Chickens Every Day
Dedicated to helping backyard chicken owners keep the happiest and healthiest flocks we can.
Chickens Every Day
Ready to Raise Chickens? Here’s What You Need to Know
Are you ready to embark on a poultry adventure? Whether you're new to the idea of keeping backyard chickens or you're looking to refine your approach, our latest episode dives deep into the essentials of chicken ownership. We explore everything from the joys of nurturing these feathered friends to the practicalities of maintaining a happy, healthy flock.
We kick off by discussing the benefits of raising chickens in your backyard—from fresh eggs to the joy of interacting with these charming creatures. We delve into local regulations to help you understand what’s possible in your area and how to find the perfect breeds to suit your lifestyle. Heritage breeds make excellent companions and are perfect for beginners! With solid recommendations on setting up a cozy coop and safe run, we walk you through the must-have features to create a thriving environment for your chickens.
Feeding your chickens a nutritious diet is key to their health and productivity. We share insights on the best practices for selecting feeds, adding nutritious supplements, and even incorporating kitchen scraps into their diet! Our conversation also covers all the health considerations you'll need to keep your flock safe from illness.
The episode unfolds with heartwarming anecdotes that highlight the bond between family and chickens, encouraging listeners to involve their children in care routines. From learning responsibility to enjoying quality time together, raising chickens can deepen family relationships.
Join us on this exciting journey and learn how to bring the fun of chicken keeping into your life! Don't forget to subscribe, share your thoughts, and maybe even ask your own questions—let's cluck about chickens together!
Are we ready, pawpaw? Hello friends and welcome to Chicken. Every Day, a podcast for you, the backyard chicken enthusiasts, and mine. Your host is my Pawpaw, gary, Gary Valerie of Senla Backyard Chickens. Here we have fun while sharing ideas and learning how to care for our foul-feathered friends. Check out our videos at Senla that's C-E-N-L-A Backyard Chickens on YouTube, tiktok and Facebook. So, without further ado, let's start today's show. How was that?
Speaker 2:Hello friends, Gary, with CENLA Backyard Chickens here with you, and before you know it, chick season is going to be here. It's late February right now and you're already starting to see some arrivals showing up at some of your bigger box stores.
Speaker 2:It's time for everybody to start getting excited. This video is for the brand new chicken keeper who's just looking out. This is what I want to do. I want to start getting chickens, but I don't know where to start. This is a good starting place right here.
Speaker 2:Something I tell folks all the time knowledge is power. Look online, find out what's out there. There's many people like me that are trying to be helpful and get you started on this project. But first of all, understand there is no absolute perfect way to do it. Just because I do it one way over here at Settling Lob Backyard Chicken, someone else does it successfully a different way where they are. So understand that going in, there's many ways to do this and there's a lot of chicken keepers out there that you can find out and get good information from, and I recommend that you do this.
Speaker 2:You know this is a hobby for me and I go out and I hang out with my birds. It's a great way for me to unwind. My grandkids enjoy it with me. We get a lot of great eggs out of it. I even sell some eggs because I have more chickens than probably what I should. It's a great thing for me to do and it's a great way for me to just chill. I love these birds.
Speaker 2:I've been doing it a lot of years, put it like that. I started out as a boy doing chickens, got away from it whenever I became an adult, went to college and married and all that Been back into it since I think since around 2016. And you can do as much or as little as you want. Just make sure you take care of the basics for them. Make sure that they have a good coop, that they have protection from predators, they have a good, secure roof over their head. So they're going to be out of the out of the storms and out of the cold weather, and you know once once you get those things done.
Speaker 2:Everything else on top of that is lagniappe, and lagniappe is a french term here in louisiana. That means something extra. So whatever you want to do above, that, that's something extra for your chickens. That's what you can do, and we're going to talk about some of the things that I do right here in this video. And because we're so close to chicken season, the first thing you want to ask yourself can I keep chickens where I live?
Speaker 2:More and more cities and municipalities are allowing people to keep chickens. So if you want backyard chickens right in the middle of town, you can certainly do this Right here in the city that I don't live in the city, but the city that I'm closest to, alexandria they allow chickens but, understand, they may not allow rooster. They may limit you on the size of your pen. They may limit you on the number of chickens that you get. So make sure that you find out this information. You don't want to have to get rid of birds whatever. You've just gotten them and you're falling in love with them and you're very fond. So make sure you know what's going on with your particular situation in your particular location. So the first question after that what kind of chickens I want. Well, it really depends on what you want to do with them. If you're looking for pets, a few eggs to feed your family, you're probably talking about some of the heritage breed chickens Rhode Island Reds, wyandott's, buff, orpingtons, chickens like that, the old, basic chickens, that that you've seen through through the years, that were at your grandparents house. Those kind of things are what you want. When you just looking for chickens to enjoy and still get the eggs out of it, I will tell you you want, want an absolute minimum of three. Chickens are a flock animal. They're happiest and they're healthiest whenever they have a flock. So you want at least three birds to have your flock. And then you can ask yourself how many do I need? And again, you guys, if y'all eat a lot of eggs, you got to let's say you got a family of four you probably want four to six. The number is generally going to be between one and 1.5 per family member and again, you need to adjust that to your particular situation. Do I, do we eat a lot of eggs? Do we eat very little eggs? What do I want to do with the eggs? Do I want an excess? I want a lot of chickens. I want to sell my eggs. So, yeah, think about what you want to do in your particular situation. Now we get to the question do we want to hatch or do we want to buy?
Speaker 2:Hatching chickens can be so rewarding, especially if you got little ones around the house where they can watch them hatch. You can buy a decent, quality incubator for less than $200 nowadays they're not really terribly expensive and you can look on the internet. There's a lot of people that will teach you how to do it. We've done hatching out here as well. But understand, when you hatch, think that you're going to get. At least 50% of those are going to be roosters, and you need to have a plan already in mind. What am I going to do with these roosters? For me, it's pretty simple. I have a gentleman who's got a 20 acre farm and he will come get all of my young roosters that I don't want from me. He processes some and that's perfectly fine to do that and he lets some roam out in this field and that's how he gets his chicks through that. Plus, roosters have a lot of advantages on the farm. So make sure that you have a plan in case you're going to have some roosters and if you're going to do your own hatching, you're going to have roosters. The next thing you can think about well, if I want to buy my chicks, or do I want started pullets? A started pullet is an older bird, probably somewhere around eight or ten weeks at the minimum, and they're just a few weeks away from starting to lay eggs. The advantage to that is you don't have the worry and the trouble of raising these young animals from little bitty two-day-old chicks and to get them going. The disadvantage to that they're usually not as used to you, they're not as friendly. You don't get to enjoy that little bitty tiny baby chick that you can hold in your arm, especially if you have kids. But they are a good way to go whenever you don't want to take the time out to do that.
Speaker 2:Thirdly, you can buy chicks. Chicks have been sent through the US Postal Service for a couple hundred years now, probably since the Postal Service has been around. They know how to do it. They're good at what they do. If you want to order through one of the big hatcheries out there, you can certainly do that. Need to order well ahead of time, because the hatcheries sell out quickly. You will get them in the mail. The post office will call you on the phone and say, hey, your chicks have arrived and you just go pick them up at your local post office. The hatchery that sells will generally send you an email saying, hey, this is the week that your chicks are going to be arriving. Make sure you have someone available to go pick them up.
Speaker 2:If you go get these young chicks, you're going to need something. You're going to need a brooder. A brooder is just a small pen that the young chicks are going to live in until they start getting old enough to be out on their own. You're also going to need a heat source for the for young chicks. Young chicks the first week need about 95 degrees of heat. You can generally. General rule of thumb is to back off five degrees per per week after that. So if they're three weeks old, they're going to be looking at 80 degrees minimum of heat.
Speaker 2:When you have your heater in there and people use heat plates, people also will use heat lamps. Heat lamps are not are their most popular, but most chicken people like me will tell you to not use a heat lamp because of the danger that the heat lamp poses and the fires that it can start. If you are very, very, very careful with your heat lamp, make sure that it's not going to be anywhere around anything that's going to be flammable, you tie it off and then tie it off again and then tie it off that third time to make sure nothing is going to drop, nothing's going to happen to where you think you can overheat some things and catch wood chips or whatever you have close to it on fire, because every year people lose them to fire. I use heat lamps, I'm very careful with them but I really like them.
Speaker 2:I can put my heat lamps in a corner of the coop and that's where you want it, or the corner of your brooder, because you don't want it right in the middle and to heat the whole thing up because your chicks are going to tell you if they're hot enough, if they're warm enough or if they're too warm, you put your heat lamp in. And if your chicks are all kind of scattered around the heat lamp, not really bundled up, just kind of chilling out and relaxing, they're feeling pretty good. If they're way off to a corner or as far away as they can get from the heat lamp, it's too hot. You need to back it off, raise it up out of the way some more. If they're huddled all under it, then they're not warm enough. So let the chicks tell you what they need.
Speaker 2:As far as the heat in the pen goes, you'll raise them in that for about six weeks. Then you can transform it to something larger. Usually by nine weeks. They don't need protection from the heat. They feather it out pretty good with their first batch of feathers and they're going to be ready to go. If you already have established chickens, you need to want to keep the keep these young pullets away from the chickens till they're old enough to fend for themselves, and I have videos that you can look at. It send my backyard chickens on YouTube and TikTok that show you how I incorporate my chickens, and I usually have very little trouble with chickens beating up on one another whenever we do this. Now you want to think about building a coop farm. The general rule of thumb for a coop you're looking at two to four square feet inside the coop, depending, and what is this?
Speaker 2:depending on Depending on the size of the birds. So if you want just little bitty chickens and you get bantams which are just kind of small, you can go more than two feet. If you get standard size birds, you wanna get closer to the four feet. If your birds are gonna spend a lot of the time inside the coop, you may wanna go five feet in there. My birds do not spend much time in the coop. You may want to go five feet in there. My birds do not spend much time in the coop. They go in there to roost at nighttime and they go in there to lay eggs Then. That's other than that they're not really in the in the coop itself.
Speaker 2:But a few things you want to incorporate in your coop. You don't want it to be drafty but you want it to be well vented. My coop has there's a top ridge where gas, where ammonia, can kind of vent out of the top. I also have windows at the bottom that slide open and close so that they can get fresh air. Believe it or not, I've got an Alexa out there where I can turn on lights. I can turn on exhaust fans, I can turn vent fans that blow in. I can turn on vent fans that suck air out of it. Again, I'm the guy that overdoes things and I get it, but this is just some of the stuff that I want to do.
Speaker 2:In the bottom of my coop you need to have the bedding. The most popular bedding is going to be wood shavings and these are pine shavings and not cedar. Cedar's got too much oil in it and it can irritate the respiratory process, but you want pine shavings in there. And I also add a lot of peat moss and it's the sorghum peat moss and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Look up sorghum peat moss on the internet. It has got some great antiseptic qualities. All the way up to World War one, medics use sorghum peat moss to wrap bandages because it had that antiseptic quality in there. It is also great for absorbing ammonia not masking it, actually absorbing the ammonia that can be in the coop to help cut it down. The disadvantage to this peat moss is it is extremely dry and if you have, if your chickens spend a lot of time in the coop, inside the coop, they're going to be scratching around and they're going to be stirring a lot of dust, and all this dust is not going to be good for them.
Speaker 2:But if they don't spend a lot of time in there. They just go in there to roost, like mine do. They go in there to lay their eggs, then they're just pooping. Well, this peat moss is really, really, really great to help absorb all of that. And you still want to keep it clean. You want to be practice good husbandry practices in your coop. Keep it clean. I go every couple of days, maybe every three days, and I'll scoop around. I'll also take a rake and I'll stir things around in the coop. And you want to have a lot of good access and my coop the way I built it. I can't walk in the coop but I've got big windows and I've got big doors that open everywhere that I can get to everything in the coop. And that's important because you want to be able to get in there and clean, do maintenance and do the things that you want to do. So once you figure out how you want to build things, then your run and the run is where the chickens get to go and play. That needs to be at least 10 square feet per bird. I have two different runs. They're both 8 feet deep, 20 feet long, so it's 8 by 40 total and they're divided by a door so I could keep the bird separated whenever I want to.
Speaker 2:And again, you need to think about, there's a phenomenon out there and it's called chicken math. Guys, chicken math is a real thing. You think, oh, in the back of my mind, I don't know. Three, four chickens, that's all I'm going to want. That'll be plenty for me. Well, that's going to be good the first year, but six months later you're going to go oh, that's a gorgeous chicken right there. Oh, I want some green egg layers. Oh, I want some chocolate egg layers. I want some blue egg layers. Oh, I want the ones with the fuzzy hair on their feet or the top hat on their head and before you know it, that Three or four chickens is going to be a dozen of them.
Speaker 2:So if you think you want to have that many chickens, build twice as much for that. If you think you want to have six, build a coop that's gonna handle a dozen or more Chicken. Math is a real thing, guys. It trust me, you're gonna thank me in the future if you do this, if you build it over big and you don't get them. Not that big of a deal, but trust me, it's gonna, it's gonna happen. So we have our coop, we have our run size that we need For my run and in my coop, the chicken pen, I use hardware cloth, that I use half-inch hardware cloth because a raccoon or a big, big alley cat that's running around or a dog is not going to get through hardware cloth if you wrap it in chicken wire.
Speaker 2:Chicken wire is only good for chickens. Okay, an adventurous dog or raccoon or a possum can get through chicken wire, and so the first four feet of my run has got hardware cloth. Now I don't do the second four feet because they are eight foot tall. Mine are seven and eight foot tall. It's chicken wire and I don't have hardware cloth up there and it's a matter of economics. The stud's expensive, I mean, come on. So I need to think about the money that I'm spending. So the first half is going to be hardware cloth and all around the perimeter bottom I will lay two feet wide, I'll lay hardware cloth down and I'll let the grass grow through it and this helps prevent animals that want to try to dig under the coop. So I want to make sure that I do that Also in my coop because you know, my buddies back at work years ago used to call me the high-tech redneck.
Speaker 2:I have three run chicken doors and I love run chicken. I've been using them for a few years for a great door. They're programmable to do a different multitude of things on ways that you can get them to open and close. I have videos about them and if you think you might want one, please, you owe it to yourself to check out some of my videos on them in. In these videos there's a discount link and you will get 15% off of what your neighbors pay for the doors and, to be honest, I get a small percentage of that 15%. That comes back to me at Sennlon Backyard Chickens. But you will love these doors and I do, I've never had one fail. You just change batteries in them. They say once a year, but I usually go a little bit more than that because I'll forget sometimes. But they do flash and they tell you it's time. They have a solar power one, that you don't need to change the batteries on but mine aren't the more modern solar power ones.
Speaker 2:Mine are the little bit older ones, but I love having them. It's so convenient when my birds go in at nighttime ones, but I love having them.
Speaker 2:it's so convenient when my birds go in at night time because I let them free range during the day and so in the morning time the the run chicken door opens for the coop. They all go out into the first run and then, like I, like I just mentioned, I have two different runs and they're separated by a door and that's a run chicken door and I can program that door whether or not I want them to go into the second run. The first run is completely enclosed. It's got a roof over it, wiring goes all the way to the top. Nothing's going to get into them. The second run has an open top on it so birds can, other birds can fly in there and you could have predator issues. You really don't have them in that size of a run, but it can happen. And then I've got a third door that goes to the outside for whenever I want them to free range and I can completely control. If we're not going to be home, we're going on vacation or going to be gone for a few days, I shut down the door and don't let them go outside the free range, just let them go in the run parts, and they're perfectly happy with doing that. So it's really, really great to be able to have that ability to do this. We've got all that set up and now you want to think about nest boxes.
Speaker 2:The thing about a nest box you want a nest box to be raised off the off the floor of the coop. Mine are about 12 to 14 inches off the floor, I can't tell you exactly, but you want them to be definitely lower than the roost. Chickens naturally, by instinct, want to get up high at nighttime whenever they go to bed and if your nest boxes are way up high then they're going to start sleeping in there and they're going to be pooping in there and you don't want that because you want to have your nice fresh eggs to be clean. You want your roost bars up high, nest boxes in the middle and then your floor at the bottom. Mine are built in such a way that I can access them from the outside. I don't need to walk inside the run or the coop to get to my eggs. I can access them from the outside. I raise them up and I have one, two, three, four of them in there and I can pick the eggs. This is something me and my granddaughter we enjoy doing together. So you want to think about doing that whenever you incorporate your chicken coop and there's a lot of chicken coop designs out there. You just want to do one that's smart and you want to have a lot of doors, a lot of ways to get into the coop. Again, it's very, very important build things big enough for that chicken man. Do not forget about chicken man.
Speaker 2:Okay, after we've got our pin built, we know what kind of chickens we want. We got them in the mail, we're raising them up, and so now what do we want to feed them? Well, I can tell you to get the highest quality feed that you can afford and you can go from around here. You can go from about $13 for a 50 pound bag all the way up to $23, $24, $25 for a 50 pound bag. Ingredients make a difference. Just because something has 16% protein and this other bag has 60% protein with this other bag is $8 more per 50 pounds than the first one. This could be an ingredient reason. And so look at your ingredients on your chicken feed, and I have found, by and large, that the more expensive feeds are usually going to be the ones that have the better ingredients. I don't want a lot of fillers, I don't want a lot of byproducts, and some of the bags will use the word byproducts and by law they are required to list the ingredients and the way the listing works. The first ingredient is the most that's in there, the second ingredient is the second most, the third ingredient is the third most, and so on. So if the first ingredient it says is wheat byproducts, then the majority of that feed is wheat. If the second ingredient says corn or corn shells in there, then the second most product in there is going to be corn, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So make sure you get your birds a good quality feed. I use the Coop Works that's C-O-O-P-W-O-R-X feeder. I have an 80 pound feeder that is inside my run, inside the covered run, so it doesn't get rained on. This is a great feeder and again, I've got a video on that and I've got a discount link that you can use for that. I can put 80 pounds of feed in there and the cool thing about those the way I have it set up is I don't have a problem with rats or mice getting in the feed.
Speaker 2:If your feed is on the ground, sooner or later they're going to get in there and they're going to start eating your feed. That's something you don't want. You pay for this expensive feed. You want it for your chickens, not the rats, and plus rats poop and we don't know about diseases and stuff that they may get. So look into getting a good quality feeder if you can, then next you want a good waterer. That's in there.
Speaker 2:You don't want water and feed inside the coop. You're just asking for a mess, too much moisture. Chickens are going to spill the feed. You're inviting rats and mice to get in there. Water and all that moisture inside the coop is not a good idea. The only time I have food and water is when I have young chicks inside their brooder and you have to have it in there for them then, but you have to do maintenance and keeping it clean as well. The food and water needs to be on the outside of the coop. It can be in the run, it can be out in the chicken yard, whatever you want, but it doesn't need to be inside the coop itself.
Speaker 2:So next we want to talk about free range or not to free range.
Speaker 2:My birds, more days than not, will free range and you take a chance whenever they do, because now they can be more susceptible to predators.
Speaker 2:A stray dog comes by, chicken hawks and all of these happen and all of these over the years have happened to me. I try to do things that mitigate it, that help keep it down. I keep a young dog that I raise with my chickens pretty much at all times you get a dog that, from a very tiny puppy, is with the chickens and it doesn't grow up to be aggressive towards them. You don't want a dog that's got hunting instincts in it, you want just a mutt more or less with it. And I tell people a lot of times you don't want a dog that's really taller than the chickens are themselves, unless they're those dogs that are specifically bred to take care of chickens and to be protective of them and they have them out there. And these are big old dogs and, trust me, they're great. But when you got a small little backyard, like most of us do, you want a small dog if you're going to use that in there.
Speaker 2:But, I like to free range and I had the choice of the free range or not because I, using the way I use my run chicken automatic coop doors, I can program them to open or not. Like I said, if we're gone we don't do it, otherwise I let them free range. They're happier, they're healthier. The birds are out there, they're eating grasses and seeds, they're eating worms and bugs and all of these things make for some of the greatest tasting and richest eggs you will find. In the fall we open up the fencing that's around our garden and they spend the fall and winter picking through our garden and come springtime there's not a weed want in our garden. The chickens have taken care of this. Plus, their poop is great compost that goes back into the soil. So you can kind of think of all of that. But I use a lot of supplements because I enjoy it. I will. I will ferment my food about once a week. I've got a video on doing that. It's an easy, easy thing to do fermenting your food, you know. I'm talking about fermenting it to the point to where it's if you have alcohol, because you could do that, you don't want to do that, but fermenting it to the point that you have these good, healthy bacteria that are in the feed. You can smell it when it's fermented just right, and it makes great gut health for about. You know, I'll also supplement that with some apple cider vinegar. It has to be apple cider vinegar. You look on the bottle it says with the mother and you can look at the bottom of it and see a thick layer of stuff down there and that's all the bacteria and stuff that they use whenever they make it. This is very, very healthy for them. I will drink apple cider vinegar. It's good for our gut health as well, and fermenting a lot of food kimchi and things like that is also good for our gut health as well. In fermenting a lot of food, kimchi and things like that is also good for our gut health. So it's easy to do.
Speaker 2:It doesn't cost you anything to ferment food. A bottle of apple cider vinegar is only one tablespoon per gallon and I don't keep it out there with them a lot. Maybe once a month I'll mix them up a couple of gallons and I'll put it out there, but no more than that. It doesn't need to be a constant supply of that stuff. So one bottle like this of apple cider vinegar will last me, you know, half a year. It lasts a very long time when you think about one tablespoon per gallon.
Speaker 2:Also, give them oyster shells. You want to give them oyster shells. That's a good calcium supplement and the way I do mine. I had these little rabbit feeder boxes and they're very small that I have attached to the, to the hardware cloth, and I can fill them from the outside and they eat them from the inside, and so I do my oyster shells in there and I do grit in there as well.
Speaker 2:And again, my birds, like I said, most of the time they're outside free-ranging and they pick up grit that way, but whenever they don't, I want to have some farm available. And what the grit does, little tiny pieces of rock, goes into their eating, goes into their gizzard and it helps them grind that food down. It helps process that food begins breaking it down. Chickens do not have saliva glands and teeth like you and I do. To help that process, all of that stuff happens inside the gizzard. The rocks will grind down, grind down and the passages in the gizzard are too small for the rocks to go through. Until the rocks grind themselves down to very small sizes, then they'll pass and the chickens are any more grit, more rocks to keep that process going. This is how that they process the food.
Speaker 2:Also, give them good, healthy table scraps. We have leftover greens. We have leftover cooked eggs is a great source of protein for your chickens. Almost anything that we eat you can also supplement and feed your chickens. Now, don't feed them rice, because rice is just blank calories. That doesn't really benefit them any and just gonna make them fatter whenever they don't need to be fatter. They need to be good, lean, lean and strong. But what you would feed your kids you know. You can probably supplement and feed your chickens whenever you have extras of it. Don't feed them sour foods and foods that's turned bad. You don't want to do that. So if you wouldn't feed that to your kids, don't feed that to your chickens. But again, there's a lot of good, healthy table scraps that you can feed them.
Speaker 2:Most afternoons or evenings my birds know it. When it comes that time, whenever I go out there, I usually have some black fly larva that I give them. They love it. They come running to me and then you can just put them in your hand. They eat out of your hand for it. That's a great source of protein. But then again, remember, these little treats should not be more than 10% or so of their daily output. The majority of their food is going to be the good quality layer pellets that I have for them, or layer crumbles if you prefer crumbles I like the pellets personally for myself and then free-ranging out of the yard and then scraps on the table and then after that are the treats. And then in summer, you know, in the summer when it's hot, I will take blueberries, put them in ice trays, cut up some grapes, put them in ice trays, freeze them with water, put them out there for them. It's a great source of fun for them. They'll peck on them and things like that, and that helps cool their bodies down in the heat of the summer. Louisiana's got some pretty vicious summers, so they really enjoy doing that.
Speaker 2:Let's see what we have next when to expect your first egg. Generally speaking, with most heritage type birds, you're looking 18 to 22 weeks or so, five or six months before you get your first eggs. If you bought weeks or so, five or six months before you get your first eggs, if you, if you bought legger and or leg horns that are specifically for laying. They're gonna probably start producing a little bit earlier than that. They are made to do that. But understand, usually those high production egg layers are not gonna be the friendliest of birds out there. They're not gonna be mean. I'm not trying to say that, but they're what what we call flighty. They don't like to hang around people and they'll run from you and all that. They just seem to be like. They're always pissed off about something. So you know, you consider that I have, I think, one leghorn out there just to give me a white egg to go with my colorful basket that I have. Then most of my others are hybrids and heritage breed chickens and I have several of all of it.
Speaker 2:Some people are surprised to learn that you do not need a rooster for a hen to lay an egg no different than any other animal, humans included. A woman does not need a guy around in order for her to ovulate and have one egg per month. A hen ovulates almost every day and she produces those eggs. Whenever the guy is needed is when we want to fertilize them and when we want to have chicks. So you need a rooster for that. If you free range, you may want to think about a rooster to help protect the chicken. A rooster spends a lot of time looking out for predators and will warn the birds, the girls, if you have anything coming, and a really good rooster will sacrifice itself protecting its chickens.
Speaker 2:I've seen roosters beat these snot out of chicken hawks that come down and they are more than happy to do it, and you find some hawks that are really regretting having made that decision. But you also got to remember that a lot of roosters can be aggressive towards people and now that I have young grandchildren whenever I didn't have grandchildren that were young and my oldest is in the Air Force, so I have them at all ages. The youngest at the time of this taping is almost one year old. So now that I have these young grandchildren hanging around and Sylvie, my grand girl if you listen to any of the podcasts, she is now eight years old I don't have a rooster because if they ever bow up to my grandkids, they're out of here, they're going to rooster camp, freezer camp, right off the bat. If they grow up they bow up to one of us, I'll shoo them out of the way. But I'm not gonna have an aggressive rooster and you gotta spend a lot of time with them and there are some roosters that are not aggressive. They can be very, very friendly.
Speaker 2:But it takes a lot of work and a lot of patience to raise that chick, to be friendly and to come up with a good rooster for your family so you don't have to have a rooster in order to have have eggs. So that that's you know. You know, don't even think about that. But when will my chick, how do I know she's getting ready to start laying eggs? Not just because of the time that's going by we're getting 20, 22 weeks into it but there are signs. You see sudden growth in their waddles that's these right here, and they're combed down on top of their head. You'll see a quick growth of those and they'll start turning a good crimson red. In most breeds some breeds that they're not red, but most of them that you'll find them, that they are going to be red. You'll see that red color coming. You know, know, your bird's starting to get those hormones raging in them and she's getting ready to lay eggs. Also, the most telling thing is when they start doing that submissive squatting behavior. You walk out amongst your chickens and all of a sudden they just squat down like that she is submitting to you. This is a submissive behavior that chicken hens would do with roosters whenever they get ready to fertilize the eggs. So that tells you again we are getting close to having some eggs.
Speaker 2:Now don't think that a chicken is going to lay an egg every day. The most high-production chickens out there do not lay an egg every day. The leghorns that I mentioned earlier are probably some of the most prolific and they will probably do between five and six eggs a week. Most of your heritage breed chickens that I talked about earlier are going to give you three to four eggs a week, maybe five sometime when they're doing good. So kind of keep that in mind. Whenever you're doing, you count on how many that you think that you want.
Speaker 2:There's going to be times of year that they're not going to lay. Every bird every year goes through a molt. That's when they lose their feathers and they grow new feathers. Usually this is going to be in the fall, so they can get a good, fresh coat of feathers to get ready to battle the cold weather of the winter. When they're molting they're not going to be laying If it gets to be very, very hot and they're stressed, because of heat stress. They're not going to be laying whenever the the daylight hours start decreasing. Chickens use sunlight, the amount of sunlight during the day, and they usually want somewhere you know around 14 or so hours to start triggering, triggering that ovulation period. We need a lot of sunlight hours to for them to lay. If you're in an area where during the winter you're getting 10 to 12 hours is all of the daylight you get during the day, their production is going to go way down. So understand that, going in, that they're not going to be constantly laying year in, year out. That first couple of years is where they're going to be the most productive. After that chickens will start dropping off a little bit at a time. So understand that as well. And again, that's just how we use it to buy more chicken. So there's not a big deal about that.
Speaker 2:Something I do want to talk about eventually we're all going to lose birds. There's all sorts of reasons, whether it's through predation, whether it's to old age, or whether it's to old age or whether it's through sickness. We're going to lose birds and when you're very attached to them like I get to mine a lot of people get to them because we raise them not only as livestock animals, but we also raise them as pets and you can get emotionally attached to them. It's funny when I was a boy growing up in Dry Creek, I was not emotionally attached to them. It's funny when I was a boy growing up in Dry Creek, I was not emotionally attached to our chickens.
Speaker 2:It was my job in the mornings to go out and feed them before I went to school. When I got off the bus, it was my job to make sure that they had water and feed out there and then to gather eggs, and I did not look at these things as pets. They were things that mama made me do and daddy made me do. But in 2016, when I got reintroduced to chickens again, it was a whole different ballgame and it's probably going to be that way for you. But remember throughout all of this that we're talking about think about what you want to incorporate in your coop and run. Think about where you are. If you live in the city, find out from your city government on what you're allowed to have and then use that as your guide.
Speaker 2:Just make sure that your chickens are safe, that they're pinned. While it's well vetted it's not gonna be real drafty. You don't want to get a lot of cold wind going through in a winter. And depending on where you live will also help tell you what kind of chickens that you're gonna get. If you live up in the high northern parts of the US, you want some winter hardy chickens. And when I say about winter hardy chickens, chickens that have good fluffy feathers, that have smaller cones, are winter hardy chickens.
Speaker 2:Summer chickens are, you know, long-legged chickens and not a lot ton of feathers around them and got big old cones. And the cone in the wattle serves as radiator, just like the radiator in your automobile. Blood circulates through there, the cone in the water. The blood is very close to the surface air and the air helps cool their bodies down with that blood circulating through their cones and wattles. So you can see in the wintertime if it's freezing outside, you know 0, 5, 10 degrees and you have that blood circulating through there. That can really cool the chicken off a lot. And we want to guard against that because chickens can be subject to frostbite. Now don't get me wrong. Frostbite is not necessarily a subject of temperature as much it is moisture. You have a lot of moisture inside your coop. That's when you can get a frostbite in the winter, because frostbite is gonna be ice crystals that form on the exterior of them and it actually kills the cells that are in the wattles or in their comb. So you want to again think about your coop. Make sure it's going to be built the way that you want it to build.
Speaker 2:If you guys have any questions, please let me know. I'm happy to answer them. You can find me at Send Lot Backyard Chickens and Videos Chickens Every Day on my podcast. If you like me, just drive down the road and listen to podcasts. I hope this has helped you some. I hope that you're going to enjoy your chicken adventure. It is a ton of fun to do. Learn and grow, especially if you have young ones out there. They can learn and grow with you. Don't be afraid to jump into this hobby. It is a ton of fun and you get more back into it than what you get.
Speaker 1:So until the next time.
Speaker 2:See you guys again soon. Bye-bye, hello friends, and I hope you guys are enjoying the episodes that I put together and I'd love to hear from you to be able to get more ideas I put together and I'd love to hear from you to be able to get more ideas. But, as you can imagine, doing this is not free. So if you could find it in your heart at some point to maybe think about wanting to support the show a buck or two I mean, that's not a big deal but if that's something you would consider doing, you can go to any of the episodes from your podcast app.
Speaker 2:I personally use Apple Podcast app. Scroll down, click on support the show and if you do, I'll give you a shout out on the show and again, I will answer and read and answer your questions on the show as well. Or you could just simply go to chickenseverydaybuzzsproutcom that chickens plural every day, all one word b buzzsproutcom, and it would be very helpful. Believe it or not, I have equipment that I need to upgrade. I pay a monthly fee for the podcast service. I pay a monthly fee for the editing software that I use, so anyway, I thought I would bring this to your attention and if it's something that you would consider doing, I would be eternally grateful. Thank you, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:That's all we have time for today. I really hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast. Be sure to watch our videos. So, on behalf of my Papa, gary, and me, sylvie, thanks for listening.
