Chapter 3 Chickens
The next thing people say after the bit about planting a garden is something along the line of “…and get a few chickens for eggs and maybe some for meat”. Brace yourself, here come the numbers!
A family of four, 2 eggs apiece, 4 times a week. Simple math…32 eggs. To allow for the hens to miss a day here and there, you’ll need at least 5 hens. 7 days a week times 5 hens = 35 eggs, then subtract for the occasional missed day. This doesn't allow for extra eggs for baking or cooking, so you would probably want a few more hens.
In the winter, egg production will slow or stop. If you're in the south, you have a longer “laying” season, possibly even year-round. As you go north, the 'laying' season shortens. Keeping the chicken coop warm won't increase egg production. It has to do with hours of daylight.
Some people put lights on a timer in the chicken coop to keep the hens laying through the winter. I've heard that they lay less than in the summer, but that you will get some eggs this way. We let our hens rest in the winter. During the summer when we have extra eggs we dehydrate them for winter use.
To dehydrate eggs we whip them as though we're going to make omelets or scrambled eggs. Then we spread them on wax paper-lined dehydrator racks (a fruit leather tray works too). This is one thing we do use the electric dehydrator for, to make sure they dry thoroughly and in a timely manner so the eggs don't spoil.
When dried the eggs look like peanut brittle without the peanuts. I dump it all in a cake pan and crumble it up, and put it in jars. You can pulverize it to powder with a blender, either at the time you pack it in jars, or when you use it. If you don't have a blender you can still crush them into powder with a spoon, it just takes a bit of time.
The mix is equal parts water and dry egg. Allow it to sit about half an hour to rehydrate. Even if it looks grainy it will cook up nice and the graininess will disappear as it cooks.
Back to chickens. The hens need to be replaced every 3 to 7 years, depending on your breed of chicken, climate, and feed, and whether you forced them to lay year round or seasonally. If you’re truly self-sustaining, you need a rooster in order to replenish your flock, plus you need a hen or two who are willing to “sit” and hatch the eggs.
Sometimes you can borrow a rooster for a week or two while you save up eggs to be hatched. Offer the owner of the rooster a few of the chicks, or work out some other deal. They may not want anything for it, but at least offer.
If you’re off-grid you may not have enough electricity from your solar electric set-up or other power source to operate an electric incubator. If you're in this situation and you really want to try to hatch out your own chicks, and you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you can wrap the eggs in a towel and put them in the oven on the lowest rack. Don't set them right on the bottom of the oven. It will cook the eggs and could set the towel on fire.
Put a couple bowls of water in the oven for humidity, and gently turn the eggs several times a day, then cover them again. I've seen this work, but the success rate is low, less than half the eggs hatching. If you have eggs to spare, it's worth a try if you need more chickens and don't want to, or can't, buy them.
But let's assume you've got a broody hen and she's setting on some eggs, and lucky you, 26 of them hatch! After the normal loss of a few of the little fluff balls, you have 23 left. They happily scratch around in the yard in the important manner of their full-grown counterparts, and you select the ones to keep as layers. Let's assume you decide to keep five of little hens.
Butchering day comes for the rest, but…wait a minute, that’s only 18 meat birds! And they’re not big and fat like fryers! They’ve been free-ranging on bugs and seeds in your yard all summer, and they’re full-grown, but under those feathers, there’s just not a lot of meat! Well, you decide, you’ll just have more soups and stir-frys instead of fried chicken!
You have 18 chickens butchered for meat…that’s a meal with meat about every 3 weeks. In order to eat chicken once a week you’ll need 52 chickens. That’s a lot of critters looking for free-range bugs and seeds. What do you eat with your fruits and veggies the other 6 days of the week?
Some people can add to that by raising other livestock, hunting, or fishing. Then you’re back to the question of how to preserve it. The logical way if you’re self-sufficient is to can it, and then we’re back to the logistics of having and storing large amounts of jars and lids. Drying or “jerking” the meat can reduce how many jars you’ll need, but is more limited in it's uses when it comes time for meal-planning.
Chickens are good garbage disposals. They'll eat just about any kitchen scraps and waste. Theoretically they'll eat garden waste too, but don't bet on it! In the summer mine turn up their noses at carrot tops, pea pods, and potato peels.
But if I dry these things and all the other garden waste... tops, peels, pods, etc. as I chop, peel, or de-top them for canning or dehydrating... they'll eat these things in the winter when the pickings are slimmer. I usually have a couple dozen buckets full of dried garden waste by winter, and I've used them for chickens, rabbits, and goats.
You can plant extra corn for your chickens. It can be dried on the cobs and tossed into the chicken pen as you need it, or you can scrape it off the cobs after it dries and bag it up. Other grains can be fed to chickens and you can grow them too. They're discussed in Chapter 5. First we'll talk about other meat animals you can raise.