Chickens

We never have to run out for "milk and eggs" while on the farm.  Our milk and egg factory runs night and day, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 day a year.  You cannot believe how much time you spend going to the grocery store, shopping, and driving home - until you are not doing it anymore.  We still go once per week for things like olive oil, coffee, tuna fish, etc... 

We have 40 layer hens that provide nearly 30 eggs per day during the spring and summer, and half that in winter (hens lay more during the longer daylight times as they only eat when the sun is out or artificial lighting is supplied).  I keep them in a 1/4 acre chicken run during the spring and summer (that is when we live at the farm).  I let them free range completely during the winter (see pic above).  They have a coop to get out of the rain (see picture above... that is without the walls, I wanted to show you the roosting beams so that the chickens can huddle together off the ground) and weather, and the grass and bugs in the run supplies more than 1/2 their food for over 6 months per year.

I keep 1 rooster for every 10 chickens.  If you have too many roosters per chickens, the roosters will literally kill the chickens through "over servicing", if you catch my meaning.

My family eats 15 eggs per, day.  The rest go into the incubator to make new chickens, or go to our friends and neighbors.  Yes, I do eat my excess roosters (my wife refuses but recently had some "homemade" chicken soup).  All farms create "excess males" if they have animals.  Cows must have calves to produce milk, and half of those calfs are male... if we did not eat these excess males there would be bulls, and billie goats, and rams, and roosters as far as the eye could see EVERYWHERE in America.  Millions and Millions of them.  The vegan argument has never lived on a farm...

Back to the incubator.  We have a 150 egg incubator and it will turn out an 85% hatch rate every 21 days.  Chickens can be incredibly self sufficient if you give them a big enough run, and growing food for them is a snap.  Corn, wheat, sorghum, hay, from the farm and some table scraps (did I mention they will eat each other?  If one dies in the run, they clean it out before I notice usually).

We give the excess chickens and rooster to a nice lady that butchers them for needy families at her church.  We could never eat all that we could produce (I figured our family will eat 2 to 3 chickens per week... 100 to 150 per year).

Un a non chicken subject...

We have a milk cow, and she is due to give birth in 3 months or so.  If it is a heifer, we will keep it and breed them to a miniature bull.  If it is a bull calf, it will be castrated and butchered just before winter.