Are you a beginner wanting to learn how to raise backyard chickens for eggs? This Beginner’s Guide to Raising Backyard Chickens covers everything you need to know to get started with your own backyard flock of chickens in 5 basic steps. I’ve also answered some of the most common questions I hear from folks new to raising chickens for eggs.
We started raising chickens in 2014 and have raised a wide variety of chicken breeds over the years. We’ve also tried out various chicken coops and supplies to experiment with what works best.
We currently have around twenty chickens, three breeding flocks of chickens with a rooster for each flock (you can read more about them here). We sell fertile hatching eggs and our happy hens keep our family well supplied with eggs to eat. In the summer at the height of egg laying season, we have such an abundance of eggs we donate extra eggs to the local food pantry.
Learning about Raising Backyard Chickens for Beginners
When we first starting raising chickens in 2014, I didn’t have a clue what to do! I helped collect eggs from my uncle’s flock of chickens as a kid but I didn’t have experience with the daily care a flock of chickens required. To learn more, I checked out chicken keeping books from the library, read articles online and talked to friends who had chickens.
Last year my kids did a homeschool learning project focused on raising chicks and chickens. My 11 year old the book worm checked out a bunch of books at the library about raising backyard chickens for eggs and natural chicken care. She was especially excited to find a book on how to train your chicken! Here are a couple great books about raising chickens for eggs that you may find helpful:
–The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens: How to Raise a Happy Backyard Flock
–The Homesteader’s Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook: Raising a Healthy Flock from Start to Finish
–A Kid’s Guide to Keeping Chickens: Best Breeds, Creating a Home, Care and Handling, Outdoor Fun, Crafts and Treats
–Keeping Chickens: A Kid’s Guide to Everything You Need to Know About Breeds, Coops, Behavior, Eggs and More!
5 Steps to Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs
When I was new to raising chickens and had read all I could about raising backyard chickens, the next step was just jumping in and getting a flock of chickens. This gave us the opportunity to gain first hand experience on how to raise a backyard flock of chickens for eggs. Now all these years later, I’m writing this helpful guide for beginners to learn how to start raising backyard chickens.
Are you ready? Here we go! Let’s get started with learning how to raise backyard chickens for eggs in 5 actionable steps:
1. Buy or build a chicken coop
Before you get chickens, you need to have a chicken coop that is safe from predators and offers nest boxes for egg laying. Check out our chicken coop buying guide for more insight and tips on how to select the right chicken coop for your needs.
We’ve used a variety of coops over the years from a large movable coop built on an old trailer frame to a simple handmade coop and chicken tractor to our current favorite Amish made chicken coop/chicken tractor. There are many chicken coop options to choose from to meet your needs and preferences.
2. Set up the coop
Once you have a chicken coop, it needs to be set up for chickens to help them settle into their new home. Chicken coop bedding can be straw or pine shavings spread evenly over the floor of the chicken coop and in the nesting boxes.
We started out using straw in our chicken coop but I wanted to be able to compost the coop bedding and chicken manure so needed herbicide free straw. Unfortunately non-sprayed organic straw was way out of our budget. We switched to pine shavings and have been using that ever since.
Sprinkle food grade Diatomaceous Earth (this is the kind we use) on the bedding to help with protection from parasites like mites.
Make sure there is an area in or around the coop for your chickens to take a dust bath. Chickens instinctively dust bathe to keep parasites like mites away. Our coops have always been in a pasture so the chickens were able to kick up a little spot of dirt and create their own dust bath area. If you need to create a dust bath area, here’s how to build a dust bath for your chickens from Fresh Eggs Daily.
3. Set up a Feeder and Waterer
Feed: Chickens need access to feed and clean water. While chickens who forage have access to natural feed in any insects they find, it is helpful to their overall health and egg laying capacity to supplement their diet with chicken feed. We buy a locally grown, non-GMO feed and scratch.
Each of our chicken coops have these large hanging chicken feeders that my kids fill once per week.
Water: We also have a large waterer in each chicken coop. Two of our chicken coops have these hanging 4 gallon tank style waterers that I found at a yard sale. Our other chicken coop has a bucket style waterer with nipples on the bottom. We made our own 5 gallon bucket chicken waterer by buying these screw in chicken waterer nipples for the bottom of a bucket.
Since we live in a cold climate, the chicken water will freeze in the winter. When we had our one huge coop on the trailer frame, we used one of these heated chicken waterers to keep the water from freezing.
Now that we have three separate breeding coops of chickens, we don’t want the expense of heating three chicken waterers all winter. Instead, we keep a rubber feed bowl in each chicken area and take fresh, warm water out to the chickens everyday.
Calcium: Chickens need access to supplemental calcium to ensure they are laying high quality, hard shelled eggs (you can read more about it in our article on how to encourage egg laying in chickens). We always keep a container of free-freed calcium in our chicken coops. We use crushed egg shells and supplement with oyster shell when we don’t have enough egg shells (our hens are a bit picky and prefer the flaked oyster shell over the crushed).
4. Get chickens!
Finally, the day you’ve finally been waiting for: getting your first backyard chickens! Before getting your chickens, you need to decide what breeds of chickens you want. There are so many options! Since we live in a cold climate, we try to raise chicken breeds that have smaller combs, like a rose comb, since bigger combs are prone to frost bite in our cold winters.
Once you know what breeds of chickens you want, you will need to decide if you want to get fertile eggs to hatch in an incubator, buy chicks, buy pullets (a hen aged 16 weeks-52 weeks) or full sized adult chickens.
We have raised chickens by hatching out our own fertile eggs, buying chicks at the feed store, buying pullets from a local 4-H youth and buying full sized adult chickens from someone who no longer wanted to raise chickens.
If you have the time and space, the most fun way to start a flock of backyard chickens is to hatch your own chicks in an incubator (here’s our tutorial on how to hatch chicks in and incubator). It’s so amazing to watch the chicks hatch from their shells!
Chicks
Raising baby chicks can be time consuming and a bit costly with having to run a heat lamp all the time but it is so worth it! You can socialize the chicks by holding them often and my kids even sing to their baby chicks. By socializing your chicks from a young age, the chicks get used to being held and having human interactions. This usually results in a more friendly flock of chickens. If you decide to raise chicks, here’s how we made a free DIY kiddie pool chick brooder.
Lots of human interaction as a young chick is also helpful for raising a gentle rooster. While temperament can play into any animal’s behavior, being able to hold a rooster on a regular basis from birth makes a big difference in having a gentle rooster in your flock.
One downside to raising baby chicks is that if you hatch your own or buy straight run (chicks that are not sexed at birth) chicks, this means you will likely end up with at least one rooster if not more than that.
Pullets
A pullet is a hen that is older than a chick but not yet a full grown adult chicken, approximately between the ages of 16 weeks-52weeks. The nice thing about buying pullets is that they are already passed the intensive stage of needing to be in a brooder under heat lamps. Pullets are feathered out and ready to be outside in a chicken coop.
The other nice thing about buying pullets is that you can definitely tell by this age which bird is a hen and which is a rooster. If you buy a pullet, you know you are buying a female egg laying hen. Pullets are also young and in their prime so just starting their egg laying careers with several years of prime egg laying ahead of them.
Full Grown Chickens
The first flock of chickens we ever owned was a full grown flock of chickens with a rooster named Romeo. It was nice to start out with a flock of chickens that were already established in foraging and egg laying.
At the time, we weren’t set up for being able to raise chicks so starting out with full grown chickens was a great option for us. Plus it was great to start out with hens already actively laying eggs so we could enjoy the fun of collecting eggs in the coop right from the start!
5. Daily Chicken Care
Once you have your flock of chickens in their coop, you need to take care of them on a regular basis. If you have a large feeder and waterer, you can minimize the time you spend each day doing what we call “chicken chores”:
-First thing in the morning let the chickens out of their coop
-Feed the chickens food scraps that we collect each day in a container next to our kitchen sink
-Give the chickens scratch in the winter when they can’t forage for insects
-Collect eggs from the nest boxes 1-2 times per day
-Close the chickens in their coop at night to keep them safe from predators
Other chicken chores we do on a weekly or as needed basis:
-Fill up chicken feeders once per week or as needed
-Fill up chicken waterers with fresh water and clean regularly
-Top off calcium cup with crushed egg shells or oyster shell
-Clean the chicken coop weekly in the summer and as able in the winter, here’s our article on how to clean a chicken coop
How many chickens should a beginner start with?
When you’re first starting out raising backyard chickens, it is best to start with a small flock of less than ten chickens. The average size of backyard flocks of chickens range from 4-8 hens.
Folks who live in an area where there are restrictions on the number of backyard chickens you can raise will be naturally limited to a small flock (although I definitely know a few families who sneak in a couple extra hens in their backyard flock and are technically “over limit” but no one ever reports them!)
Speaking from experience, if you start out with a large flock of chickens it can get overwhelming fast. Feeding the chickens and collecting eggs isn’t the part that gets overwhelming. It is the cleaning of the chicken coop and keeping a clean, sanitary flock that can get overwhelming if you’re new to keeping chickens and starting out with a huge flock of hens.
Disadvantages of keeping chickens
Keeping a backyard flock of chickens is not all happy clucks and delicious eggs. There are some disadvantages to keeping a backyard flock of chickens.
Chicken Poop
Chickens poop. A LOT! If you let your chickens free range in your backyard, that means you will end up with chicken poop all over your yard and walkway. Don’t forget the chicken poop on the porch! If your chickens are curious like ours, they love to strut up to our back porch, hop up on the little side table by the bench and peek in our dining room window and watch us eat. It’s hilarious!
Unfortunately their little poopy gifts left behind on the porch and in the yard are not so great. If you love to go barefoot in your yard in the summer, there’s a high chance of chicken poop getting squished onto the bottom of your bare feet.
Ok, I think you get the point. Chickens poop a lot so keep this in mind if you want them to free range. Our three breeding flocks of chickens have large fenced pasture areas so we make sure we wear our chore shoes when going in there so it doesn’t matter if they get poop on them.
Flies
Chicken poop is a fly magnet in the summertime. If you don’t stay on top of keeping your chicken coop cleaned out (here’s our tips on how to keep a clean coop), you’re going to have a very healthy fly population.
Destructive
Chickens love to scratch and peck, it is their natural instinct. If you ever watch a chicken foraging, it will take a few steps to scratch up the soil then take a few steps back and peck around the area it just scratched up. This is great in areas you want them to forage for insects.
At our old homestead, we parked our trailer frame chicken coop in the garden for the winter. We let the chickens scratch and peck all they wanted to eat out insects, turn the soil and add a little chicken poop compost.
A chicken doing its scratch and peck dance in your vegetable garden in the summer, or worse your neighbor’s flower garden (which in our case happens to be my mom!) it can be very destructive.
As chickens scratch and peck around, they can dig up plants or even peck at and damage plants. My mom loves to put a wood chip mulch around her numerous flower beds. Well guess what? The chickens LOVE to scratch back the mulch and peck at the insects living underneath.
The mulch my mom so carefully placed then ends up all kicked out into the yard, plants are upturned and it’s an absolute disaster. Oh the chicken drama! We now have a large white poultry fence that runs between our house and my mom’s next door to try to keep the wandering chickens out of her flower beds.
There was also the seedling mishap I mentioned when writing about how to start garden seeds indoors. I sat our trays of seedlings outside to start hardening off only to have the chickens find them and devour every last seedling we so lovingly cared for!
There are ways to safely let your chickens forage in your garden area. You can buy wire chicken cloche plant protectors if you want to let your chickens in your garden but protect your plants. I’ve also used chicken wire cut in pieces to make our own DIY plant protectors. If you want to learn more, here’s a helpful article from The Prairie Homestead on 8 ways to use chickens in the garden.
Time Consuming
Chickens are so fascinating to watch that you just may pull up a chair and spend a large amount of time watching them do their thing.
The rest of your chores will go undone. You may keep a copy of the book “How to Speak Chicken” (read our book review here) close by so you can study your chicken’s language and try to figure out what they are communicating.
My kids and I are guilty of ditching our chores and lounging in chairs by the chicken coops watching their clucky antics. It’s a pretty fantastic way to spend a lazy summer afternoon lol!
Do you need a rooster when raising chickens for eggs?
You do not need a rooster for a backyard flock of chickens unless you want to have fertilized eggs to hatch in an incubator or under a broody hen. Most of the eggs you buy at the grocery store are not fertilized.
Fertile eggs look the same as unfertilized eggs from the outside but there’s one tiny difference you can see when you crack open the eggs. Read our article with detailed pictures on how to tell if a chicken egg is fertilized to find out more.
Roosters are great flock protectors and will sound their loud, crowing alarm call to let the flock know that there is danger nearby.
If you live in an urban area, likely there are restrictions to having a rooster in your backyard flock of chickens. My kids and I love the sound of our roosters crowing early every morning to welcome the day and hearing crows throughout the day. But not everyone shares that same sentiment, including my husband!
How many chickens do I need for a dozen eggs a week?
All chicken breeds vary on approximately how many eggs they lay per year. This means that there is no exact formula to tell you how many eggs your chickens will lay per week or per year.
There are some chicken breeds, like Leghorns, that are bred to be egg laying machines. But if you’re like us and you enjoy a colorful egg basket of Easter Eggers, Olive Eggers, Swedish Flowers and Black Copper Maran then you’re going to get slightly less eggs per year than a flock of all Leghorns (who I might add lay a very boring white egg!).
If you had 2 Leghorn chickens, you would likely get a dozen eggs a week from them. But if you want a prettier egg basket and a flock of more colorful, unique breeds of hens then you will probably need three hens to get a dozen eggs per week.
Our best egg layers, the Olive Eggers and the Swedish Flower hens, lay 5-6 eggs per hen each week.
How much does it cost to raise your own chickens for eggs?
The cost to raise your own chickens for eggs can vary depending on the type of chicken coop you buy, how many chickens you are raising and the type of feed you choose (organic is obviously going to be more expensive).
Just like with starting beekeeping as a beginner, there is a big up front investment in supplies before you can even get started.
Here is an example to give you a rough idea of what it might cost to start raising your own chickens for eggs if you were keeping a flock of four to six chickens.
–Chicken coop price for up to six hens $775 new based on current pricing of our favorite Amish made chicken coops that we have for all three of our breeding flocks (we bought ours gently used off Craigslist over the last few years).
–Chicken Feeder: $20
–Chicken Waterer: $40
–Oyster Shell: $15 per box
–Chicken feed: We are currently feeding our chickens a locally grown non-GMO feed that costs $18.50 per 50lb bag. A flock of 4-6 chickens would probably go through one bag about every 1.5 to 2 months.
–Chickens: 6 Chicks $5 each (a lot more if you want more “designer” breeds) =$30. If raising chicks you will also need to calculate in the cost for a heat lamp, chick feeder, chick waterer, chick feed and a brooder which is at minimum another $60 total for chick supplies. The estimated total for chicks and supplies would be $90.
If you decide to buy pullets or full size laying hens, I’ve seen these sell for anywhere from $15 per chicken on up to $50 per chicken depending on breed and show quality. For 6 hens at $15 each it would cost $90.
Total estimated cost to start keeping backyard chickens for eggs: $958.50
It is possible to start raising your chickens for eggs for a lower cost than this. How? If you’re handy you can build a coop to save costs. Watch local sales ads on Craigslist, Nextdoor or Facebook for used chicken coops and supplies.
Every once in a while I see free ads for chicken coops, chicken supplies and even chickens. This sometimes happens when people are moving and don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling or no longer able to keep chickens for a variety of reasons and decide to give them away.
We love to go to yard sales so I always am on the look out for any supplies that may be helpful on the homestead. I’ve found some great gently used chicken waterers and feeders at yard sales for a small fraction of the price of what they cost new.
Best egg laying chickens for beginners
In our first couple years of raising chickens, I went a little crazy at the feed store chick sale and ended up going WAY over my initial (self imposed) limit and list of breeds. They all just looked so cute and sounded so interesting!
We quickly learned that some chicken breeds are not so friendly and don’t make good hens for a backyard flock of chickens or a flock of chickens tended by young children. We learned the hard way that some chicken breeds are bred for egg laying quality and not temperament.
Since that experience, we are now a lot more particular about the breeds of chickens we raise. Here are a few of the best chicken breeds for beginners that we’ve raised:
Rhode Island Red
Wyandottes
Black Copper Maran
Cuckoo Marans
Easter Eggers
Australorp
Brahma
Swedish Flowers
Is it hard to raise chickens for eggs?
It’s not hard to raise chickens for eggs but it is definitely a time commitment. Like any pet, chickens require regular care and tending. Chickens need access to fresh water, feed and a safe and sanitary coop. This means you need to clean out the chicken coop and clean up chicken poop on a regular basis.
Some people get backyard chickens thinking it will be all happy butterflies and rainbows only to realize a few weeks to a month later that it IS a lot of work.
We have been keeping chickens since 2014 so have many years of experience. We have figured out a daily rhythm to our farm chores that my kids and I share.
Actually, my kids and I love caring for our animals so much that it it is one of our favorite things to do each day and we often vie for who gets to do which tasks! Taking care of our chickens each day is so enjoyable for us, it doesn’t feel like a chore.
Before you invest in a backyard flock of chickens, make sure you educate yourself on the care involved before making the commitment. Talk to friends, neighbors or people you know who raise chickens to get their perspective and insights on raising backyard chickens. That way you’ll know if you’re up for the exciting adventure of getting a back yard flock of chickens!
First Aid Care for Chickens
If you have a backyard flock of chickens, it isn’t a matter of IF your chicken will get an injury but WHEN your chicken will get an injury. If you’ve ever heard of the chicken “pecking order”, well it’s a real thing and can be intense to watch and often will result in some minor chicken injuries.
Usually with an established flock of chickens, you don’t see a lot of pecking and fighting. Occasionally there will be a challenge of “pecking order” when one chicken will try to dominate another. It’s literally a pecking chicken fight. It’s fascinating yet awful to watch at the same time.
Minor injuries often result from these chicken squabbles. Normally a minor injury might not need a lot of first aide care, but chickens instinctually start to peck at blood or any injured chicken.
That’s why it’s so helpful to have a bottle of Blu-Kote first aid spray for chickens on hand (just be aware it will turn your hands blue too so wear gloves!) This is blue in color so the chickens won’t see the red of a bloody wound and peck at the chicken or wound even more.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to naturally care for your chickens and other animals, check out the Herbal Academy’s online Herbs for Animals course. I’ve taken several courses through the Herbal Academy and love that I can access their high quality courses online right from our rural homestead!
Kenny Allen
I really enjoyed reading your article and have been thinking about raising some egg laying chickens. After reading your article I feel like I will soon be raising some chicks but will learn a lot as I go. I know Tractor supply employees are a good resource for helping me learn. thank you for your time and sharing your knowledge.
Sonia
How long does a laying hen lay? As in, would I need new chickens every year, two years, three years…?