Raising Backyard Chickens in Texas – A Recap
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Bacon and eggs were what I had the other day and this has got me thinking about the recently concluded Social Circle hosted by TexasRealFood. This social circle touched on the topic of Raising Backyard Chickens in Texas which piqued my interest since fresh organic chicken eggs are a big part of my diet. Mornings would be a nightmare without them.
But of course, my love for this specific type of egg sometimes is a bit hard because of the premium that I have to pay for the quality. I’ve just begun wondering how to commit to my dedication to a steady supply of fresh and healthy eggs. This is why raising a small set of chickens might be just a way to save a buck or two.
But how do I get started? Good thing Team G Ranch gave us quite an informative discussion on how to get started and eventually succeed on your first backyard chicken coop.
Raising Chickens: The Advantages
Like the rooster, you have to seize the day and get started with your planned backyard chicken coop. But why should you opt to raise chickens in your backyard? There are multiple reasons for this and you might even be inspired to know it can have positive effects on your respective homesteading setups.
First off, chickens are a great way to manage the pests in your backyard that may pose a threat to your vegetable garden. TeamGRanch Co-Founder Mora Guerra elaborates on how raising chickens in your backyard may be beneficial to pest control, ‘They are good pest control. They even eat small snakes and small mice.’
Of course apart from having a source of eggs and chicken meat is an obvious bonus, raising your chickens also helps in upcycling your biodegradable kitchen waste. Mora points out the different ways you can get value from your own kitchen’s scraps, ‘They’re a good way to compost. You can feed them your kitchen scraps and then you can also compost their waste.’
Another advantage of raising chickens is that they’re pretty easy to manage. Founder and Pastoral Counselor of TeamGRanch BJ Guerra pointed out how easy it is to manage egg-laying hens, ‘If you’re just keeping chickens for the consumption of eggs, you don’t need a rooster. So the hens alone are very quiet for the most part and are very easy to manage.’
Like gardening, raising chickens can also be quite therapeutic. According to the founders of Team G Ranch, one of the best places where you can zone out to relax is, apparently, a chicken coop. This also allows us to establish a connection with nature by having a direct hand in producing our food. BJ sheds some light on how chicken-raising relaxes one’s mental state, ‘It’s such a good mental break. They’re simple. They’re fun to watch…It’s just something fun but something that you can also sustain off of as well,’ BJ said.
Getting Started with Raising Chickens in Texas
Hyped up, I’m having visions of a decked-out chicken coup with rope lights and stuff. But before we daydream of establishing a chicken manor out in the old backyard, one has to think about the basics. Space is probably the most important thing to consider. BJ gets into how easy it is to set aside space for your first chicken coop, ‘They’re easy to be kept up with. You can keep them in the yard - hens especially.’
When setting aside space, you need to make sure that they are protected from different animals and also keep the chickens in. Team G Ranch, based on their chicken-raising setting, uses chicken wires to keep the chickens in while they use hardware columns to keep the predators out. ‘Our coop is built of both, it has chicken wire around it and hardware columns around the bottom half of it so skunks or raccoons can’t stick their hand through the holes to grab a chicken,’ BJ said. The rule of thumb for free-range chickens is 400 hens per acre so a small space in your backyard can house enough chickens so you will have a good supply of eggs, meat, and emotional support.
The next thing you need to do is plan out how you’re going to make your chicken coop. The ideas are almost endless because you can use old stuff lying around the house to construct your makeshift chicken coop. BJ pointed out how the possibilities are endless when it comes to chicken coop ideas, ‘There are plenty of coops that you can make. Anything from zero dollars on up to $4500. We built a chicken condo for our chickens and that’s kind of a huge huge coop … What you need is to make sure it’s predator-proof - secure from animals.’
In your chicken coop, you need to also decide on what kind of flooring you’re going to use. Wood shavings are a great path to choose when opting for flooring. This is because you don’t need to clean the flooring of your coop every other day. Mora explains further the advantages of using shavings as flooring for your chicken coop, ‘When you do the deep litter method, nature takes its course underneath, basically, and composts underneath when you add fresh shavings on top…and the heat underneath creates that compost. That’s mutually beneficial because you’re not cleaning the coop every other day or every week. And when you do clean your coop out you can use that free compost,’ Mora said.
Apart from the coop, you also need to make sure that you have to prepare nesting boxes. The nesting boxes should house up to three to four chickens and, especially in Texas, should have a lot of air circulation inside. The highest frequency of egg-laying is during spring when the environment provides a conducive setting for the nesting of hens.
Hens typically lay eggs from morning to around early in the afternoon and they need the air since they exert so much effort when laying eggs. From 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm hens will not lay any more eggs and that’s when you close the nesting boxes to not let the chickens sleep in their boxes. This is because you need to make sure that this specific area of your chicken raising area is always clean. And to keep up with a clean nesting area, the flooring for the nesting boxes, unlike the chicken coop, should be changed every week.
Where to Get Your Chickens for Your Backyard
BJ Guerra runs down where to get your chickens for your planned chicken coop. ‘There are a few different ways to get chicken. You can use local people like us - we hatch chickens and we sell them…or places like Tractor Supply, Callahan’s - a local area feed store in Austin. Ideal Poultry is another one if you want to get mass varieties or large quantities. Windy Metal Hatcheries if you want to order meat birds to raise so that you can slaughter. Then there’s Facebook, Craig’s List, and neighborhood pages. You know there are always people on there trying to sell or even give away chickens,’ BJ said.
Of course, Texas is blessed with different suppliers for chicks to fill up your coop but also practice due diligence when picking chickens for your coop. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the success of being able to raise healthy chickens. You have to know what you’re looking for. ‘When you’re looking for chickens, you need to know what you’re looking for. Not necessarily what breed you’re looking for but do you want chicks? Do you want full-blown hens that are laying? Do you want pullets - in between chick or hen…So it’s good just to know what stage of the development you want to look for,’ Mora explained.
As for the breeds of chickens, you also need to isolate what you want to use them for. The breeds range from meat birds, layers, dual-purpose chickens, and even ornamental chickens. For example, the Rhode Island Red breed of chicken is known for those brown grocery store eggs that you can get anywhere. There are Americanas or Easter Eggers that can lay green, blue, pink, or even olive. Some varieties lay large eggs but are inconsistent when it comes to frequency and some breeds lay average-sized eggs but are more frequent. It all depends on how you want to utilize your chickens where they could be a food source or even as support animals. In terms of preference, Team G Ranch has its take, ‘Ours' is truly like a farm straight-run Barnyard mix. We don’t separate our chickens. If we wanted to do all easter eggers, we would have an Americana rooster and a couple of Americana hens that we could put into a separate kennel of sorts. This is so we could start breeding those if we wanted to breed them,’ BJ explained.
If you would add chickens to your existing flock, be sure to quarantine them for at least 2 days. This is to protect your flock from any disease or virus that the new chicken might bring in. Also, when putting in a new chicken, it’s best to do it at night. This is to limit the stress induced by introducing a new part of the flock in the middle of the day. Like pets, chickens also need to be introduced to each other.
The Roosters for Your Backyard
If you want to produce chicks or if you have problems with any small predators out in your yard, then you should consider getting a rooster to add to your flock. Naturally, the roosters are there to fertilize the eggs and this will produce chicks that you can sell, or raise as meat birds for slaughter. Roosters, based on the experience of Team G Ranch, ‘They’re also beneficial if, like us, they have a lot of land and they do free-range. So they’re good predator protection … you’ll hear stories of them fighting hawks, or possums that might come in. They’ll do their part to protect the flock,’ Mora said.
It’s typically wise to consider the area you are living in and if the neighbors would complain about how much your rooster likes to sing the song of his people at four in the morning.
Feeding Your Backyard Chickens in Texas
If you’re worried about the cost it takes to feed a flock of chickens in your backyard then you might just be ending up saving a few bucks on that. Feeding chickens is pretty straightforward. You’ll have your scraps from the kitchen and cuttings of your greens or vegetables that your chickens are sure to love. Your discarded eggshells can be crushed into a powder and fed to the chickens as a good source of calcium - this ensures that the eggs of the hens are harder.
BJ also emphasizes the importance of being able to give supplements to your pet chickens during the colder months and foraging starts to be more limited, ‘Yes, you can buy feed. We do supplements when we feed, especially in the wintertime with actual store-bought feed. This is to keep the protein up…but for the most part, we try to feed them as much natural [food] or home vegetables,’ BG said.
So if you want to save up on the chicken feed, you can even ask your neighbors for some of their kitchen scraps. This ensures that your chickens will have a steady supply of feed that comes from natural and fresh sources. Of course, if you do opt to buy feed, Mora has a few tips when preparing store-bought feeds, ‘You can ferment that feed or grain that you buy. So you ferment it in water for a couple of days. It expands the feed and makes it last longer. It introduces really good probiotics to their systems,’ Mora discussed.
This makes raising chickens in your backyard sustainable because they feed off of your organic scraps. That, for me, is a win-win proposition in itself.
Backyard Chicken Health
One of the main concerns that I have when raising a chicken is what to do when your bird or birds get sick. A visit to the veterinarian would cost hundreds of dollars but according to BJ of Team G Ranch, ‘Most things can be done at home and taken care of. Don’t feel that if you have a chicken you have to go to the vet. If you don’t know, just ask. There’s plenty of people, there’s plenty of forums out there. There’s a strong community in farming. So just asking neighbors or asking similar like-minded people can be a real big deal and save you a lot of money,’ BJ said.
Of course, if you’re planning to keep chickens as pets, there’s nothing wrong with bringing your birds to the vet. But if you’re just raising chickens as a food supply, you can simply ask. There’s a healthy community when it comes to raising chickens in Texas.
Collecting Eggs from Backyard Chickens
Hens typically lay their eggs between 22 to 26 weeks of life while some even take a year to lay. This of course depends on the breed of the chicken but mostly falls under that range. Usually, chickens lay their eggs the most in spring, summer, and early autumn. This is because hens need up to 12 to 14 hours of sunlight to be able to create an egg which is most ideal during the spring, summer, or fall. The whole process needed to form an egg only takes 24 hours.
Hatching your eggs is one of the most exciting events when it comes to raising chickens. Typically, hens lay their eggs and brood over them for 21 days. The hens do not leave their eggs except when it’s time to feed or defecate. BJ shares how this method of hatching eggs is best if circumstances would allow, ‘The benefit for that is that chicks have a bond with the chicken already once they’re born. Sometimes if we could get a broody hen and we can’t take her out of it we’ll take eggs and put it right under her,’ BJ said. Of course, when it comes to brooding, it varies from hen to hen that’s why some opt to incubate their eggs.
If you’re planning to incubate your eggs, it also takes 21 days before baby chicks start to hatch at a temperature of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. After two to three days, you can start candling the eggs which is a process that can be attributed to pregnant women getting an ultrasound. This is practiced so that you will know the development of the eggs or if they will hatch or not.
The hatching process itself can take anywhere from an hour to 24 hours. It depends on the chick and typically it’s not advised to help the chick to come out of its shell because this may cut its umbilical cord. Incubation though has a higher turnout when it comes to hatching them because you can control the incubation space. BJ points out their hatching rates through incubating their eggs, ‘As far as fertile eggs though, we average at about 75%to 85% hatch rate,’ BJ said.
Time to Plan
These methods elaborated here are what you need to know to help you get started with your very own backyard chicken raising setup. For homesteaders like me, it’s a great addition to my quest to be self-sufficient since it not only serves as a good food source but also produces by-products like compost that I can use with my small vegetable garden. If you have a space to spare, maybe you need to try out setting up your chicken coop in your backyard. You may only ever keep a few birds but that doesn’t stop you from raising advanced poultry like those found on the best organic farms, using sustainable feed, responsible treatment and shelter. Also, on market days, you can check out existing poultry farms around your area to ask for some tips. It’s a great way to reconnect with your food source and also help in recycling organic waste in your own home.
Need more information on raising backyard chickens? Don't forget to visit Team G Ranch's page to see what courses they have to offer!
Are you interested in selling at farmers markets? For advice on becoming one, click here.
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