding this great six foot by twelve foot chicken coop. It actually has six feet of run and six feet of coop area with a little bit of area underneath. I'm going to show you the video here of him hauling it up my very steep incline. I have kind of a path that comes up and around from my driveway and that's where we put it. It was a nail biter let me tell you um but this chicken coop was so amazing the chickens loved it so much and this was about two months in so I moved my chickens over to the chicken coop at about six weeks old so you can kind of do whatever works for you. It's going to depend on the weather you want to just make sure that you don't need to heat it. You'll see you know some of my pictures were red my video was red and that's because the heat lamp is red and that actually a tip for you that hides blood if they kind of peck at each other so that it doesn't cause like a tizzy um or cause you know other chickens to like attack the ones when they see blood. Watch a how-to video this is not a how-to video um but my chickens really did love their new coop. They were pretty shy in exploring it going down into the run area but you know if there's anything that backyard chicken backyard chickens have done for me and my family it's um just provide free entertainment like they're so fun to watch and interact with. Oh pickle pickle you you guys were so curious about this door come on you guys have big legs just come on down. They did eventually figure out how to come down that that chicken run plank and I do let them out of that enclosed area sometimes but I live on a really busy road and I'm still pretty skittish but they definitely helped me clean out my garden area at the end of the summer and still enjoy looking for worms in there. My white chickens lay white eggs and my black chickens lay brown eggs and so I have four of each of those. Um someone told me actually that they laid the same color of eggs that they have um the color of their ears. I didn't even know they really had ears um I guess it's an assumption that they have ears um but I've also heard that it matches the color of their feet. So I have a white silky that's pickle. I have a wind that I think that's what spot is very very pretty but small that's actually a good thing when they're hopping onto the hens. I think that my Jupiter might be a Rhode Island red he is just a classic looking rooster and a very large so I kind of have like a small medium and large rooster situation. And with eight laying hens during the summer and the the full-on egg laying season which is warmer weather I've noticed I get probably about a dozen every other day. So I get quite a lot during the summer but now that it's cooler and winter I only have one brown egg that I get every day and I have like three to four white eggs. So they did slow down in their production. I don't sell a lot of eggs. I'm you know just kind of starting up and feeling it out and everything so um but that's you know that's how I got started with my backyard chickens and honestly um I think the the best way to start with them is to go pick a couple little chicks out and start raising them in your garage or basement. Most tractor supplies and those types of stores have like spring chicken days in March and April that's when it's very popular to start raising your chickens for you know your their first summer. So that's my advice. I think having your own eggs is such a great way to start becoming more self-sufficient because we cook with a lot of eggs in baking and just straight eating so it's been great for our family for my family and I would definitely recommend it for you. If you have questions please feel free to leave them in the comments below. I feel like I've covered almost everything. You know I've covered kind of everything that I've done. I did watch a lot of YouTube videos early on so I hope this was helpful for you to see the process that I went through. So I really loved having backyard chickens. I would recommend it for anyone. Some areas don't allow roosters because they are the only ones that really make very much noise. If you just have female hens you're not gonna work you're not gonna need to worry about noise. But you know make sure to check the jurisdiction that you live in and give it a shot. So thanks so much for joining me. Have a great day. Bye for now.