Backyard Chickens: Worth It?

My husband and I have had the, ‘chickens would be so cool!’, conversation lots of times over the years. We never really did much about it. We’d buy a book here and there and pretend we were gonna do something about it. Then, a coop went on sale and my husband bought it.

“Just because it was such a good price - I figure we’ll do it eventually, we might as well have it ready to go.”

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Then one Sunday morning in February, “Why don’t we just build it? It looks pretty easy to put together. Then the box wont just be sitting in the driveway.”. Makes sense. Let’s do that.

So we build it, and head to lunch. Lunch conversation makes it’s way to chicken supply needs. What are the basics? Food? Water jugs? Hmm. “Why don’t we head to the supply store and just look around? Maybe grab a few basics.”

I assume by now that you can see where this is going.

By the end of the day, we had 5 Rhode Island Reds.

It’s been 6 months almost to the day, and all five are still alive. Which is a bigger feat than you might think! This isn’t a guide to backyard chickens because I am real far from being an expert - it hasn’t even been a year. It’s more of a, ‘here’s the deal with backyard chickens, and would I do it again’ situation.

We bought hens that were already laying.
Since it was winter in New Jersey, we needed hearty chickens that could handle the cold weather. Neither of us was looking to raise chicks. There happened to be a local farmer who we were able to purchase very young, but already laying hens. We had 5 eggs the next morning, and didn’t have to worry about them in the chilly temps. The downside to this is they’re not what I would call ‘pets’. Since we didn’t get them as babes, there wasn’t really any bonding on their part. WE have the food - THEY want the food. That’s about as far as it goes. Personally, I don’t trust ‘em. They’re too quick and jittery.

They’re not NO work - but there’s way less if you make a plan.
I think a lot of blogs romanticize the idea of backyard chickens as if there’s no work involved. At first, we just had the coop and a tiny, bullshit, chicken-wire fence that was barely held up and wide open on top. This meant that in order to allow them to have time out of the coop, one of us had to literally sit out in the yard with them…for like an hour. Twice a day. Since I typically work from home, that person was me. Why did someone have to supervise? Cause predators, yo! Fox, hawks, there’s tons of critters that want to eat your birds. (Eventually, we built a much bigger area for them to wander in, and put netting over the top to protect them from airborne snatchers and eliminated the time-consuming supervising, while providing a happier life for them. This means all we have to do now is open up the coop door in the morning to let them out, and then close it up at night to keep them safe.). After about three weeks of this original bootleg situation - I was done with the chickens. I felt like a mom who let their kid get a dog after they promised to walk and feed it, but everyday there I was with a poop bag in the rain.

That’s fine. Totally fine.

This takes me to my next point:

Make sure you understand who is doing what, and if you actually have time to do it.
It’s not my husbands fault that the bird-burden fell to me. When we got them, I said that since he was the one who wanted them - he was gonna need to do the work - and he said he of course would. He had every intention of doing just that. The problem? The best intentions don’t always match up with reality of what’s possible. My husband gets up for work at 4:30-45 in the morning. Coaches at his gym from 5:30am-10:00am. Then out working with a residential solar company most of the day. More often than not, I work from home. The chickens get let out and fed after the sun comes up - 6:30 and 7:30am. They’re usually done laying by 9. They eat again mid-day. Let’s do that math. Even though he fully planned on taking on the majority of the responsibility - that wasn’t something that was logistically a possibility given our schedules. One of the biggest pieces of advice I would give to people considering it - make sure you have a come to Jesus talk about who will really be doing what. Not a best-intentions talk. What do each of our schedules really allow each of us to do? Are we both equally on board with this project?

Before we had a solid enclosure and were just using a make-shift chicken wire fence, I had a morning where I lost it. I let them out, fed them, then sat down to eat my breakfast in the 20 minutes before I had to leave for work. I had to be about 60 miles north for a meeting, and the route is one of those - leave in 20 and you’re good…but leave in 30 and you’re fucked with traffic. So I sat down with my food and coffee, pulled up the security camera in the backyard: we had a jailbreak. I went out and tried to wrangle them all back in, but with no structure for walls, and chicken wire that kept falling down - it was feeling virtually impossible. I literally sat down in the backyard, now late for work, and gave up on the whole thing. I felt completely overwhelmed, tricked into getting these things, and mad at myself for going along with it. I was absolutely fuming by the time my husband made it home. I was going out of town that weekend, and by the time I got back there was a structured run surrounding the coop - life got a lot easier after that.

Here you can see the run we built. It was pretty simple: 2” x 4’’s in a rectangle, with wire mesh. Each 8’ section is connected to another 8’ section with hinges. This allows us to easily relocate and reshape it as needed. Eventually I’ll get to the how-to instructions - but if you look at it, it’s not that complicated. Eventually, we covered the entire top with netting because these bitches were escaping through the top - also to protect them from air-borne murderers.

Your yard will be destroyed.
That’s it. It just will. Chickens tare shit up. They rip up the grass and turn a patch of green to brown in a week. We’re not in an area where we can just let them roam willy nilly. They have a 16 x 24 foot area that they can safely wander, and we will let them out to explore the yard for a few hours here and there. We don’t like to keep the grazing area in the same place for too long. Not because of the yard, but because of the birds. We don’t want them walking around on their own shit and mud for days on days. We want them eating grass, and bugs, and all the things that make pastured eggs, pastured eggs. As you can imagine, the fresh spots of grass aren’t infinite. Eventually, most of the yard is pretty beat up. A good solution is to spread grass seed on the newly chickened area after a relocation and use the chicken ‘fertilizer’ to your advantage. We did that once. It worked great. Lush lush lush. Then we never did it again because we got lazy.

Chickens are hilarious.
They move ridiculously. They have moments where you think they’re super smart, and others when they can’t figure out that you have to go around a fence - not through it. They’re pretty entertaining. During the winter/fall, I would sit out by the coop after letting them out in the morning with a cup of coffee and watch them dick around. I can’t do it now because we have a real mosquito situation over the summer - but I’m looking forward to getting back to that little morning ritual. The dog probably is, too. He’s really interested in them, even though they don’t care at all about what he’s doing. They take dust-baths, which I find endlessly entertaining and could honestly watch for hours.

Mid dust bath, which is probably my absolute favorite thing that they do. They literally get in a big pile and roll around in dry dirt and fluff their wings up. It’s hilarious.

You will have an insane amount of eggs.
We have 5 chickens. I would say that 80% of the time, all five lay an egg a day. Sometimes 4. That’s between 28-35 eggs per week. If my husband and I each ate 2 eggs a day, we’d have a surplus of just 7 each week - somehow that never seems to be the case. We’ve got eggs coming out the ass (no pun intended). People do love getting a random dozen, though! Edit: It’s currently December and for the first time we’re experiencing the chickens molting. They lose and regrow their feathers, which takes a ton of energy and puts a major break on egg production. I would say we’ve gone from 5/day to closer to 2 or maybe 3.

Once you get your situation, situated - the work really minimizes.
Now that they’ve got their fully-enclosed area, we really don’t have to spend that much time on them. Let them out in the morning, lock them in at night. Feed ‘em twice. Make sure they have water. Clean the coop weekly, move the run every couple of weeks as needed. I do think that if you’re in an area where you’re not worries about predators, you could probably get away with what larger farms do and just let them come and go from their coop as they please without locking them in. That said, I have friends that did that and their flock got massacred by raccoons. So maybe don’t do that. Edit: A few weeks ago we stopped closing the gate at night. This was partially out of laziness, and partially because we weren’t getting out there early enough to let them out of their coop before they were already getting restless and pecking each-other. Now they can enter and leave as they please, but they don’t have the added protection of a bolted gate. So far, so good.

Colt is much, MUCH, more interested in them than they are in him.

Going on vacation or staying out overnight becomes a little trickier.
While my husband and I going anywhere overnight together has always been a little tricky because of the 130 lb dog we’ve got, the chickens added another layer of complications with that. Now, instead of asking someone just simply come watch the dog (which is pretty easy because he generally just lays around), now they’ve also got chicken responsibilities. For me, the hardest part of that is the evening in the summer. They head into the coop to roost on their own, but they don’t generally do that until the sun goes down - which in the summer can be as late as 8pm. This means that for someone watching them, when they’re day is done, they gotta head back out to the yard and close them up. It’s not a big deal - it’s just another thing. If someone is house-sitting, it’s not that much of an inconvenience, but I suspect it would be for someone you have stopping by. “Hey, I know you’re probably home from work and tired but you wanna swing by my house around 9?”. We tend to consider these types of responsibilities with pets, but I know when it came to the chickens I didn’t really think that much about it. When you bring any animal into your home - or your yard - you have to consider how that is going to impact your lifestyle, because it will.

Really think about it.
I know that a lot of these points seem obvious. Of course you would have these things to consider. But honestly, I know other people who have a similar experience to ours. You have to realize that you’re getting pets. Even though they may not be ‘pets’ in the sense that they won’t hang out on your couch. It’s a responsibility that you’re taking on, every day, for years. You have to approach it with the same seriousness as you would if you were going out to get a dog. We, in my opinion, did not do this. ‘Hey, get some chickens! You get eggs, and they’re so easy, and it’s super fun!"‘, doesn’t really tell you the truth. Have a real conversation about do you really want this responsibility, is it worth it for you, do you want this responsibility for years? Think it through. They’re living things, not egg machines.

But is it worth $7/week?
I say $7 because that’s probably what you’re looking at for store-bought pasture-raised or organic eggs. Here’s the thing. For me? No. It’s awesome having eggs from your yard. We’ve probably saved around $200 on not buying eggs since we started - but we’ve also probably spent $140 on food for them, and more money on other supplies. So really, it’s not a windfall of savings. I’m not going to get rid of them tomorrow - but when they drift off into the sunset in a few years, we will not be replacing them. If I could do it again? I probably wouldn’t. That’s not to say that I regret it. It’s definitely been an experience, and something that I think is pretty cool to do for a bit - but I don’t think I can say I would have regretted not getting chickens. It’s not that big if a deal having them - I’m just not super jazzed on it.

Should you get backyard chickens?
I have no idea. It totally depends on your situation. If you don’t have anywhere for them to walk around - no. If you hate flies and want your backyard to be a super pretty place - no. Think about it just like you would bringing any other animal into your home. The problem, I think, is that the idea of backyard chickens got so blogged to death that it seems so easy and fun and romantic. Sure, it’s cool. It’s pretty funny. We’ve gotten some good laughs and some great eggs out of the deal. It was also a lot at times - and occasionally felt overwhelming to me - since I was the one primarily responsible for them and before we had a legitimate housing situation, there were a lot of escapes, and a few meltdowns.

So no, they’re not that hard to manage and there are plenty of reasons to have chickens. Just talk about it, break it down, have your come to Jesus talk where you honestly address who will do what, and if that’s what you want to do, and then either continue to buy your eggs from the store - or go for it and get those birds!