By The Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture
With egg prices at all-time highs thanks to bird flu, saving money on eggs by keeping your own flock of laying hens has never seemed like a better idea. If you’re considering raising chickens, the Kerr Center has a virtual coop full of useful resources to help you get started.
Though we don’t currently keep chickens on the ranch, we’ve run poultry enterprises off and on over the years, most recently in a pastured poultry project that ran from 2009 to 2012.
The first phase of that project focused on keeping the layers in a so-called “chicken tractor”: a portable coop that was moved daily to provide the flock with fresh forage. The plans for the chicken tractor continue to be one of our most frequently-downloaded publications.
Next, the project moved on to housing the birds in trailers, with foraging areas protected by temporary electric fencing. This phase gave rise to both a presentation and a report, with a second presentation focusing on the potential for co-grazing pastured poultry and cattle in order to reduce parasites.
If you’re considering expanding beyond eggs for household consumption, our report, Farm Made: A Guide to On-Farm Processing for Organic Producers, includes a section on considerations and regulations for producing organic table eggs for sale.
These free electronic publications are just a few of many, many more available in the Kerr Center’s online livestock library.
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