Chicken/egg question

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robinjopo said:
I definitely go in the Red on my chickens and bees.

Next year I will harvest another hive so I should have about 9 extra frames of honey. I definitely go in the hole on chickens by selling a dozen eggs for $2. They don't eat that much feed durung thw summer because there are so many goodies in the woods.
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I don't expect to make money on raising chickens for meat or eggs. Last year we let the meat chickens free range so the feed cost was much less. We also didn't care for the meat either. So this year we're pen raising them. They go through about 20 pounds of feed a day.
We sell our eggs for $2.50/doz. We probably break even on the laying hens. They free range only during fall, winter and spring.
 
Arcticdude said:
I don't expect to make money on raising chickens for meat or eggs. Last year we let the meat chickens free range so the feed cost was much less. We also didn't care for the meat either. So this year we're pen raising them. They go through about 20 pounds of feed a day.
We sell our eggs for $2.50/doz. We probably break even on the laying hens. They free range only during fall, winter and spring.
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20# per day. How many do you have?
 
No kidding, 20 lbs/day? I know ones raised only for meat grow fast, and hardly walk around. But that's a lot of feed... 20 lbs should feed 20 chickens for a week.

And $2/dozen is really cheap, by me local free-range eggs are $4-5/dozen. And young roosters sound horrible for a month or two while they learn to crow. They sound like a dying lamb in a snowstorm!

Bees are really expense in the first years. Most people kill some colonies. And they don't do well configuring the hives for honey production. But once you get it going, a hive should make 50-200 lbs of honey per year, and a pound of honey sells for $8-16. Region variation on yield as well as good years/bad. And splits are a bonus.
 
Robin, I could have used a better example. How about "a liberal the moment Trump won election" (or RE-election!). Talk about a monster cry baby...
 
TexasFreedom said:
No kidding, 20 lbs/day? I know ones raised only for meat grow fast, and hardly walk around. But that's a lot of feed... 20 lbs should feed 20 chickens for a week.

And $2/dozen is really cheap, by me local free-range eggs are $4-5/dozen. And young roosters sound horrible for a month or two while they learn to crow. They sound like a dying lamb in a snowstorm!

Bees are really expense in the first years. Most people kill some colonies. And they don't do well configuring the hives for honey production. But once you get it going, a hive should make 50-200 lbs of honey per year, and a pound of honey sells for $8-16. Region variation on yield as well as good years/bad. And splits are a bonus.
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It's amazing how much these birds eat and how fast they grow. I have to keep raising their feeder otherwise they'll just lay there and eat.
 
AD, it's worse than that. You have to slaughter them at the right time (can't remember, 8 or 12 weeks?). They won't live 6 months, they die of heart attacks or something. They can barely even stand up after a while. But they sure put on the meat quickly.
 
TexasFreedom said:
AD, it's worse than that. You have to slaughter them at the right time (can't remember, 8 or 12 weeks?). They won't live 6 months, they die of heart attacks or something. They can barely even stand up after a while. But they sure put on the meat quickly.
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We're going to butcher them at 12 weeks, in 10-12 more days. I think some of the ones we lost died of heart attack.
 
My roofers were all Mexican and they really liked my pollos. After a "slight" language barrier, I realized one of them wanted to buy one and another wanted fertilized eggs for his hen to lay.

I bartered my baby rooster which needed to go for shingles, the wrap and nails. Thought I would spruce up the coops a little.
 
Cleaned coop and carried 5/5gal buckets of sand and was so sweaty. Usually that's no biggie, but today it was hot.

We have a feels like 100 now. I love the heat. Makes my achy bones feel good.

I haven't cleaned the coop as often as usual and found some little worms. Didn't look like maggots but were probably some type of insect that eats poop. I feels guilty about being a slacker.
 
We took the meat chickens in to be butchered on Monday. Out of 23 birds we got around 140 pounds of meat.
We cleaned the coop out today. Pretty easy job; I just put the tractor bucket up to the door and shovel it in, drive over to the garden and dump it in a pile along with the manure from the corral. Next spring I'll spread it out and till it all under. It was about 50 degrees today so it's comfortable working weather.
 
The heat and drought has caused two terrible weeks of eggs production. No rain in forecast either.

After 8 more days, the temps are going to plummet into the 80s.

I live the heat as long as we get rain.
 
Went out this morning and heard a chick. Tomorrow is the due date, so I had to go out and repair the apartment and make a nest etc. Only one so far. Black.

Son is looking for a cool name. Any ideas? Already had a black Raven and Tonto so they are out.
 
When I went to check the chicks and mom in the apartment, the bottom had a large hole. The water damage from the main coop has damaged the apartment.

Spent my morning disassembling the apartment and trying to patch any holes going into the main coop.

It's a warm day and didn't take long for me to realize I need a helper. Looks like the 2x4 we ran across the back side was a bad one. It rotted, therefore the walls and flooring rotted to. Going to be too much for me to do alone. I will clean all the sand out and scrub in down so that it won't smell like poop. Hopefully we can have it done in one day so they will be able to roost in the coop.

We are going to have good weather so now I just have to find a worker. Sorry, I'm tired and rambling.
 
robinjopo said:
When I went to check the chicks and mom in the apartment, the bottom had a large hole. The water damage from the main coop has damaged the apartment.

Spent my morning disassembling the apartment and trying to patch any holes going into the main coop.

It's a warm day and didn't take long for me to realize I need a helper. Looks like the 2x4 we ran across the back side was a bad one. It rotted, therefore the walls and flooring rotted to. Going to be too much for me to do alone. I will clean all the sand out and scrub in down so that it won't smell like poop. Hopefully we can have it done in one day so they will be able to roost in the coop.

We are going to have good weather so now I just have to find a worker. Sorry, I'm tired and rambling.
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Are you using pressure treated lumber for your floor joists, and anything else that comes in contact with the ground? I'm not sure that sand is the best medium to use on your coop floor. It may hold all the moisture in against the wood. We use pine shavings or straw on the floor in our coops and the wood is always dry when we clean out the coop. Only takes about 15 minutes to clean the floor too.
 
A couple days ago one of our ducks went missing. I looked around and found it dead and frozen inside of a 5 gallon bucket of water. Appearently it got in the bucket and couldn't get out. I chipped it out of the ice and got busy doing something else and the dog ran off with the carcass. He probably buried it somewhere.
 
Had to take son to his Best Buddies meeting last night. I had to leave coop door open till 9:45 . I was terrified for the babies. They made it inside, but couldn't get up into a box. I left them on the floor with the mom.

When you have animals, it's a 24/7 job. Many don't understand that.
 
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