Getting bigger and better!
We had lots of hopes and dreams for 2020, and expanding our livestock was one of them.
We currently have 27 chickens [3 of which are roosters] that we rely on for egg production. When we first started our flock we were learning about chickens in general and decided to go with dual purpose birds.
What is a dual purposes bird?
It is a bird that lays a decent amount of eggs, but not as many as a strictly egg laying bird. A dual purpose bird will also get a little meatier than an egg laying bird, which makes it a good option to process for meat as well.
A dual purpose bird provides the best of both worlds when it comes to eggs and meat.
It was as great way to start off!
The Current Situation
Now that we had some experience raising and processing chickens, we started to look towards the future and what we wanted to do with the Flock. Some factors to condsider:
- We knew the max capacity our current coop could was 30 birds.
- Customer demand for fresh eggs was high.
- We weren’t too satisfied with the ammount of meat we got from a processed dual purpose birds.
So then we began looking at the options:
- Get meat birds
- Get egg birds
- Get more dual purpose birds
- Keep things as is
I was all for getting more birds. The only problem was housing. With 27 birds currently and a max capacity of 30 in our coop, there wasn’t much room for expansion. So if we wanted more birds we would need to build some other housing arrangement for them, or add on to our current coop.
We were trying to be a little more thrifty when it came to our spending. The current coop cost close to $3,000 to build. It was basically a shed which also meant moving it would be difficult, if we ever wanted to.
We did not want to spend that kind of money on more chicken shelter, and we also wanted something a little easier to move since we were still planning out our field area. We didn’t want any permenant structures in the field yet…
The Decision
The plan moving forward was to expand the flock. We decided to purchase strictly meat birds to stock up our freezers and, hopefully, sell to customers. I did my research and decided on the Cornish Cross meat chicken for a few reasons:
- They are fast growing and can be processed in only 6-8 weeks
- They can weight up to 10lbs by processing age
- They are very common and easy to find
- They are the recommended #1 meat bird
The loinger term goal would b3 the phase out the dual purpose birds we currently have and eventually replace them with egg laying birds so we would have more eggs to sell to customers.
But I put the cart a little before the horse – we still needed a housing solution before we purchased the new birds…
We decided to make “chicken teepees” as we dubbed them.
They would be a simple triangular structure that could easily be pulled by the tractor. It would be simple to build, and would land around $350 to make 2 of them, very cost effective! On the downside, they probably wouldn’t last anywhere near as long as our shed style coop, and the risk for predator invasion would be higher due to the construction style. But I was pretty confident we would be able to make it work!
Once the plan was in place, it was time to make it a reality!
What do you think? Share your comments below!
The FARMily 