Keeping laying hens is an excellent idea for preppers, if you have the space and ability to do so. They are an excellent source of nutrition, particularly fats, which can be problematic to store in a grid-down or survival situation. Back in the early part of the 20th Century, during two world wars, the US government encouraged all households to keep laying hens. It is sage advice.
Keeping hens to provide eggs is not hard, and does not require a large amount of time and attention. Much information is available online about raising chickens. This is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on keeping poultry, but rather some real-world things I have learned to make things easier and more productive.
Feeding
One great thing about chickens is they can take bad food, spoiled food, or food that you may not care for, and convert it into food that you do like. My hens love the dead mice that I have caught in my mousetraps! Table scraps can be an easy part of their diet, and the US Government realized that as well.
However, laying hens have definite minimum nutritional requirements. There is a lot of energy and nutrition in a typical hen’s egg (70 calories overall, 5 grams of fat, and 6 grams of protein), and that nutrition has to come from the hen’s food intake, in addition to the hen’s own nutritional needs. Most instances I have seen of hens not laying well are due to insufficient nutrition.
I keep my hens together in pairs of the same breed. I feed a mixture of commercial layer crumbles (from Rural King, but available from most any farm store), and scratch grains (a combination of corn and other grains that are higher in fat, and that the hens like the taste, also available from most any farm store). I feed each pair of hens 1-1/2 cup of layer crumbles twice a day, and in warm weather I share a handful of scratch grain between the two coops. For my four hens, I go through around one 50 lb. bag of layer crumbles in a month, which is about $11 worth of feed. A 50 lb. bag of scratch grains usually lasts me at least one year, as I don’t go through that nearly as fast as the layer crumbles.
Hens also need a lot of calcium to make the shells of the eggs. I also keep a bag of crushed oystershell on hand and put a little in their feed every other day or so.
Which breed?
I have had many different breeds of hens, and can tell you, that if you are after egg production (and if you are a prepper or survivalist reading this, I assume that is what you have hens for), Leghorns are the best white egg producers, and Isa Browns are the best brown egg producers. Someone gifted me an Isa Brown hen once, and that thing was an absolute egg-laying machine! It produced an egg nearly every day without fail. Since then, I have always kept two Leghorns and two Isa Browns.
The local farm stores carry chicks now since they are now legal to keep in town in our area. However, people are now tending toward keeping what I call ‘designer’ breeds like Auracaunas, which lay colored eggs, for the novelty of them and not the egg-laying capacity. This Spring I replaced my two Isa Browns and had to go to the local feed store and order them, since none of the local farm stores had them this year. As a side note, Isa Browns are very calm birds, while Leghorns tend to be very flighty and nervous.
Bedding
Another advantage of keeping hens is the fertilizer that they provide – and the downside of that is dealing with it in the form that they provide it in. Raw chicken manure is ‘hot’, with lots of nitrogen, and will burn plants if put directly on them. I keep my hens on several inches of medium wood shavings on the floor of their coops. This gives them a fairly soft surface to lay on and sleep on, while absorbing the manure and letting the hens compost it by walking on it. There is no odor. The composted manure and the wood shavings can then be put on your garden and other plants without worry of burning them.
I clean out the coops and change the bedding every other month. As the amount of composted manure builds and the wood shavings break down from the hens walking on them, their area gets dustier. I have two hens in each 2 1/2’x 6’ coop, and I go through just under half of a 6 cubic foot bag of medium wood shavings in each coop when I change it out. I keep the rest of the bag handy and then put it in the coop at about the halfway point between bedding changes, to make up for the bedding lost by them walking on it and breaking it down.
Getting along
Hens are very territorial, and they will attack and peck at other chickens when introduced into their area, sometimes to death. To avoid this, I normally buy chicks two at a time and raise them together, so that they are lifelong companions right from the start, but I have had to introduce strangers into the coops when someone gifted me a hen. The first time I had to do this, I made a partition out of wood and chicken wire, which I inserted into one level of the coop to make it into two smaller coops, and then put a second waterer and food dish in the other side.
I then put the two bonded hens on one side and the new hen on the other, and they all were happy. But then, several weeks later, I made an interesting discovery. I needed the get the hens out of there for a few minutes so I could clean the coop. I had my wife standing by with a broom to break up what I was sure was going to be a fight as soon as they were together without the partition. To my surprise, all three of them came out and stood together calmly without a problem! After I cleaned the coop, I put all three back together in the coop without the partition in place, and they got along fine. Since that time I have done that several more times with other new hens, and they have adapted to each other without a fight. It seems that they just need to be close to each other for a week or so to get familiar, without being able to fight and peck, and then they get along fine.
Winter laying
A common misconception is that hens will not lay as well in the winter as they do in the summer. That does not have to be the case. Mine lay year-round just fine, but there are three requirements:
Light — Hens need to have 14 hours of light a day so they will lay well. In the summer the sun provides that, however, in the winter you will have to supplement with artificial light. I have a 60W equivalent LED light in both levels of the coop, on a timer so that it runs from 6:30A. till 8:30P. every day, year-round.
Temperature — Hens can survive outside in cold climates, but you will have to increase the amount of their feed to accommodate the increased caloric demands to keep them warm. Keeping their water unfrozen is another problem. I think it is better, and more humane, to keep them inside, at least out of the wind. Our coop is on our screened porch, which keeps them out of the wind, and allows us to partially regulate the temperature by opening and closing the window screens. In addition, I have a small heater out there on a thermostat set to come on at 45 degrees. This keeps their water from freezing, and makes it more comfortable overall for them. Keeping the coop on the back porch also keeps predators away, and allows us to go out the back door and feed them and gather eggs without having to get all bundled up to go outside in the wintertime. In the summer, I put the heater away and put a fan out there, also on a thermostat set to come on when it gets above 80 degrees.
Nutrition — Again, if the hens are outside in the cold, they will require much more feed to compensate for the calories they are burning to stay warm. Even though ours are inside, in the winter I double the amount of scratch grains I give them, from ½ handful in each coop twice a day, to a full handful in each coop twice a day.
Molting
Starting in their second year of life, hens will go into a ‘molt’ in the fall when the days start to get shorter. During this time, they shed their feathers and grow new ones to get ready for the winter. During that time, they will not lay, or lay only sporadically, as their food intake is used to grow feathers instead of making eggs. This period typically lasts from 1 to 2 months, and is obvious when it starts because the hens will stop laying and start dropping feathers, as the new ones grow in to replace them. This period also allows their reproductive systems to rest from the demands of constantly making and laying eggs. An advantage to providing artificial light is that it ‘fools’ the hens into not thinking that winter is coming, and their molting periods are much shorter.
Nesting boxes
When I first got chickens, I listened to the book advice that you had to have nesting boxes for the hens to lay in. My hens roosted on them, pooped on them, and pecked at them, but never laid eggs in them. After a year or so I took them out of the coop. They made no difference whatsoever in their egg production. The hens will lay where they want to. Typically, in my coops where I have two hens living together, they will both lay in the same spot, usually in a corner. Save your money, the hens will lay fine without them. At left is a photo of our chicken coop. I custom-built it to match the space on the back porch that was available for it. It measures 6’ wide, and 2 ½’ deep, and has two unconnected levels, with two hens in each level. The photo at right shows a detail on sturdy construction.
In the lower level, there are two waterers, to provide water on each side of the partition when it is in place. There is a second food dish under the left (red) waterer, but is not visible due to being covered with bedding.
So is keeping hens worth it? I should say so! Out of four hens, I typically get three eggs a day on average, so that is 21 eggs per week, or almost two dozen. Two dozen eggs per week is eight dozen per month. At a cost of around $11/month for a 50 lb. bag of feed, that is $11/8 = $1.38/dozen for eggs, and they are richer and better quality than the ones that you get in the store. I spend around five minutes twice a day to feed them and fill their waterers, and around an hour of time every other month to clean the coop and put down new bedding.
Needless to say, we are the envy of our friends every time the cost of eggs spikes up to $5/dozen!