Raising Chickens at Home - Waiting For the First Egg

I guess it's a curse to know what a farm fresh egg actually tastes like. With that thought in mind we decided on raising chickens at home so we can have fresh brown eggs whenever we want. The problem: waiting for the first egg.

Once you make the decision to raise chickens yourself you figure out which breed you wish to buy. That decision wasn't that difficult. Rhode Island Reds were our choice. We had them once before and they produced a wonderful large brown egg. This batch of birds is very tame and mellow so it should be easy to gather the eggs.

These brown eggs were the secret to Grandma's cream pies. People tried to duplicate her recipe but they never turned out because she failed to tell them you had to use farm fresh brown eggs to get that golden color. She's gone now so I guess it was okay for me to let the cat out of the bag!

Okay where was I? Oh yeah, the chicks. We have an overabundance of cats right now and were unable to use the brooders in the pen. So, like any other farmer, we ad-libbed. The chicks were raised in a pen with a heat lamp in the garage, in between the truck and the car. While they were growing we got a larger bird pen ready. This they also quickly outgrew.

When we finally got the chickens into their full-sized pen we thought everything was going quite well. That is until one Saturday morning. We had a fan running in the pen to cool things down. It caught fire and started burning the window frame and roof.

Luckily we caught it in time and were able to put out the fire ourselves. The rolling black smoke was so dense we couldn't get in the pen for some time. The goats and deer were in the pasture but I thought for sure the chickens were goners. Believe it or not, those hardy little buggers must have been low enough to the ground that we didn't lose a one of them. I guess someone was watching over us.

We have currently spent around $80 bucks in feed to get 17 chickens started. The chickens are 14 weeks old now and just yesterday we heard the rooster trying to crow for the first time. We estimate that they should start laying eggs around 19-20 weeks of age. So now we eagerly await the first egg.

It's going to take a little while to recoup the money but soon we'll be enjoying our own farm fresh eggs for a long time to come.

If you are even remotely interested in having chickens of your own I urge you to consider it. The taste of the eggs, as well as the meat, if you decide to butcher, is far superior to what you get in the grocery store. Plus, you have the added benefit of knowing what your chickens have been fed (no hormones).

As you can see, you don't need a whole lot of room or money to get started. Maybe you'll be so inclined to give it a whirl. You can even sell the extra eggs you don't use yourself. It's a win, win situation all the way around.