Fresh Eggs Daily in 3 Detailed Steps

What if, instead of "reinventing" leftovers, you could convert them to brand new food? Believe it or not, it can be done even in most urban backyards with the help of some feathered friends. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to start keeping backyard chickens.

1. Check Local Ordinances on Backyard Chicken-Keeping

I realize not everyone can have chickens, but the urban chicken-keeping movement sure makes it easier to have a couple of hens in a backyard coop. While city ordinances may restrict the number of chickens you can have (check with the city before you go all chicken-crazy), your coop design and whether or not your girls can free-range, kitchen scraps are a great way to keep chickens occupied and recycle those scraps. You give chickens scraps like wilted lettuce, slimy berries and moldy bread, and they'll give you back a protein source that is rich in antioxidants and long-chain fatty acids. That's a trade you can't beat.

2. Select the Right Breed for Your Climate and Needs

Mother Earth News has a great Pickin' Chicken App for iPhone to help you select your breed. Also, Tractor Supply Company stores now carry heritage-breed chicks in partnership with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, which I think is a great cause aimed at preserving America's heritage breeds. The stores carry pamphlets with information about all the heritage breeds they'll be stocking during their Chick Days each spring. Select birds that are appropriate for your setup, and do plenty of research and preparation before you bring your girls home. Local feed store owners are an excellent resource for which chicks are the most popular in your area. They're also fantastic resources for local feed and emergency help.

3. Let's Pick Up Chicks

Love them, feed them, and name them George, and in just half a year or so, VOILA! Insert scraps, collect fresh eggs in the morning. It's a win-win.

(Note: Some people think chickens shouldn't eat meat, which I think is crazy since chickens are omnivores. But, your chickens will eat what you give them. It's totally up to you, so do your own research.)

Earn a bigger "hourly wage," extend your financial resources

Whatever you decide to do to save money, both large and small changes can add up quickly. I once heard somewhere, “You can't be poor AND lazy.” So, when my ancient washing machine quit agitating, I had choices. I could:

1. Call a repairman, most everyone's first choice;
2. Throw out the old washer and buy a new one (EEK!), the spendthrift's first choice; or
3. Quit assuming I wasn't smart enough to fix a washing machine.

I Googled the machine's make, model number and “won't agitate,” and within five minutes had a plausible answer. Opening the top of the agitator, I confirmed that some little plastic cogs had worn down. The next day, I bought them for $4.85 at a local appliance repair shop. It took me 15 minutes to take apart the top of the agitator, clean out the pieces of the old cogs, slip the new ones into place and put everything back together again. The washer was good as new.

If I had paid a repairman to come to my house, it would have been $85 for the service call (I did call a local company, just to find out in case I couldn't fix it – there's that self-doubt again). They would then charged $50 an hour for labor (minimum of one hour), and I have no idea how much they would have marked up the parts, so let's keep the parts at $4.85. If the repairman fixed the washer in the same amount of time it took me, the minimum bill would have been $139.85. My total was about $15 including gas (I live 20 miles from the repair shop), so I saved $124.85, but that's not the important thing. The work I did in 15 minutes was worth $139.85, taking my hourly wage to $559.40 ($139.85 x 4, the number of times 15 minutes goes into 60).

That's the really high end of hourly wages. On the other end, there's clothesline vs. dryer ($6.00/hr) or keeping chickens ($5.16/hr, accounting for feed but not water because I use rainwater). Those low hourly wages are worth it to me for other reasons, though, so I'm willing to spend my time doing them for less than my base hourly wage (which I usually set at about $10/hr.). If it's not important to me and my hourly wage doesn't make the work worthwhile, I pay someone else to do it. I don't change the oil in our trucks because the hourly wage turns out to be less than $10/hr after buying the oil and filter. Also, I have a five-year-old running around and don't like to be under a pickup when he's with me. If you like getting used engine oil on your hands, don't mind finding a place to dispose of it, and don't have small children who want to crawl under there and “help,” it might be worthwhile to change your own oil.

Then again, you could always use a (*gasp!*) coupon for an oil change, which would bring your hourly wage way down or into negative numbers and just doesn't make DIY the sensible choice. Coupons ARE good for some things...

Ode to a Mama Chicken (and free chicks)

Chicken math is loosely defined as the inability to ever have “enough” chickens, and the assurance that your chicken population will increase to meet and exceed the space you have available for housing said poultry. I've never really liked chickens and was even afraid of them before we raised our first chicks, but once I got used to having nearly a dozen fresh eggs everyday, I got way over it. I. Love. Chickens.

This year, I had enough chickens to fill the free coop on our place, but the problem was, the brooder was empty. We couldn't have that. I bought 15 new chicks (five of which are little fluffballs that I splurged on just for fun) and set up the brooder, and the next day I had a hen go broody. Her name is Bertha. She's a Buff Orpington, a super fluffy yellow chicken, and she growls and is uber-offended when I take her off her 11 eggs once a day so she will eat. She chases us, chases the cat, chases the dog and the other hens. (The rooster is in solitary, awaiting his trip to freezer camp. That change is, I'm guessing, what made her decide to raise babies while she could.) It has become a source of great enjoyment for all of us to watch Bertha get all mad and fluff up her feathers and cluck, and Lord, don't let another hen think she's going to sit on Bertha's nest. It sounds like a chicken massacre with all the squawking and growling and indignant screaming. (Yes, chickens scream.)

Broody Bertha, well-rested and giving me the "stink eye."

So this morning when I got Hubs and the elder bambino off to school, the younger one and I started preparing for hatch day this Friday. We got a regular old cardboard box, turned it on its side and filled it with shavings, then attached it to the floor of the coop so the babies wouldn't have far to fall if they fell out of the nest. What surprised me was that Bertha was off the nest when I went outside to let the girls out. Then I heard the most ear-splitting growl/screech you can imagine, and realized that the eggs were still nice and warm... under another hen. She was warning me to back off, because this egg-sitting is serious business. Apparently, after 17 days Bertha got tired of doing this whole thing by herself and needed some time off, so she hired a surrogate broody to give herself a break.

Sounds like there's a lesson there, doesn't it?

Cheep, cheeper, cheepest: Three phases to the cheapest eggs, ever

There's just nothing better than free stuff, and that's how I got on this whole chicken kick that's taken over our homestead. In my search for cheap protein sources that weren't beans, I learned how complete the protein in eggs is, and how cheap it is per serving. I think for a dozen eggs at the store, when I caught them on sale, they were around 8 cents a piece. Even at regular price, 10 cents for 12 grams of complete protein is nothing to sneeze at. But, I also knew how OLD store eggs are by the time they get there, and I thought if we're doing the fresh-food thing, our eggs should be fresh and free-range, too. (No WAY was I paying $4 a dozen for organic, “cage-free” eggs at the supermarket. That just means they're all shoved into a closed-up barn all together, anyway.)

Phase one of the egg project was a small step: I started buying local eggs at the feed store. People around here whose chickens produce more than they can eat, sell them for $1 a dozen to the feed store. The feed store sells them for $1.70. It messed up my pricing because it wasn't the cheapest, but this concession was worth it to me. I mean, have you ever tasted a fresh egg? No way would I ever buy store-bought eggs again. I am such an egg snob now.

So a few months passed, and sometimes the feed store had eggs and sometimes they didn't. I kept cruising Craigslist's free postings, and came across an ad for two free chickens. Aha! We loaded up and drove 40 minutes to see these chickens, which were what was left of a classroom hatch that a teacher was giving away. She had one of those nifty chicken tractors that allow chickens to free-range just by moving it to new grass every day, and when I complimented it, she said, “Take it.” She gave us feed, feeders, waterers, the chicken tractor, and two young chickens, and that's how we moved into Phase Two of the egg project.

The free tractor coop, with chickens snugly in the upper level during a freak Texas snowstorm.

Our first egg was cause for celebration; we took it to my parents' house, fried it up and everybody had a bite. It was unbelievably awesome. Before long, I found a big coop (free) and raised my own baby chicks that I bought at the feed store when I bought eggs one day (Enter: Phase Three). We've had lots of chickenish adventures and chicken poop on the front porch every day, but the best part is having so many awesome, free-range eggs that I've been giving them away. (We've also had a couple of tasty roosters, but that's another story.) And yet, we're not done: we have 15 new chicks in the brooder and – wouldn't you know it? -- a broody hen sitting on 11 eggs in the coop. Time to find a new free coop or two...