 This week we continue the interview with Haley Oliver, owner and chief farmer at Fertile Crescent Farms. Haley raises chickens and turkeys and grows a lot of food on her homestead where she lives with her husband and adorable son.You can connect with Haley, and learn more about her farm on the Fertile Crescent Facebook page and Shaome’s Farming Co-op group on Signal. |
| What feeding practices work best in this area? When it comes to feeding practices, chickens will eat almost anything. They are like feathered billy goats. They love grass, vegetable scraps, fruits, seeds, bugs, animal carcasses like fish or deer, and they will even kill small animals and eat them whole such as frogs, lizards, snakes, and mice. Chicken feed itself comes in many different forms depending on its use (layer pellets, scratch grains, chick starter, All Flock feeds, and high protein show bird feeds). The top 3 ingredients in most chicken food is corn, soybeans, and wheat. What you feed your flock is your choice. Many chicken owners do a mixture of layer pellets and scratch grains. These also come in organic varieties. I prefer buying chicken food locally from animal feed stores rather than from Tractor Supply. There has been a lot of uproar this past year about the chicken feed at Tractor Supply, specifically the brand ‘Producer’s Pride’ manufactured by Purina. Many people’s chickens who were eating that brand had stopped laying eggs for an extended period of time and only started laying again once the feed was switched to a different brand. There have also been similar scenarios with their dog food and cattle feed in recent years with the animals turning their noses up at it and even cattle dying. I do not know what they did when they switched their formulas but it was something obviously not good. So just a word from the wise, buy from local stores and stay away from chain brands. What are the local regulations and best practices for chicken farming? Not everyone can legally have chickens. It depends on where you live. Most city residents will have a strict “no farm animal” rule. Their main concerns are about noise, disease, odor, and waste management. If you live in a Homeowners Association neighborhood, most of the time the answer will be no. The best advice would be to contact your local health and zoning boards or call your local city hall and ask them about the livestock ordinances. Generally however, if you live out in the country, chickens are allowed. How do you handle extreme weather conditions, such as hot summers or cold winters? For extreme weather, the best thing to do is make sure your chickens have a good coop and food/water. In the summer, make sure the coop gets good airflow and that their run has plenty of shade. Either natural shade from trees or shade from a tarp or shade netting will do. In the winter, close their windows or cover their window areas with plastic or wood. This helps keep the cold windy air out. Chickens are outside animals and can handle most temperatures well. They do not need air conditioning or artificial heat. Their feathers are very insulating and they will keep themselves warm. Some people put heat lamps in their coops at night during the winter to add extra heat and to trick the chickens into laying more eggs in the winter. This is an extreme fire hazard and is not recommended. Dust, dry wood chips, flapping wings and feathers do not mix well with an unattended heating element. Plus, it is healthy for chickens to have a small egg laying break a few weeks during winter. The biggest threat to chickens during the winter is not the cold itself but moisture. Keeping their coop dry and ventilated is key. Too much cold moisture can lead to comb frostbite and respiratory illnesses. How much does it cost to raise chickens? Another thing to consider is the question of self-sufficiency. Chickens are not cheap and they cost money to care for. Getting chickens will not give you free eggs, you still have to buy the materials to house the chickens and pay for food and water. Generally, one bag of feed is around $20-25. This adds up month to month, especially if you have multiple chickens and need to buy multiple bags of feed. One good way to combate this is to sell your extra eggs. There will be a point in time if you have more than 5 hens, that you will be getting too many eggs to eat. You can sell these eggs to others to help pay for feed costs. Generally, fresh backyard eggs sell for $5 a dozen. If you sell 4 dozen eggs a month, that pays for the cost of one bag of feed. Most chickens will lay an egg a day during the high egg laying seasons of spring and summer. You do not need a rooster in your flock for your hens to lay eggs, they will lay regardless. The eggs will just be unfertilized and unhatchable. If you do have a rooster in your flock however and are getting fertilized eggs, what you can do instead is sell the same eggs as “hatching eggs” and make more money. Most hatching eggs sell between $20-40 a dozen depending on what breed of chickens they are. If you sell one dozen hatching eggs a month, that pays for one whole bag of feed. This is much more sustainable and the chickens will be paying for themselves. You can even dive further and hatch the eggs yourself to add more chickens to your flock or sell the chicks to others. One chick is generally $5-10. You can still eat fertilized eggs, they are exactly the same as unfertilized eggs. I recommend having a single breed flock if this is what you choose to do. Selling purebred hatching eggs or chicks will provide more profit and be more worthwhile. |
