Raising chickens is a wise investment in your survival, especially if you are now living on your rural retreat. We live in the deep southern United States, so it would be much different the farther north you live. I can only speak out of my own experience, so you will have to take what I say, combine it with all the other things you have read, heard and experienced on the subject, and modify it for where you live.
Housing
You need to have plenty of room for the chickens to live. If your chickens free range every day, less pen space is required. We keep our chickens in 10’x10’Xx6’ dog pens with chain link fence. The roof is recycled roofing tin, attached with recycled electric fence wire. In a pen that size, I keep one rooster and about 12 hens. If they never free ranged, they would need about twice that much room.
Down here, we don’t worry about winter temperatures, since winter is very mild and short. In the winter, we give them a wind break by tying either roofing tin, recycled plastic feed sacks or other tarp-type material onto the sides. We have chickens that are cold and heat tolerant, though the heat is the biggest concern.
We have a dog, which is essential to the life of the farm. He stays in his own 10’x10’x6’ dog pen with metal roofing, while the chickens are out free ranging. When the chickens are shut up in their pens, he roams free, checking for skunks, possums, other dogs, etc. He keeps them from digging under the dog/chicken pens.
Nesting Boxes
The hens need a quiet, dark place to lay their eggs. Five gallon buckets make wonderful nests. Wash it out well, then cut a hole in the lid, with a lip, to hold the nesting material inside. Put the lid on the bucket. Make sure it’s dry inside, then put in some straw, grass, leaves, etc. It has to be refilled often, since the hens throw the hay about, to try to camouflage themselves. If you wish, a nesting box can be made from wood or metal. Dimensions and building plans can be found in various places.
Feed
In a SHTF scenario, chickens could be fed table scraps, corn or wheat, and free ranging. While it’s ideal to keep commercial feed in front of them, they can make do with whatever they get to eat. They get a lot of green grass and minerals and bugs by free ranging. I haven’t tried to feed them without commercial feed. There are recipes around for substitutes for the essential nutrients, but I haven’t tried them. I do know that my chickens are healthier and happier when they free range, and it saves a lot of feed (money). Some people don’t want the chicken poop all over the yard, but chickens can be trained to stay out of certain areas. If you have compost bins around your trees and borders around your flower beds, you might want to make them tall enough that the chickens can’t scratch out everything. Compost and chickens make a great combination, since the chickens are more than happy to aerate the compost for you, and they get lots of bugs and other nutrients from it. They do not, however, discriminate against flowerbeds- that’s one way to find out which flowers are edible; the chickens must be trained to leave them alone by firmly and consistently being shoed away. They also like grapes, blueberries, pears and apples, so beware. Remember, they have a very small brain and a very short memory. They operate mostly on habit.
Chickens love cracked corn. You can lead them like puppies with corn chops, so keep it on hand, but try to not feed them too much— fat hens don’t lay too well. When training them to come back into their cage after free ranging, throw some corn inside the pen. If you can get a few to come eat the corn, they will call the others. After a while, they will come to you when you come out to the back yard, expecting to be fed. When training them to follow you into the pen, it’s helpful to pull their feed about 2 hours before close, then lead them back in with corn and feed. If you are fattening some to eat, such as roosters, feed them only corn. It will fatten them up like nothing else.
Roosters
Having chickens is a (fun) time commitment. You must maintain your relationship with them. If you are not out and about with your rooster enough, he will think you do not belong near his pen or hens, and will attack you. You must consistently and firmly pick him up if he attacks someone, to show him that he may be boss of the hen house, but not of you.
Having a rooster has many benefits. He is very protective of his flock, and when they are free ranging, he is constantly on the lookout for dogs, hawks, owls, possums, etc. Often he will send out a warning call if he isn’t familiar with some sound, and all the hens will hunker down and be very still and quiet. If you have a big problem with varmints, I suppose you couldn’t free range. It is important to keep the roosters’ spurs trimmed. I personally do not like the idea of removing them, since I do want him to be able to fight, but I don’t want him spurring me or my family or the hens, so I believe in trimming them, similar to trimming a cat’s nails. I pay attention to the phases of the moon, not to worship it, but to be able to understand phenomenon in the physical world. It is a good thing to trim the rooster spurs close to the new moon, to cause him as little pain and blood as possible. If you cause him pain, he will cause you pain. It’s best to do the trimming after he’s gone on the roost. Take a file, nail clippers, scissors, or a veterinarians’ nail trimmer, and another person with you into the chicken pen. Take the rooster off the roost, tuck him under your arm and hold his feet, one in each hand. The other person should trim off his spurs. Cut close to the end, then round it off. Next month do it again, and so on, until they are shorter. Work as quickly as possible, then put him back on the roost. If you do draw blood, don’t worry, it will dry and he will forget. The next morning, he will be crowing his cheerful wake up call just like always.
Hens
It is a good thing to have a broody hen to be able to maintain your flock if you have no electricity. However, if allowed to free range, a broody hen will often make a nest in some secluded spot, away from your peering eyes. Just follow her when she goes to lay, or watch where she comes from when she cackles, to be able to find her eggs. I haven’t had a hen hatch any eggs, since they are less people friendly when they do. A broody hen is much more self-sufficient, which is a good fit for a survival situation.
Hatching Eggs
I started out with Rhode Island Red chickens, since they are supposed to be a dual purpose chicken (eggs and meat), and my husband liked them. The Rhode Island Red roosters tend, however, to be aggressive. I then tried some Barred Rocks, in a different pen, while keeping the Rhode Island Reds as well. The Barred Rocks are much more docile, and make better meat chickens. And they lay as well as a Rhode Island Red. I am going to try some Buff Orpingtons now. They are supposed to always be broody, though the Barred Rocks are sometimes broody. It is possible to take the eggs off of one hen and give them to another that is broody, so a Buff Orpington or broody Barred Rock can hatch Rhode Island Red eggs. It is important if you want to hatch chicks to have a heritage breed, which all three of these breeds are. A heritage breed reproduces well, generation after generation. It is ok to in-breed chickens, though it is better if you don’t. If you are worried about it, you can get a new rooster from time to time to introduce new blood. Hopefully, you can find one of the same type, to keep your flock of the same breed. In a survival situation, it is a very good thing to start with as healthy chicks as possible, so that they will require much less maintenance with limited resources. Free range eggs make stronger, faster growing chicks. I have hatched caged eggs and also free range eggs, and much, much prefer the free range eggs. I won’t go into the details of how to hatch eggs, as the instructions are readily available. It’s a lot of work to replicate the conditions that a hen provides.
Raising Chicks
When the chicks first hatch, it is important to get them into a brooder box. You can buy fancy expensive brooders that work very well. Or you can make your own, if just for a few chicks, from a cardboard box and light. Put a thermometer in the area by the light. The ideal temperature for very young chicks is 95° to 100°F. Have an area where they can get away to cool off— a long narrow box is a good shape. In my commercial brooders, I have a red fabric homemade curtain to separate the heated area from the “cool” area. They can easily go under it to regulate their temperature. You will learn the difference between a frantic “I’m too cold” chirp, and a calm, happy chirp. If you hear the frantic chirp, and see them hovered under the light for a long time, you might put in a bigger wattage of light bulb and drape a towel over the box, being careful to not touch the light with the towel. It is very important to keep the box clean. In a homemade brooder, you have to change the paper out at least twice a day. A paper towel is a good choice to cover the floor, placed over newspaper to be absorbent. Newspaper is too slick for the chicks to walk on. The commercial brooders save a lot of cleaning by putting the absorbent newspaper under a net wire floor.
Chicks can be started on straight corn meal instead of commercial chick starter, but when they get to be about 3-4 months old, they will need lot more foods with more protein. Always make sure that the feed and water are clean, and make sure that they are always available. If you are using plastic water troughs, add a few drops of vinegar to the water. It helps to clean the digestive track of the little chicks, though free range eggs hatch healthier chicks that don’t have too much trouble with that. Baby chicks can’t free range. They are so vulnerable to cats, varmints and older chickens. If I was having the hen raise them, she would stay in a small pen and not free range during that time.
Problems
This isn’t going to cover nearly all the problems, but here are a few.
Cannibalism. This is where the birds (young or old) peck each other and draw blood. I used to have problems with this, until I found out that they only do this when they are terribly deficient in meat. Free range chickens get plenty of bugs and small creatures for protein, so they don’t peck each other. Whenever I have any kind of meat or animal bones that I don’t want, I feed it to the chickens. The bones can either be beaten up with a hammer, if you have a strong arm, or pressure cooked for an hour or more in vinegar water.
Thin Egg Shells. This is the result of a calcium deficiency in the hens’ diet. The cheap and easy way to fix this is to save all your egg shells after using the eggs, wash and dry them, and grind them up. Feed this to the hens. The more effective solution is to buy oyster shells and feed to them. I add both to their feed. It saves a broken egg if you happen to drop one or two.
Blood spots in the eggs. This is the result of bacteria in the water. Always keep fresh water available to them. Better yet, save your rain water to give them— they prefer it. Add a little vinegar to their water, if it is in a plastic container. Vinegar will rust metal containers, which will produce more blood spots in the eggs. A simple solution: cut a hole in a milk carton and put some water in it, and add a little vinegar.
Ant Killer
Here in the south, we have these wonderful (yeah right) creatures called Fire Ants. I have yet to find any way to get rid of them other than to put fire ant killer on them. I have to be really careful about it around the chickens, though, because it will kill chickens. It is poison, wrapped around cornmeal. If it is put down in the ant mound, the chickens won’t bother it, but heaped on top, the chickens will eat it before the ants get to it.
You have to love the chickens to do a good job raising them. Mine get every little scrap of meat or vegetable I can save for them. They love carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, apples and pears, peaches, etc. And they fight over any little scrap of meat. They love anything made with flour (whole wheat or white), corn, oats, etc. They will clean up termites if given the chance (so I hear). Chickens are so much fun to keep. They are an investment in my sanity during a SHTF scenario since I enjoy watching them. Farm raised eggs also make a wonderful cash crop. You would not believe the demand among people who aren’t quite ready to take the plunge into farm living, but want the best of both worlds. Before my first batch of chickens hatched, I had people asking me for eggs. I have planned to make a little sign for our road, advertising eggs for sale; I might get to that if I ever have any excess eggs. Store bought eggs simply do not compare with farm eggs. The shells are thicker and the yolks are usually a dark, deep orange. The eggs have 4-6 times as much vitamin D, 1/3 less cholesterol, 1/4 less saturated fat, 2/3 more Vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more Vitamin E, and 7 times more beta carotene than caged eggs. And no one will ever be able to convince me that caged chickens are happier than my free range chickens, and happy animals make happy meat and eggs.