Starting Chickens

Getting started with chickens

This is not the guide to getting started; it is merely how we got started with chickens here at Tail Recursive Farm.

Our initial foray centers around egg-laying hens so what we did will vary from those looking to raise meat birds.

Do you legally have the ability to have chickens at your residence?

Town law, HOA covenants, and other entities can restrict your ability to raise chickens, either outright banning it or capping the number of chickens, the offsets from property lines, and other sometimes onerous requirements.

We are closer to a rural setting and have just shy of 4 acres (~1.5 hectares) to work with, so no restrictions other than being a good neighbor.

Do you have a minimum amount of space?

A hen house / coop has a couple principles to start from and allow the design to follow from there.

  1. Predator proofing - animals that like to each chickens are wily!
    • Any entries should be secured against clever paws. We have found carabiners through latches are robust against non-human limbs.
    • A skirt and buried fencing to deter digging. We buried our hardware cloth down 6 inches under soil level. We have not seen attempts to dig, but we still have added random farm debris around the base of the coop to further deter interested diggers.
    • Hardware cloth (not chicken wire) is a sturdy material. We used 1/2" hardware cloth, 6' wide, 100' long. We built ours with 2 sides of wood (the coop is attached to an overhang against the barn) and 2 sides open with hardware cloth (the west and north sides). Any larger-sized holes and you risk predator paws reaching in and tearing off parts of chickens, which isn't great for their well-being.
  2. Flock size
    • Chickens are social! Don't plan on a single bird.
    • Typical suggestions are 2 eggs per 3 birds per day, on average, from spring to fall. However, our hens laid through the winter (1 egg per day average) their first year, with no forcing (no artificial lighting or any shenanigans on our part).
  3. Space needs
    • Within the coop, recommendations are 3 square feet of space per hen.
    • The roosting bar should allow ~1 foot per hen (more for bigger breeds)
    • One nesting box per 3-4 chickens is often recommended. We actually just let the hens build a nest in a corner opposite the roosting bar, behind the feed bucket. No construction necessary.
    • In the chicken run, 8-10 square feet per hen is recommended.
    • In the chicken run, plan on a fence plus bird netting to keep your domestic flock separated from your native birds and curious dogs on the loose. We have some old welded wire fencing we used to enclose the run, with some black plastic bird netting over the top.
    • We have half the run covered in a thick layer of wood chips where the garden and kitchen scraps get added at the north end, turned towards the south end and piled up. When we clean the coop out (see Deep Litter Method below), we'll combine with the run's compost in a heap elsewhere.

Other considerations

  1. Feed needs
    • Chickens need daily fresh clean water. We like a 5-gallon bucket hanging with water nipples on the bottom for the hens to peck at. We found waterers on the ground got dirty every day from their kicking and scratching. We also don't have many days below freezing; when it did get cold enough, a fresh bowl of water each day while the nipples were frozen was enough.
    • Laying hens need a feed formulated for laying (higher calcium mostly) We have a local farmer who makes really good layer feed.
    • Food scraps and garden waste During the winter when our vermicompost setup is hibernating (worms and black soldier flies aren't too active then), we feed most kitchen scraps to the birds, in the run.
    • Additional calcium and grit Chickens need small sized grit (like sand) to help with digestion. If they don't have access to gritty dirt in their run, adding some periodically will help We save the egg shells, cook them in the oven after we bake/roast in the residual heat, then grind them up to sprinkle in the run as additional calcium. Our feed has high calcium rates as well.
  2. Cleanliness
    • If the coop or run smells bad, you don't have enough carbon (wood chips, straw, etc).
    • We have had great success with the Deep Litter Method: we bank a large amount of carbon in the coop and run. A couple times a week (mostly by sight of large amounts of poo or smell) we turn the carbon to aerate the piles and spread things out. Especially during the winter, there's a hot composting effect that offsets the chill a bit for the ladies. Every 6-12 months (again based on smell mostly), remove all the bedding to a hot compost pile and re-bed with fresh carbon.
    • Ventilation is very important. Above the highest point should have an outflow for coop air and down around the floor should be an inflow for fresh air, but there shouldn't be drafts. Adjustable vents can be used to mitigate really cold temperatures.
  3. Temperature
    • Chickens mostly do well in cold temperatures, as long as they can stay dry.
    • Hot days are the most challenging to keep them cool
      • Cold water in their waterer helps
      • Wetting down some dirt
      • Digging a small hole to find cooler dirt to lay in
      • Plenty of shade
  4. Eggs
    • If you don't wash them (just wipe off the feathers and gunk), they can stay on the counter for a couple weeks.
    • If you wash them, the protective coating (or bloom) comes off and they need to be put in the fridge
    • You can store excess eggs in the freezer for leaner times.
    • You can dehumidify eggs (if you can do it over 165F) for later cooking
    • You can pickle eggs for later eating as well (with pickling lime AKA lime water). 2+ years of viability! No electricity required! Not attractive to rodents!

What chickens to get

Most breeds of chicken fall into one of three categories: good layers, good for meat, and hybrid (pretty good at both).

We started with pullets (juvenilles about 8 weeks old) that could immediately be in the coop and run. Granted, it was August so temperatures were well-suited to keeping the birds happy. Younger chicks often require a more controlled environment until they can be left to the elements, but this requires additional setup which may not be ideal for starting out.

There are as many opinions as there are breeds for what kind to get. We liked our local breeder and have had good success with her hens. We would recommend heritage and rare breeds because diversity is important to maintain, if you can. Growing what lots of neighbors are growing is also a viable strategy - lots of shared experiences to bond over and grow your sense of community as well.

Cost of raising chickens

The fixed costs to start will be figuring out how to house and protect your flock. We used a covered corner on the outside of the barn to protect two sides of the coop. We purchased the 100' of hardware cloth for ~$150, knowing we needed it for other projects as well. 30' of fencing for the run was found on Craigslist for $15 and bird netting for ~$35.

The water nipples are a couple dollars plus a 5 gallon bucket.

The hens were purchased from a local lady for $10 per hen. We should get 4-6 years of productive egg laying and rich compost from them.

We get our feed in 50lb bags for ~$45 per bag. These last us about a month in the winter (when we feed them more to keep them warmer) and almost two months in the warmer months as they forage more in the run for bugs, garden scraps, etc, for our three ladies. To be honest, I could probably get more precise with feeding rations but 3-5 scoops with our metal cup seems to keep the hens plump and the eggs coming.

All told, we're probably around $200 for setup and ~$45 per month variable costs at this point. We'll start cycling new pullets in every year or two as the older hens cycle out.

A dozen commodity eggs are currently $3.50 (of unknown quality). So ~57 eggs from the hens will offset the fixed costs. 20 eggs per hen takes about 30 days. To offset the feed costs, we need ~22 eggs a month; the first year we should expect ~45 eggs per month (30 days * 1.5 eggs per day).

Reasons to raise chickens

Our reasons for raising chickens include:

  • Showing our kids where food comes from
  • Controlling the quality of nutrition in the eggs and birds
  • Objecting to commodity egg production techniques
  • Enjoying watching the flock (chicken TV - thanks to Sean at Edible Acres among others for highlighting that pleasure)
  • Rich compost in the spring
  • Delightful eggs

Way down at the bottom is to save money; we're fortunate that the financial impact of raising chickens isn't making or breaking our ability to put food on the table.

Chicken Coop / Run 2023

End of 2021

1.) Determining your overall "why" for your farm 2.) Creating your lifestyle calendar 3.) Creating your community calendar 4.) Enumerating your market 5.) Developing your production calendar 6.) Building and financing your capital budget 7.) Writing your "production cases" (this one is a really big deal) 8.) Extracting your staffing needs and levels from your farm stories 9.) Developing your schedule plans 10.) Integrating all of the above into a master budget and P&L 11.) Developing your operations manuals

August 2021 update

We survived the first month!

Since moving in 6 July, we've settled into a bit of a routine (eventually, that is).

We've also added a puppy to the mix! Meet Charlie Coconut:

First Week Down!

We survived the first week!

Move in on the 6th of July went well overall. Brian came down early to help load the truck, Joey and Brenda joined later at the farm to help unload, and CD and the kids pulled their respective weight getting everything on and off the truck.

One surprise was the front storm door was propped open to help with bringing furniture in; the weight of the door was apparently too much and ripped a chunk of the door framing from around the door off the house! We propped the storm door up and I drove some long screws in along the door hinge side to provide extra support when the storm door is propped open. Not a big deal, ultimately, but also not a great start to our residence.

Otherwise, first impressions are that the sellers left the place in pretty good shape! The barn is "clean" for a barn, the cherry trees are overflowing with fruit. Apples, figs, grapes, pears and prunes are developing despite the heat extremes seen (112F the week prior!), and the house was clean and ready for move-in.

The property

Some of the first activities on the land have been:

  • learning how the irrigation well/pump work and getting the pods situated to water some of the existing trees. With as hot and dry as its been, we wanted to give the trees a little refreshment while we figured out the process.
  • removed dead branches from the cherry, apple, and magnolia trees
  • removed European holly and English ivy from around a hazel in the back of the pasture; removed some dead branches as well
  • picked a lot of cherries and didn't make a dent in what was still on the tree!

We did a little digging in the arena to see what we'd be working with. It appears that we have about 4 inches of sand and turkey grit on top of the local clay. Maybe an inch is loose sand while the next 3 inches are hardened. I took a small hoe to that hard portion and was barely making a dent. A jackhammer bit proved more effective in breaking the hardened portion up; the bit is not friendly to manual use though! There is a pickaxe that I believe will be the nice middle ground for breaking up the hardened sand for removal.

The outstanding question is where to put it all! I believe the material will be useful for chickens and other fowl for use in their gizzards. But do we need ~150 tons of it? Perhaps a sandbox of some sort for play.

Morning walks

I've been walking the pasture most mornings with a hoe in hand, knocking down and shrubs or noxious weeds (like tansy ragwort). Occasionally one of the boys will rise and join me; that is a pleasant way to connect with them.

Wildlife

Surprisingly little to report! Barn swallows, little song birds like nut hatches, a red-tailed hawk and maybe a bald eagle (a nest does exist closer to the river so we assume it was). A deer or two in the morning and evenings running through the pasture.

The property is not close to running water - the Willamette is over a mile away down hill, with a busy road leading uphill to our land.

We see evidence of ground squirrel, mole, vole, or other burrowing animal. Not sure just yet which.

Insects are pretty minimal; hopefully pesticides and insecticides aren't the cause. Some hornets, lots of pollinators like bees, ants and beetles. Could probably stand to look more thoroughly though.

So far no snakes or other reptiles nor amphibians. We hope that adjusting the hydrology of the site will increase available moisture and provide some riparian-like habitat for them. The bottom of the pasture is more lush than higher parts so it seems that if we can hold more of the rains higher in the landscape, there will be more micro-climates with higher moisture available for those species that thrive there. Trees getting established will help water infiltrate deeper into the ground as well.

The neighborhood

Met several neighbors and received some wonderful summer squash from one. I've revived the sourdough starter that has lived in the fridge the last few weeks. Cooler mornings (mid-high 50s) give me a baking window where I can offset the oven heat with outside air. Hoping to share some rounds and spread goodwill!

The climate

We've not needed to run more than the ceiling fans with the rare exception upstairs when the boys get ready for bed. Daytime temperatures have reached the high 80s, low 90s but we have a lovely mature red maple and magnolia tree shading the western side of the house. The south side is a bit more exposed that I'd like; will look to introduce some shade there in the coming years.

The house does have heat pumps to help cool things off if necessary.

Wrapping up

We've mostly finished unpacking; all the major elements of furniture and layout are done. Now comes decoration, unpacking suitcases, and trying to learn the new kitchen utensil layout!

All in all the move and settling in have gone as smoothly as we could have hoped. Relishing the idyllic moments watching the boys run around the property, swinging lazily in the hammock with CD, and performing small yard work and pasture tasks.

We know full well that more work is coming! We expect these first 3-5 years to be the most eventful as we establish systems of working in the garden and pasture, with an eye towards a "small efforts, consistently applied" mantra for the long term management.

Until then, we are happy making this place our home and getting settled in.

Similarity in Water For Any Farm and Erlang

I'm making my way through Water For Any Farm and had a nice moment of déjà vu.

When I started programming in Erlang I loved how my mind got bent by the "Let It Crash" philosophy. The basic idea is that, rather than programming defensively and trying to account for all possible errors, write the "happy path" code and handle errors at a higher level. This technique can greatly simplify the code that "does the work" while error handling can be delegated to other areas of the program (read more about The Zen of Erlang).

In WFAF, Mark Shepard shows the limits of the Keyline design when it comes to landscapes that have "abnormal" features. In fact, Shepard says, "abnormal" features are the norm! And we should design around that fact!

"Let it crash" is similarly opinionated: things will crash, whether it is invalid data from the outside world, 3rd party services failing in unexpected ways, hitting timeouts that should never be hit, or any number of unanticipated or undocumented errors. When you embrace "Let it crash" and design programs around the fact that things will fail, the resulting code is often structured in significantly different ways compared to "traditional" structures.

At Tail Recursive Farm, we aim to shape our systems to the land (and how water interacts with it) versus imposing our systems onto the land (as industrial agriculture might). We can't beat the Earth into submission; We are Earth. We wake up as Earth. We eat Earth. We breathe Earth. All we know is Earth. All of our systems and processes we put in place will be rooted in this fact.

Visions for TRF

With closing coming up soon (May 20th) but a slightly uncertain possession date (probably early July but…), it has been fun to think about what Tail Recursive Farm could be.

While I tend to get lost in the potential, Christina is much more practical and wanting a plan with concrete steps to getting started. Hopefully we'll find the middle ground to keep a vision that drives use while having a plan to direct next steps to get there!

One aspect of this adventure that we do seem to agree on is using the farm for good within our local community. There are no bootstraps being pulled here. We are in the fortunate position of having a sizable inheritance to use on a down payment; without this the monthly payment would be outside of our financial comfort zone.

Because of this, however, we do not have a pressure to monetize the farm in a meaningful way. If we can generate enough income from it to cover the mortgage, that would be welcome; it is not a goal, however.

I think, right now, we want to establish a "traditional" garden, initially, that can provide for a large portion of our nutritional needs while we setup parts of the pasture into a food forest or silvopasture setup. The goal being to establish a large base of perennial production for the coming years (decades and centuries) that relies on little to no irrigation.

We know that much of the Americas were tended by the Indigenous cultures that lived there for millennia. Can we use their blueprint to convert the 3 acres of pasture into some semblance of that past? Can we also re-introduce some of the regional staples into our diet, nourishing ourselves and community with food that has proven to grow here?

Can we also start growing food from warmer regions to our south as climate change brings new challenges to what can grow here? Some say our region could resemble California's Central Valley over the next 60 years. What does a successional plan look like that plans for that kind of change?

At this point, the benchmark for success will not be dollars or profit generated but community nourished.

The beginning

The beginning of our farm journey should start in July!

In the meantime, we're busy reading and planning what it is we want to do on the farm.

Initial planning

First order of business once on the farm will be:

Assess the property

a. Soil tests b. Infrastructure - barn, pasture fencing, gates c. Irrigation well and sprinkler pod system d. Existing tree inventory

Establish garden beds (possible market garden site) for fall crops

Currently the space is a horse arena, approximately 8,000 sqft, and covered in sand, possibly crushed gravel underneath. The boys are interested in what might be the largest private sandbox! So lots of shoveling to remove sand and fill in with soil suitable for annuals. Depending on timing of it all, planting a cover crop to get the soil biology kickstarted for sure; possibly some winter squash if we can get them harvested in time.

Definitely looking at over-wintering garlic, kale, chard, and others that do well in our typically mild winters. No hoop houses or greenhouse yet though so just the hardy stuff!

Prepare southern barn stall(s) for chickens

We'll most likely hold off on getting egg production started until the spring to avoid doing too much at the outset. However, I would like to prepare the stall(s) with laying boxes and chicken wire as appropriate.

The chickens will also be involved in the compost production operation. The raw garden/house/yard wastes will start nearest the stall and work their way west along the inner fence until finished and carted off to the garden (maybe sold eventually). Plans to grow feed for chickens (like millet, corn, sunflower, etc) along the compost flow to minimize inputs required.

Woodchips and other organic matter

Begin searching for sources of organic matter to start compost production and garden beds. These include wood chips, manure, yard and compost from neighbors.