How to Raise Chickens and Choosing the Right Chicken Breeds for You

 

How to Raise Chickens for Eggs

How to raise chickens for eggs? These are birds that are light in body-weight and as a result often take off to roost in trees and tend towards flightiness in general. Therefore, if you want to keep egg-layers, they should really be kept in covered runs. Alternatively, if you want to let them free-range, you will have to clip one wing.

How to Raise Chickens for Meat

How to raise chickens for meat? Table breeds are heavier and therefore less flighty than egg-layers. They are also more docile and placid in nature. There are also many dual-purpose birds which are both excellent table birds and good layers. These are discussed under Chicken Breeds . However, if you are going to raise table birds, never name your chickens unless you want recrimination and tears from the kids who refuse to eat "Rusty" or "Speckles" minus its feathers while gracing the plate!

However, if you end up with too many roosters, don't despair, as you can caponize chickens, making your roosters good as surrogate mothers for hatching eggs, and also better meat birds.

How to Raise Chickens - How Many Chickens Do you Need?

How to raise chickens for your family's needs? For those of you who are raising organic chickens just for eggs, then 6 good layers will happily keep a family of 4 in eggs, all year around. Beware however, that at certain times of year there will be times when egg production will decrease. This happens when the chickens loose their feathers during moulting in late summer, early autumn, and in winter when there are reduced daylight hours.

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How to Raise Chickens and Buying your Chicks

Buying your chickens will basically come down to 2 things; how much money do you have, and how much time can you afford to wait before your chickens start to produce eggs or will be slaughtered for their meat? How to raise chickens in the space that you have?

The cheapest option is, without a doubt, buying day-old chicks. However, although they are cheap, there are some issues here that need to be discussed. First of all, buying day-old chicks often comes with a high mortality rate. If you haven't lost some on-route to delivery, you will often loose some more within the next couple of days. 

To prevent any further deaths you will have to invest in an artificial brooder, or find a foster mother for them to keep them warm.

Secondly, very few chicken breeds can be sexed at that age. As a result, if you are after egg-layers, you really don't want to end up with a lot of useless cock birds. And then what do you do with them once you find that about 40 - 60% of your stock are male? You will either have to cull them, or separate them off and sell them at a later stage. However, you will have to off-set that against the cost of their food, care and housing.

Lastly, when you buy day-old chicks, you will have to feed, care and house them for at least 8 months or so, before they start to lay.

For those of you who are raising chickens for egg laying, it make more sense to buy pullets. A pullet is a female that is at least 20 weeks of age and less than 1 year old. Technically, she is capable of laying eggs within 4-6 weeks of purchase, which is significantly less than time then the 8 months you would need to wait if starting with day-old chicks.

The downside is of course in raising pullets is the cost of purchasing pullets. They are more expensive, but then they too have had to be fed, vaccinated and cared for, for the last 8 months.

At the end of the day, you will have to decide what is right for you, and your situation. However, the best time to buy, whether it be day-old chicks or pullets is in the spring. Your birds will be about a year old, and will be far happier coming to a new home with good weather and access to new grass shoots and lots of sunshine.

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How to Raise Chickens - All about Raising Organic, Backyard Chickens

 Learn how to raise chickens from your own backyard. Information on chickens and bantams for raising organic, urban chickens for eggs or meat.

Raising organic poultry can be very satisfying, and you don't have to live on a farm to be able to collect your own eggs every day - you can raise backyard chickens too. As long as your council allows the keeping of poultry, you can easily set up a chicken coop in your backyard; thus Farming organic chickens in your own backyard, is very satisfying. Just remember, most councils will not allow you to keep a rooster, only hens, because of the racket they can make and waking up your neighbors, which is fine, because you do not need a rooster for your hens to lay eggs.However, before you decide on what chicken breeds you want to keep, you should be looking at why you want to keep them. Are you raising chickens for meat production, egg production or just because you want to have a couple of fowls scratching around in your garden keeping the slugs and snail population under control? Based on your needs, you will then be able to identify what chicken breeds you should keep.However, remember too that if you want to learn how to raise chickens that are free range in an urban garden rather go for bantam chickens, particularly a breed such as Pekins as they do very little damage by comparison to other breeds that are far better suited to chicken coops.

However, raising organic chickens really is the beginning of sustainable living; chickens will be able to eat your table scraps and vegetable peelings, in addition to their grains. They will happily lay eggs for your personal consumption, and best of all, will provide you with some of the best type of manure for you to add to your compost heap which, in turn, will benefit your garden and vegetables no end.

How to Raise Organic Chickens and Basic Care

So, how to raise chickens successfully? Chickens like routine, and should be let out and put away at a set time every day.

They should be fed little and often.

Housing should be kept very clean, and all manure should be scraped off the perches and floor of the coop daily.

Fresh water should be given daily, and chickens looked over to see any immediate apparent illnesses.

There is no need to keeping a cock bird if you are raising chickens for eggs. Sometimes, they are more trouble than they are worth.

Our 0nline video tutorails

Our 0nline video tutorials

The Nigerian government in recent time have being placeing emphasis on the need to develop the agricultural sector in our country as a means to improve the level of unemployment and our economy at large. This is the reasons why here at mackson's farm we've seen the need to encourage young and up come farmers by providing with free asses to our personalized video tutorials on how to be a productive and effective farmer.

prices of our livestock up for sales and delivery this week

  This weeks livestock up for sales and delivery in no particular other are :
BROILERS: 
14 Weeks , arvg weight 5.4kg , purchase code :yellow tags

 price: #2000 (#200 delivery fee)

 12 Weeks , arvg weight 5kg , purchase code :red tags

 price: #1700 (#200 delivery fee)

 10 Weeks , arvg weight 4.6kg , purchase code :blue tags

price: #1400 (#200 delivery fee)

laryers:
12 months , arvg weight 3kg , purchase code :red tags

 price: #1250 (#200 delivery fee)

 cocks:
12 months , arvg weight 3.7kg , purchase code :orange tags

 price: #1300 (#200 delivery fee)

   Turkey: 
12 months , arvg weight 8.2kg , purchase code :purple tags

 price: #9500(#500 delivery fee) 

please note that prices of our livestock are not fix and change every week so be sure to check our this site for updates on our new prices ................... we value your patronage.

Welcome to mackson's farm

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to mackson's livestock sales and home delivery service.

Here at mackson's farm our only desire is rendering avoidable and satisfactory services to our customers that's why we recently open a new division call mackson's farm home delivery service.we deliver your choice livestock ranging from birds ,cattle and rabbits to your door steps, we bring the market to the comfort of your homes with little or no delivery fees and at very avoidable prices. 

Place orders right here or call our hot lines (08131889316 , 08067526406) we have people working round the clock to waiting for your calls . Here are a few photos of what to expect , prices of livestock will be updated soon.