Have you ever raised hens?

I grew up on a chicken farm but since I was young when we left, can’t really help you with practical advice. We probably had about 3,000 and they were for eggs, not meat.

AS a kid we had a bunch of Bantam hens around twenty they were a hoot.
and great eggs.

Rhode Island Reds. You can eat the eggs or butcher, whichever you choose. They’re fun, too.

(I first read “Have you ever been raised by hens…)

I have not. But if they’re anything like ducks they crapalot.

We’re giving it a shot. Chicks come in a few weeks. We’re getting 4 Plymouth Rock and 2 others (mystery chicks).

My wife has wanted to do this for years and has finally decided to go for it.

@Thisis Cool! I love seeing people live a dream. Are you in the country or ? Have to make sure you have a good chicken run or pen so they’re safe.

@KNOWITALL – We’re in the suburbs. We’ve known people with chickens for years, and they are allowed in my town. We have friends with chickens who are guiding us re: coop and run. We have lots of hawks, however, so we’ll have to be outside with them when they are out in the yard.

My dad raised about 100 once, just plain old white chickens. For meat. (There were 8 kids in our family.)
Whenever the grandparents would come for Sunday dinner, 3 or 4 would get the ax and we’d have fresh fried chicken for dinner.
Dad’s mom once watched as Dad took the ax to some chickens. He’d hold them down on a board and whack them off, trying to get away from the bird so he wouldn’t get splattered.
Gram remarked, “Why do you do it like that, Bill? Let me have one of those birds and I’ll show you how to kill a chicken.”
With that, she grabbed the next bird to go, swung it around in a great arc like a baseball pitcher winding up for the pitch, the head separated from the body, the body landed some distance away, and the splatter was then relegated to a safe distance, and all Gram had to do then was drop the head.
If you have ever heard the phrase, “Run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off,” but haven’t witnessed it, a headless chicken can haul ass!

@Thisis Can’t you just make them a nice chicken wire yard? With a wire top?

The closest I came to anything like that Grimm was in the 70s you couldn’t buy seperate chicken parts and pieces. You had to buy whole chickens. Mom taught me how to cut up a chicken because she couldn’t stand it. She was raised on a farm and cicken slaughtering simply horrified her.
Same reason Dad taught me how to clean fish. Mom told me later he was such a pacifist he couldn’t handle the guts!
So make the kids do it and make them think it’s an honor.

@KNOWITALL – Yeah, we’re going to be building a large protected run. We also know of people that put up fishing line across their back yards to help protect against hawks.

We have lots of coyotes, but the yard is fenced and they only come out at night. The coop and run is going to have to be very secure.

My uncle Sandy had hens for eggs, then chicken fricassee when they slowed down on eggs. Eight or ten in a pen and house with a chicken wire cover, they also had hawks. I remember going in to the house and getting eggs with my cousins.

Back when I was a kid, my great uncle operated a cattle ranch in Wyoming. And having chickens was a part of the whole ranch thing, like eggs and fried chicken once in a while. (There always were chicks running around with momma hen so there was never a shortage of chickens.) There had to be about 200.
The last thing a person had to do in the evening, after the chickens all went into the henhouse for the night, was to place a board and a heavy rock at the chicken’s entrance to keep the skunks and other chicken killer/eaters out. The next morning, bright and early this board and rock had to be removed to let the chickens out, and they would haul chicken ass to the horse corral where the kernel corn was and where they would be fed some corn that would be scattered about by whoever let the chickens out.
The point of this tale is this: You never saw so many chickens come out of that little chicken house door all at once! Like a shot gun blast of chickens!