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Grateful For My Chicken$
Good grief. Have you bought any eggs lately? Apparently, the average U.S. price of a dozen individual servings of the perfect protein source (AKA œufs ordinaire) is fast approaching five dollars. A few days ago, I saw a box of twelve at the local Giant Eagle (lovely brown ones, surely from happy hens, not battery-raised) sporting a price tag of $9.99.
Almost exactly four years ago (actually, it was January 23, 2021), I came across two very bedraggled, emaciated, and half-frozen specimens at the side of the road, while I was out for a walk. Not quite knowing what to do, I called a neighbor, who drove down with a cage, and we rounded them up, and I took them home. The hen wasn’t well at all, and didn’t survive. Chinggis the rooster, who must be well over six years old by now, flourishes still:
I’d wanted to try raising chickens for a few years, but was afraid to start with peeps, and just never got around to anything else. But here I was, suddenly with a lonely rooster in desperate need of female companionship. (Men are like that. Just sayin’.)
Fortunately my local veterinarian offered to contribute a couple of elderly hens, and a neighbor did the same, and suddenly–Chinggis was about to find himself with a harem! So I needed to do something about accommodations, and I spent a very enjoyable month building the world’s loveliest chicken coop:
I’ve been grateful to the “Gods of Chickens Present” ever since.
Although all the ladies were believed to be past their best laying days, they repaid my kindness by providing four eggs a day pretty regularly (the number diminished in winter, but they gave me eggs every day) for two years. Plenty of eggs for me, and more than enough for me to occasionally offer dozens to family and friends. During that time, I built a covered run behind the coop so that they could get some exercise and enjoy the many toys and treats I provided (things like cabbage piñatas, large ice cubes in very hot weather, scratch grains, and plenty of greens.
But old age comes to us all, and the girls weren’t exempt. They laid fewer and fewer eggs, and sadly–one by one–gave up the ghost.
There’s just one “old girl” left today, who’s still Chinggis’s mate. Every once in a blue moon, and to everyone’s surprise–most of all her own–she does manage to lay an egg, amidst much clucking and alarm. She likes to peck it to bits and eat it raw, so I let her.
In August of 2023, I decided it was time to move to the next generation of egg producers, and I—bravely—bought four peeps from Tractor Supply. They spent their first eight weeks or so in a portable trough in the spare bedroom:
Towards the end of that time, I realized I’d have to do something about the old girls (two of them were still living at the time) and Chinggis, who were still up in the “big” coop. (Mixing chicken populations is tough, and they can be quite vicious if you try it. The phrase “henpecked” exists for a reason. As do both “pecking order” and “ruler of the roost.”)
So I split the coop in two to give myself temporary space for both flocks, and a little more room to think about the future as, not long before, I’d broken my left wrist (I’m a leftie—in physical terms, anyway), and needed some more time to heal before I embarked on a substantial construction project. But embark on it I did, building a home for the geriatric birds which I refer to as the “Assisted Living Facility”:
That’s where Chinggis and his girlfriend are at the moment. A generous-size coop for two chickens, with a small but functional run underneath it. On wheels, so it can be moved to fresh ground when needed.
As for the other four (“Gladys Knight and the Pips”) they’re thriving too. It’s not great weather for egg-laying at the moment, but I’ve gotten one or two each day throughout the cold and dark days, and yesterday and today one of my “bluey” chickens who hasn’t laid for a couple of months has picked up again.
The four of them are “Easter Eggers,” a rather haphazard breed that’s a cross between a Chilean “Araucana” rooster and a brown-egg laying hen. The Chilean breed passes on a lethal gene that causes early death, but the cross-breeding (informally, the results are called “Ameraucanas,”) prevents that. “Easter Eggers” can lay both brown eggs and eggs in shades of blue and green. My four consist of two brown-egg layers, one that lays eggs that are a light olive green, and one whose eggs are a beautiful pale robin-egg blue. They’re beautiful in a carton of a dozen. Almost (but not quite) too good to eat.
It’s the latter’s beautiful pale blue eggs that have just reappeared. So, three eggs a day now. Can four be far behind?
Spring is coming. The cycle begins anew.
Published in General
Nice post. We also have chickens – in two separate coops/areas. We have 11 “retirees”; 10 hens and a rooster that are all 8+ years old. We might get 1 egg per week from them. Our second set we bought mail order from Tractor Supply about 3 years ago – they all arrived alive and number about 20 hens and 2 roosters. We are getting about a dozen eggs a day now – when it warms we will get more. It is fun giving away good eggs to friends.
Our chickens, back in the days when we raised chickens, would have gone on strike for better housing if they had seen the nice digs you provided. Our first year we started chicks in the living room. There was a barrier to keep them contained, but soon there was a fine dust all over the living room. We moved them to the garage for a while, but I didn’t get a decent brooder house built until the next spring, IIRC. It’s long gone now.
We used to order some variety packs of chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa. They’d arrive in the mail. The other day when I was at the local farm store I saw a sign saying chicks would be in soon. One could get smaller quantities that way, but I was tempted for only about 5 seconds.
Thanks. Yes, it really is fun. I’m surprised at–on a day to day basis–how cost effective having a few egg layers is in this day and age. Sure, with the first coop I went a bit over the top with materials and expense, largely because I was having so much fun building it. But the second one was built with materials lying around.
I’ve never pretended to be a “real” farmer. But I do think that small-scale production, and raising what one can is both illuminating and something I can learn from. If only when it comes to what I’m willing to do when it comes to the necessity of neck-wringing for the supposedly useless.
Or not.
Yes, places out here are saying that they expect new generations of peeps in a couple of weeks.
As a kid living on the farm – we had so much fun with chickens – they all had their own personalities and would actually play with us…
Eggs arent quite that expensive … I bought eggs on Sunday, dozen large eggs for 4.35 – these are the eggs for people who can’t afford to virtue signal to the cashier. They do have others, vegan eggs, free range eggs, eggs from plants… etc… But I think they’re like Organic Bananas.
Get marked up, but are from the source as the others – just the supplier scamming consumers, for a higher priced product that has no testable, provable difference from the others…
I think if you want real true free range eggs you have to go to the farmers market.
Live chicks going for $3.29 a pop … er … peep. Minimum of 15.
You could be on your way to being the Egg Baroness of Western Pennsylvania!
I used to tell my kids things like, “I’ll bet you’re the best 9- and 11-year-old chicken pluckers in Calhoun County.” They were not amused. But it was probably true, back in those days before so many Amish moved into our county.
I’d like to be the Dowager Countess:
Love this post!
I have built a few chicken coops in my day. They were profoundly functional, designed to keep out foxes (who are happy to dig), and keep in the chickens. Nothing as remotely gorgeous as your work! “Fancy-dancy” as my father would put it.
I also love the wheeled concept. I know commercial farms often are mobile, fertilizing fields as they make they way across them. It makes so very much sense – and offers the chickens a broader menu of whatever bugs live in the newly-revealed turf.
Share some pictures of the eggs? I know what white and brown ones look like. But I’d like to see the other colors you mention.
I love to see your coops! You are doing an awesome job with chicks and eggs.
I have friends who have chickens, and buy my eggs from one of them. Cheaper than the grocery stores, and fresher. And absolutely delicious 😋😋😋
I found Grandma’s chicken accounts a few years ago. She ran the chicken operation from the onset of the Great Depression through to around 1965 or so. This many chicks in, this many chickens out, egg production and sales. She had a tight little operation going.
Another post that I’ll have to send my wife the link to.
I went with Grandma when she delivered to her most long-term customer. She had been dropping off eggs since before World War Two. The transaction itself took only five minutes. The information exchange that followed approached forty five minutes to an hour.
Back when eggs at Aldi were consistently 67 cents, I thought chicken feed was terribly expensive. Monday they were $4.67 and my next stop was the farm store. That $10 bag of chicken feed seemed dirt cheap!
My daughter and her husband lived in the country so they built a coop and tried producing their own eggs. I stayed with them a lot when my youngest granddaughter was born to help out. Twice my son-in-law, a great hunter, called me out back to get a snake out of the roosting buckets ( he had 5 gallon plastic buckets with straw in them sitting on their sides in a row). That’s tricky. You don’t want the snake getting excited and breaking the eggs. He couldn’t figure out how the snake kept getting in so I pointed out the gaps at the top of the wall. He didn’t realize some snakes are great climbers. After the second time I had him buy that can of spray foam that seals gaps and insulates. They tried to free-range them to eat bugs and ticks and ended up feeding the flying predators on several occasions. They gave that up when they bought a new house in a neighborhood. I love it when neighbors have a rooster.
Our egg prices spiked and eggs disappeared from the shelves. Prices have dropped a little and eggs are back. Bob said it was because Biden had thousands of chickens killed because of bird flu.
Love your story.
Trump has been president for a week and has not solved inflation or bird flu! That is what Dem leaders are saying.
What we should do, is end agricultural quotas on poultry and dairy, and export our abundance to the US.
Maybe not directly as eggs and milk but maybe as Mayonnaise and Cheese…
Farmers all across Canada throw away so much food, because after they meet their quota they’re not allowed to sell it… But the silly cows (and chickens) don’t know – they continue on eating and producing just as much… Even though their work for the week is one…So the farms could sell a lot more food, without raising production costs at all, because the livestock is going to eat anyway.
I didn’t know Canada had production quotas. How long have they been in existence?
I know such things have existed, but usually here in the U.S. other equally wasteful methods have been used, such as one in the 1980s by which the government paid for milk cows to be taken out of production. I remember getting into a big argument with the president of the Michigan Milk Producers Association about the wisdom and effects of that one. Don’t know if he expected to run into arguments like that in a university setting.
There is an argument that it is good for society for government to pay/subsidize/quota food production, so that food production is stable. Without subsidies production capacity (supply) would adjust to demand. If there are some good years (fortunate weather) in a row, there would not be enough production capacity during bad years (bad weather, bird flu,…) and there would not be enough food to meet demand. Society quickly goes to crap, when there are food shortages. I am guessing we do about 10X what is required to ensure stability given the global nature of food production.
Yes, I’ve noticed that too. If the price of chicken feed was tracking that of the eggs, I’d be in even deeper doodoo than I regularly find myself. Thank goodness that’s not the case.
Wonderful stories. Yes, snakes, mice, and a few other critters can be very disruptive. I kept that in mind when building. Also, I saw the “outrigger” cantilevered nesting boxes in a photo of a coop on the Internet. I really like them because I don’t have to go inside and root around for the eggs. Gladys and company do get a bit put out when I open up the back wall just as they’ve settled themselves down in there, though.
Chinggis is very chatty, starting sometimes at about 3AM. I don’t mind the crowing at all, and my neighbors are too far away to hear him, so he just goes at it whenever he feels like it.
The original reason I did “runs” rather than free-ranging them is the pretty abundant population of one or another species of hawk around here. Since I can count my chicken population on my fingers, losing one or more to a rapacious bird really wasn’t on the cards. Another benefit is that they don’t have much contact with wild birds, so there’s less risk of avian flu. I don’t think there’s much of that in these parts anyway, at least at the moment.
Thank you!
What a lovely post. Boids are a mystery to me, but eggs keep me alive. Two every morning, boiled, scrambled in olive oil, or if I need an excuse to celebrate, an omelet with crumbled bacon cooked in plenty of Amish butter from a roll. Thanks for linking to that protein article, too; great information.
This reminds me: Does the US Gov’t still buy and stockpile cheese?
I think so.
Here’s yesterday’s haul. It’s just a picture from my phone, and the colors aren’t quite as saturated (I think that’s the right word?) as they are IRL, but perhaps you can get the idea:
We have four Austrolorp hens. We had five and one passed (reason unknown). We used to get 3-4 eggs per day but now 1-2. I love having fresh eggs but out cost per egg is definitely not cheaper than store bought, even at current prices. Still worth it. I’d love to let them free range during the day but I’m pretty sure our dogs would like a chicken snack. Given the foxes, coyotes, and snakes around here it’s amazing nothing has even made it into the enclosure, let alone the coop.
When we first got them there were 6, but one turned out to be a rooster. We gave them to friends down the road who had a dozen hens. He was in rooster heaven until he picked a fight with one of their dogs.
Come to think of it, now he is literally in rooster heaven.
On a day-to-day basis around here, eggs from my chickens are still cheaper than buying them. That’s not true if I factor in what it’s cost me to build the coops. The second one was built with stuff I had lying around, and that was my intent with the first one, but I had so much fun planning it out and thinking about how nice it would look that I got carried away with myself. How else to explain the fact that I had pieces of steel roofing that matched the house roof cut to fit the chicken coop….
Oh well.
Its called Supply Management in Canada, its primary goal is to keep farmers from over producing and bankrupting themselves when this oversupply drives food prices so low they bankrupt themselves. Oddly there are no such production restrictions on industrial products at all.
The 3 main controls are – Production Control, Import Restrictions and Price Controls:
Here is the list of flock restrictions by province:
They clearly dont know Say’s Law. That production creates its own demand. IF we removed quotas, we could export the abundance or invigorate a larger food processing industry for export. In short allow investment, create jobs, generate wealth. Here, in Canada which is expected to have the lowest economic growth of the G8 nations over the next 20 years. Canada desperately needs this boost in productivity.
Presumably, Canada would not want to IMPORT any of these things, since they want their own food production situation to be stable.
So, why should any other country want to IMPORT these things from Canada, for the same reasons?