Why Start With Chickens?
Why start with Chickens? Regardless of whether you are a brand new homesteader or a seasoned veteran, whether you have a large farm or an urban garden, it’s likely that you already know, the first livestock for most homesteaders are chickens. This was true for us at Chaos Magik Homestead as well. Truly, before we even knew homesteading would become such an integral part of our lives, we had eggs in an incubator. For us, starting with chickens was a circumstance of convenience, education, and economic practicality. And, for most people just starting out, one or more of these reasons are why they started with chickens as well. CONVENIENCE… Convenience can be broken into a few different categories. First, chickens are convenient to find and purchase. Sure, there are lots of hatcheries and plenty of people selling through Facebook poultry and farm groups, but chicks are also available every spring at nearly every feed store or farm store in every community! So, avoiding the hassle of online scams or locating reputable breeders can be nearly painless. Sure, the chicks you pick up at your local farm store chain probably aren’t the ideal breeding stock for your future hatchery… but let’s be honest, you’re probably not starting with the goal of managing your own breeding program; that will come later, when chicken-math gets the best of you! Chickens are also convenient to manage. Unlike other livestock that need lots of space, high end fencing, and feed storage space, chickens can fare well with minimal space, minimal fencing and a garbage can for storing feed. A medium breed chicken, like most high egg production birds, needs about 4 square feet of coop space per bird and about 8 square feet of run (if they aren’t free ranging). Let’s imagine you want to start your flock with a variety of egg colors from high-producing chickens, so you go to the local feed store this spring and get some Easter Eggers! These birds will lay about 280 eggs a year. Divide that by 365 days in a year and multiply by 7 days in a week (no, you don’t have to do the math, I’ve got you covered!) and you find that one Easter Egger will provide you with a little over 5 eggs a week! Okay, cool. Now, imagine you have a family of 4, each member eats 2 eggs a day for breakfast. A bit more math, or just trusting my math, shows you that you need 10-12 chickens to provide eggs for your family’s weekly needs. To achieve that, you’re going to need a 40 to 48 square foot coop like a 4 by 10 or 6 by 8. That’s not a lot of space, but if you’re struggling to find it, you can always build up off the ground a few feet so the chicken yard can incorporate the space under the coop as well. Chickens are convenient to feed. Above all things, feeding chickens is one of the BEST advantages to having them on the homestead. Chickens eat nearly EVERYTHING! Sure, it’s a little stressful at first, especially when you look through blog after blog telling you what chickens can’t eat… but, honestly, I’ve never lost a chicken because it ate a nightshade. Chickens are great at managing the bug population in your back yard, cleaning up your kitchen scraps, discarding your garden scraps and, best of all, TURNING YOUR COMPOST! Yes, I feed my chickens pelleted feed year around, but I keep it minimal and let them work for the rest. One of the ways I facilitate their health is by keeping a compost pile where they can access it. Yes, it does get a little messy, but it’s well worth it! I throw all of my kitchen scraps, as well as some of the neighbors’ scraps into the pile. When I let the chickens out in the morning to free-range, that is the first place they go. They will toss through, eat what they want and leave the rest to the bugs. Then, the bugs will come to help with composting and the chickens will eat the bugs too! All I have to do is go out a couple times a week and rake the mess back into a pile. This process is so much less work than turning compost and it saves a ton on feed expenses! EDUCATION… So many homesteaders keep chickens simply for their convenience, but the number one reason we started with chickens was for educational reasons. At the time we began this journey, I was homeschooling three of our four children. It truly was CHAOS! My kiddos have quite the age gap, so while I had two in high school, I had one in first grade… it was impossible to find things for them to work on together and science was one thing I wanted them to all be able to really get their hands dirty with. But, even though I wanted them to do all of the chemistry experiments and such, I also really wanted them to dive into every-day, practical science. We did lots of cooking and baking, but we were losing inspiration. Then, one day, the kids went to Tractor Supply with their grandmother and came home gushing over the cute chicks they saw… and I was inspired! Fortunately, my husband had a friend who owned chickens and had an incubator just sitting around… he was more than willing to let us borrow it and even supplied us with a couple dozen eggs. The first step of our education began with setting up the incubator. Setting up the incubator was a great opportunity for the kids to learn some important lessons like: How long does it take a egg to hatch? How do you know if an egg is fertile? What temperature does an egg need to be at for a chick to develop? What role does humidity play in hatching an egg? What does a chick look like at each stage
About Chaos Magik
Hello! We are Chaos Magik Homestead, and we are enchanted by living a simple and frugal life while pursuing independence, health and happiness… all on ¾ of an acre! Here’s a bit of the pixie dust that brought us here: …It all started with a homeschool science project which included a borrowed incubator, eighteen eggs, a book, a half dozen pallets and a ¼ acre lot in the deep-south, Gulf Coast Region of Mississippi! Together, my 3 homeschooled children and I incubated our first eggs, hatched our firstclutch of barnyard-mix chicks, and built our first chicken coop out of pallets. And that’s it; we were hooked! As I began researching the most budget-friendly ways to raise a healthy and happy flock, I found myself diving deeper and deeper into the mystical world of homesteading. Once the chickens were established, we quickly realized we needed a place to dispose of the poo, which led to the construction of our first pallet-compost-bin! But, once the compost was established, it needed a use! Thus, our first square-foot garden beds emerged! With the establishment of chickens, compost and a thriving garden… all in the first year mind you… we fell deeper into the magic hat of homesteading tricks! And, the bunnies popped up! I mean, it’s great to have compost to add to the soil, but sometimes you need a bit of extra fertilizer and, well, rabbit poo is the perfect resource! It’s also great that bunnies can eat right from the garden! As our second year emerged, so did new pallet construction projects, hordes of reclaimed wood, another ½ acre of land, and bigger dreams! With the help of my extra-handy husband, the pallet dairy barn was erected and our first herd of goats were brought home as adorable bottle babies! The plan? To make goats milk bath and body products as well as cheeses… which led us to the next adventure… herbs and honey! So, now you see, we started with a whole lot of Chaos, and from it, we found Magik in the form of a ¾ acre suburban homestead! On this site, we hope to share some of our magik with you as you experience some of the highs and lows of our adventures in raising livestock, growing produce and constructing all things ‘homestead’. Thanks for visiting, and feel free to get in touch if you have questions or insights about any or all of our topics. We never get tired of learning about homestead living, or hearing about others adventures in frugal, self-sufficient living!
The Chaos Magik Family
If you’ve made it this far, you have probably already read about our journey from science experiment to suburban-homestead. If not, feel free to jump on over to our About Us Page and see a snapshot of our journey to live a simple, frugal and independent life… AND join us on our journey; hopefully you will benefit from some of our successes and be able to avoid some of our harsher lessons. Now, let me introduce you to our Family… The Mastermind Hi! I’m Jodi and my most notable qualities are probably my loyalty and my terrible sense of humor… if you get it, you get it, but if you don’t… this blog probably won’t be nearly as much fun! Anyway, somewhere along the line, I became the ‘Mastermind’ of this magik (which sounds much nicer than ‘Lunatic Slave-Driver’)! It’s true, I’m a bit of a momma bear… think big teeth and loud growl, not so cuddly and soft! I can create a LOT OF WORK, but I also like to do a lot of that work myself. I grew up remodeling homes and even owned a construction business for a while, so I’ve obtained a skill or two along the way. But I’m not all ‘brawn’; it turns out I have brains too… backed by a masters degree and an insatiable appetite for research… If given the choice, I’d read instead of breathe! I suppose my work ethic, researcher mind and inability to stop dreaming are the tools that motivated the start of our journey and the tools that keep it going… those and my growl! The Better-Half Thomas… where to even begin! Always in a ballcap, with a smile on his face and a song in his heart, Thomas is the ‘Better-Half’, but I rarely tell him that. I’d hate for it to inflate his ego. Besides, he’s pretty cocky already “It ain’t braggin’ Mother Fucker if you back it up” Kid Rock aside, he really is the constant, the support, the foundation of our household. He is our breadwinner; the reason we’re able to thrive instead of simply surviving while we build. But he’s more than that, for every new project I come up with, he is scoping out and collecting materials from every roadside dump he passes! After ten-plus hours at work, he comes home with the energy and commitment to feed animals, cut down trees and put roofing on whatever structure I just finished building! And at the end of an exhausting week, he’s the one to light the fire, pull out the karaoke equipment, grab a bottle and invite the neighborhood for a night of comradery! He really is one-of-a-kind… If I create the ‘Chaos’, he makes the ‘Magik’. The Spirit At this point, most people would probably be tempted to list their children from eldest to youngest, but I just can’t justify that… so I’m gonna mix it up and introduce you to the ‘Spirit’ of our homestead… Nylah! It’s difficult to say which one of us truly brings the ‘Chaos’, her or me, but I think it’s a team effort! Nylah is our spirited, all legs, charcoal eyed, freckle faced, never silent, youngest daughter! With a seven-year age gap between my last two children, Nylah had to make up for the years with words and energy! This child wakes up with the sun and doesn’t stop talking until the roosters stop crowing and the cicadas stop singing… which is basically never! But she loves her animals and is oftentimes the most responsible member of our clan. Nylah was seven years old when we hatched our first chicks on the homestead and she claimed them as her own. Since then, she’s helped me with nearly every project from building housing for animals and planting gardens to training dogs and turning compost! She’s my sidekick, and as the only child that I’ve home-schooled since the start of elementary school, she’s the most invested in the daily tasks of making our home a homestead. Her dream: to breed livestock guardian dogs, be a barrel racer and have a farm of her own… oh, and own a zoo! We’re getting there baby, we’re getting there! The Heart Isabella, or ‘Izzy’ as she likes to be referenced, is our blue eyed, what-color-hair this month, needs a stool, could never find a better friend, eldest daughter. Although she’s definitely the most timid when it comes to the animals, she’s also the most gentle hearted and the most reliable. She has her dads heart and my head which makes for an amazing human with incredible compassion, but a never compromising sense of self-efficacy. Although she spends the least amount of time doing the ‘homesteading stuff’, she’s my kid with wheels! She’s always willing to run errands for me, pick up supplies and generally give-a-damn when I just can’t keep up! Did I mention she’s the ‘Heart’? Above all, Izzy loves the ducks, and even if we didn’t love them ourselves, we’d keep them around just to watch Izzy smile. Where Nylah takes on most of the care of the chickens and dogs, Izzy takes on the care of the ducks and can be found watching them dive in and out of our little pond as they make an absolutely atrocious mess… but they sure are cute while they do it! The Artist Quite frankly, I’d have to spend a fortune on branding if I didn’t have Levi! I’m full of cool ideas and all, but to execute them on paper… Just take my word for it and be glad I have Levi! Leviathan, as he prefers to be called by his full name, is our goofy laugh, what-color-hair this week, ukulele playing, ever thoughtful, youngest son. He is seven years older than Nylah and two years younger than Izzy, but he and Izzy are generally inseparable. On our homesteading journey, he really is responsible for all of the artwork that goes into our branding: from color pallet