How To Keep Natural Chickens

DIY Health Urban Farming

Raising chickens is an easy "gateway" into farming. Since getting chickens, we balk at the idea of buying factory eggs. We no longer have to pay $5 for a dozen eggs that we hope are raised in better conditions than the standard conventional variety. The kids love running out to the coop every day to check the eggs, and we all love guessing which hen was responsible for each unique egg. We bought a large variety of chicks (we currently have 7 different breeds) that lay different sizes and colors of eggs; none have white shells. We've gotten some remarkable eggs, the kind that are no doubt tossed before making it to any retailer when factory farmed. Double yolks (twins!), huge, oblong eggs, even a tiny one that held only a yolk, no room inside for the egg white. Loki, my six year old, considers it his responsibility to make sure the hens get their greens every day. Some days he forgets, but I love that he knows how important these vegetables are to healthy chickens and nutritious eggs.

I think my kids learned the importance of greens in our diet from feeding our chickens grass and dandelion leaves.

There is nothing so sweet and tender as a child holding a baby chicken! It's worth raising them from chicks for this moment alone.

Just feathering out, our chicks safely explore the outside for the first time.

Now that they are grown, the chickens get significantly less lap time. Though we still name each one, they are more farm animal than pet. They usually stop laying during the winter months when they don't receive enough daylight, but this year we took the plunge ($8 for the timer) and set up a compact fluorescent lamp in the coop that extends their "daylight" enough that we get an average of 2 eggs/day. Plenty enough to keep us from needing to buy any, so we maintain control of at least this aspect of our food supply!

A beautiful variety. The blue one is from our Easter Egger, a cross between an Ameraucana and an Araucana, which can lay a variety of different colored eggs. One of our favorite breeds, they're very beautiful birds as well!

I'm not big on cooking eggs on their own, so I usually make a huge batch of french toast, and recently I've been making egg nogs and ice creams with fresh eggs. Check out my ice cream recipe here, a great use of farm fresh eggs.

By the way, we ordered our day-old "sexed" chicks from mypetchicken.com, but check if there's a farm co-op in your area, where you may be able to go in on a group purchase from a local farmer, which is a way more sustainable way to obtain chicks... Well, anything, really, is better straight from the farmer. There are also local farmers who raise chicks to the "pullet" stage and sell them to people who don't want the hassle of brooding chicks.

For my articles on how we feed our hens, check out Sprouted Grains for Chickens, and Making the Most of Veggie Scraps for Your Hens. 

Bulk grains and chicken feed can be purchased from Azure Standard, a natural foods distributor. Below I'm linking to some relevant Amazon ads. Any purchases made through them helps support our family. Thanks in advance!

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How To Keep Natural Chickens

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Oleh Mellow

Mellow December 23, 2011 47 Comment