Keeping chickens at home for eggs

It is truly miraculous what happens inside the egg when it is incubated.

The gooey white and yellow of the egg comes out as a cute, fluffy little chick that you just want to cuddle in the palm of your hand! To watch an egg hatch into a chick is a thrill and a joy that is unmatched. If you are in the habit of raising chickens, you will naturally want to incubate eggs and hatch them so that you can raise your chickens from the first day of their lives.

This article will help you take into consideration all that is involved in realizing your plan. Consider what is to be done with the cockerels. Before you rush off to buy yourself an incubator or constructing one yourself, you must think about what you will do with the cockerels that will hatch out along with your chickens.

In a small batch of eggs, about 70% could turn out to be cockerels! If you incubate a large number of eggs, hundreds of them, then the proportion of female chicks would be more than just 30%. If all you need are a few layers, you will have to give serious thought to the feasibility of hatching eggs on your own.

A better plan would be to buy chicks that are only a few days old. These will be still fluffy and cute but it would be possible to pick only the prospective layers, because it is possible to sex the chicks very early, just a few days after hatching. It will be comparatively easy to dispose off cockerels which are pure bred.

Mixed breed cockerels will not be easy to sell. When you do get them off your hands, they may end up in the kitchens of a Chinese restaurant or, tragically as practice targets in the illegal and abominable sport of cock-fighting. If you have done your research on the breed that you have, and there are breeders in your neighborhood or reasonably closely located, you might be able to get some of the cockerels off your hands.

You might consider enrolling yourself as a member of the poultry club in your area and find suitable buyers through the club which will be part of a network of similar clubs. You can use your club to tell members of other clubs about the pure bred cockerels available with you.

You should know the pedigree of your breeder. It often happens that the chicks which hatch from eggs are not always what they are supposed to be. They may not be pure bred. It will be a good idea, therefore, to personally inspect the parent stock in the hatchery and assure yourself that they are pure breeds, in excellent health and that their eggs will be of high quality.

Nothing is more heart breaking than having to cull chicks which turn out to be weak and unsuitable. You might want to prepare some of the fowls for the table and store them in the freezer. You should learn how to do this yourself.

Courses are available to teach you how to kill and dress the birds for the table. Such courses are advertised in this website. Finally, a word of warning. Bird calls are surely to be preferred over the noise and din of the modern world. But you will not think so when your cockerels crow loud and clear at 4:30 am. And neither will your neighbors appreciate such sounds of nature when all they want to do is get some sleep!