Chicken Corner Archives - Ankeny Hill Farm

So here we are. I gave it a good try with selling chicken eggs the last 3 years but it’s one of those things where you start thinking more and more about downsizing. Every day you go out to feed and you just keep thinking “this isn’t what I planned to do with this property”. You start to despise all the chicken poo everywhere and all the chickens that get out no matter what you do…just pooping on every surface…..Last year we were up to nearly 300 birds! I downsized at the end of the year cutting that number in half, but it’s still a lot.

Being a chicken farmer was never my intention when we moved here in 2016. I had other plans and goals in mind. (read this post Do what you have to do and this one Beginning a Dream) But those other plans couldn’t be realized yet because they cost a lot of money up front that we just couldn’t do yet (I’ll talk more about that in another post). Selling chicken eggs just kind of fell in my lap. I don’t regret getting into it. It makes us a little money when the hens are laying at 60% or more production. I learned a lot, and we gained a lot of wonderful customers that I am so glad I got to meet! (Thank you if you are reading this!!) Selling eggs helped get our name on the map and that’s always a good thing.

But right now? In January? They’ve decided to take a complete nose dive in laying even with my lights on. It’s to be expected at times, but now that I have even more customers than I had this time last year, it makes things even more stressful. I want to have eggs available and not have people waiting too long, but I have orders that probably won’t get filled 2 weeks or so out! Everyone has been understanding, but it is still a weight on my people pleasing mind.

The problem is, eggs don’t make you much money for how much time and money you have to put into it. Plus, if you don’t have a passion for raising chickens, you’re going to get burnt out. Chickens have never been my passion. I started selling eggs to make some extra cash. I enjoy chickens in moderation, but they are super messy, pooping on EVERYTHING, some of them getting out of their pens even if you clip their wings and have high fencing even though they have several acres of pasture to free range on.

Then you have molting times when they stop laying or drastically reduce for a little while, times that illness runs through the flock leaving many dead and costing money in medication and extra supplements. There’s mites and/or lice…. those are fun…again, more money to buy spray or dip to kill the little buggers. Chickens are also easy prey. Thankfully we haven’t had much of a problem with that here, but I’ve heard of many people around us having issues with foxes, raccoons, etc. I would have quit a lot sooner if we had predator issues because generally once a predator finds out you have chickens, they will keep coming back.

You need to buy bedding to keep their coops and nesting boxes clean. That alone is a lot of work and more money if you want to actually keep them clean regularly especially in the winter. You need to rotate the flock by bringing in new chicks and selling off the older hens to keep production up. There’s a lot to it!

Don’t get me wrong. A small flock is pretty easy to take care of, but as you get more and more, the mess and cost just multiplies at exponential rates!

I love clean animals. Ones that don’t like to poop in their stalls. Animals that have more solid poop that is easy to clean up. Animals that don’t spend most of their time in their enclosed stall/coop.

Do you know what animals fall into that category for the most part? Horses and goats. I have both. I’ve had horses nearly all my life and I’ve had goats for the past 3 years. Goats aren’t necessarily my passion either but I do love the 2 does that I have and I love goat milk! Goats have a lot of personality and if they have a good size pasture, they are pretty easy to take care of and they don’t make a mess of their stall too quickly.

Horses. Now horses are my passion. Horses are what I wanted this property for. We finally have the opportunity to move forward with my original dream and so I will be transitioning over to focus on that full time over the course of this year. I won’t stop selling eggs right away and probably not completely. I’ll still have excess eggs to sell at times even with a smaller flock, and I’ll be keeping the 11 ducks I have (I really do enjoy the ducks!) so there will still be duck eggs available. I will probably stop taking orders and definitely won’t be doing deliveries anymore. Any extra eggs available will be set out in the egg stand.

We will still be selling some beef shares each year too. We only butcher 2-4 steer per year so it’s not much but that is something we will continue to do. Cows are messy too by the way…. but mostly not too much work to take care of and you get more bang for your buck once they are butchered and you get lots of delicious beef to put in the freezer!

The cornish cross meat birds we’ve been selling the past 2 years I’m still on the fence whether to continue with those. It really depends on how many people want them. I’ll definitely continue to do some each year for ourselves and probably sell some of them but I don’t think I’ll be doing the quantity I’ve done previously.( By the way, we are taking pre orders for our 2022 Spring batch of pastured chicken right now.)

That’s all I’m going to divulge in this post, so If you would like to see what our big plans are, stay tuned!

Last spring, after we’d been here nearly a year, we bought our first chickens. We happened to have a building that is perfect for a chicken coop/feed storage area. We also had a bunch of old barn wood that was taken off one of the big shops out here since we needed to completely re do the shop. Of course I didn’t want to toss all that neat old wood!

The chicken coop was pretty fun to build. I’ll show you how we did it below. This year I plan on adding to it on the other side so it will be U shaped. I also plan to make better nesting boxes that are easier to get eggs out of. That’s one thing I didn’t plan very well when we built the first part, but we were kind of in a rush to get it done since we had just got our first chicks home.

I love the barn wood look and I am hoping to have enough to use for some other things on the property, and for some country decor.

As you can see, we already had a great structure to work with! I love that those benches are there as it made it super easy to just install plywood over top for the floor. We also used some left over vinyl flooring on top of the plywood for easy cleanup and protect the wood from getting wet.

Next we used some leftover pieces of particle board and other plywood type board to cover the inside walls as well as the top. Then we used some 2×4’s and 2×6’s for the corners and other supports to be able to attach the barn wood on the outside.

Doesn’t that old wood look beautiful? Another project on my list this year is to stain the whole thing. Not a dark stain, just something to make it pop a bit more and protect it from the weather.

And here is the door that I made myself! I was a little bit proud of myself. I had a picture in my head of how I wanted it to look, and thankfully we have a chop saw, so I was able to make the angle cuts. I love it! We didn’t have to go buy any of the wood. These were all pieces of wood that we had lying around. I did have to go buy the chicken wire, door hinges and latches.

Here’s the finished coop. Like I said, this year’s project is to do the same thing to the other side of the bench so the whole coop will be a U shape. I may even make a removable divider so I can separate chickens if need be. I will be sure to make good nesting boxes on the other side that I can actually open up from the end to grab eggs instead of having to reach around the corner through the main doors.

After getting the coop done, we made a very small run on the backside of this shed and cut a small door on the back wall for the chickens to go out. At the moment I am working on expanding their run. Forgive the pictures if they look off. The tree next to that building is pushing it so the building itself is leaning a bit to the left. The chicken run boards are level and straight up and down lol The ground also slopes down a bit so it looks like the run is not level!

A tip I learned when researching before building this, make sure to set the chicken wire or preferably a more sturdy wire, down into the ground a bit so that predators cannot dig underneath. I have some other fencing I need to put around the run in place of the chicken wire, I just haven’t got to it yet! Actually, I am planning on siding the left side of this run so it will only have the right side open. Once I expand the run off to the right, I can remove the chicken wire from that side too.

I would love to just free range our chickens, but both our dogs, that had been doing great around the chickens for months, decided to kill a couple last year, so I’ve been afraid to free range the chickens since. The dogs are fine if I’m out there with them, so I plan on doing some training. I’ll probably keep the dogs inside a couple hours before dark and let the chickens free range in the evening. The nice thing about chickens is they put themselves to bed!

I’ll be sure to post an update once we get the other part of the coop done!

Why I’m Quitting The Chicken Egg Business

Building Our Chicken Coop With Old Barn Wood

Snickerdoodle Frappuccino -Blended Coffee

DIY Bread and Butter Pickles-Canned or Refrigerator

Why I’m Quitting The Chicken Egg Business