Chicken Coops, Nest Boxes and Fresh Eggs

15 hole simple nest boxes

Make mine an omelet. Unless you have a large family or you are trying to feed all  your neighbors, you do not need as many laying hens as most people think they do.

Todays families it seems can never find time to all set down as a family for a hot home cooked breakfast. Unlike my early days being raised on a small farm. In those days everyone was seated the kitchen table at 6AM and we had one of mothers hot good tasting and good for you breakfast consisting of fresh eggs, bacon, sausage or ham, biscuits and gravy. When in season we had a special treat of home fried fresh dug potato’s with bell pepper and onions.

In those days each person eat 2 eggs a day, 12 to 14 eggs a week. I don’t think most families of 4 will eat a dozen eggs a week now days. Our kitchen had to seat 7 kids, mom, dad as well as grandma and grandpa. With 11 hungry people we eat 2 dozen eggs a day. This required a rather large flock of hens. We aways had 50 or more hens roaming around the homestead.

Fast forward to 2010. Year round you can expect to get one and a half eggs every other day per hen, providing you with about 4 or 5 eggs per week per hen. If your family eats 1 dozen eggs or less per week then you only need 2 or at most 3 hens to provide all the eggs you will eat.

4 hole simple nest box

Brown eggs are better than white eggs. Thats a myth. The only difference in a white egg or a brown egg is the breed of hen you have, some are brown layers others are white egg layers. In general white layers are better layers than brown layers. Most duel purpose hens, that is hens raised for both meat and eggs, lay brown eggs. White egg layers are generally more productive but are poor meat birds.

What breed is best for you? This is not an endorsement but McMurray Hatchery has many pictures and a lot of very useful information on many chicken breeds that will help you decide what breed is best suited for your needs, facilities and climate.

I require few birds every year so I am willing to pay a bit of a premium price for sexed birds and purchase them from a local store {Atwoods Home, Farm and Ranch Store} as needed. I’m not concerned about what breed I have and always buy them when they are on clearance sale.  **By the way, if you don’t already know, you don’t need a rooster unless you plan to hatch a few replacement chicks.

Even with range raised hens it is very useful to provide them with supplemental high quality lay mash.  This supplemental feed provides all their required nutrition needs even when green and insect forage is in short supply.

Yea Old Nest Box. You will need a nest box for your hens, they really don’t like being out in the open when laying. It need not be fancy. The most important thing is to build and place the nest where it is easy for ‘you’ to collect eggs and clean out the box when replacing nesting materials.

I have used everything from 5 gallon plastic buckets on their side to larger more expensive factory build steel boxes. I’m getting older and now place nest boxes at a height easer for me to see into and collect eggs from them. The only real advantage of the metal boxes is they are easier to sterilize should you get a disease introduced into your flock.

News Flash: Salmonella Outbreak Leads to Egg Recall August 18, 2010
Health officials recall 380 million eggs after hundreds of people are sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs in three states.

Another good reason for keeping a small chicken flock and producing fresh, safe eggs for you and your family.

Why is Common Sense so Uncommon?
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