Fresh Eggs From Your Oven Hens
How to produce your own fresh eggs without making that trip to a poultry farm, from the Have-More Plan
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
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Our small all-purpose barn is 16 x 30 feet. Run at capacity this efficient little building houses up to 30 laying hens and a battery broiler in one section; in the other, 4 milk goats and in two pens up to 6 kids or lambs, plus a six compartment metal rabbit hutch, squab loft, milking stand, also feed and hay. No-draft ventilation with plenty of sunlight is provided by four windows facing south. A second door at the far end (not visible) opens from the goat dairy section into the fenced pasture. Small hen door on the north side lets hens out into the yard. Floor is concrete, building is regular frame and sheathing construction with cedar shingles roof of heavy green mineral surface roofing. Water is piped from the house. Cost including equipment: materials $285, labor $240.
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PERHAPS this sounds fantastic but we find that it's not much more work producing our own eggs than it is to make a weekly trip to a poultry farm to be sure we actually do have strictly fresh eggs. Our laying flock of 20 R.O.P. New Hampshires requires about 7 minutes care a day - and gives us on the average 11 eggs daily, year around.
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Twenty hens require an 8 x 10 foot house which costs new about $75. But if your family uses only four eggs a day a house for eight hens can be bought or made for as little as $30.
Eggs were the first project we attempted when we moved out of the city. We estimated how many eggs we'd like to eat. With three in the family we thought we wouldn't need more than two dozen a week 3 1/2 a day.
In estimating year around egg production, figure a hen will lay an egg every other day - if you can use six eggs a day, then plan on having a dozen hens. So, we bought a ready-made poultry house for $28., 7 pullets for $11:00; plus a water pan for 50 cents, a feeder, 69 cents.
If you can drive a nail and cut a straight line with a saw, you can build your own poultry house. If you want to, you can buy a "knock-down" poultry house and assemble it. You'll find them advertised in poultry magazines - be sure to write for catalogues and compare prices - they vary quite widely.
For the first week our 7 pullets (young hens beginning to lay for the first time) didn't lay an egg. One evening when I came from work, I found my wife all excited - our flock had produced an egg! That egg, counting the feed we had on hand cost us $45.89.
But during the next eight fall and winter months those 7 hens laid 646 eggsnearly 54 dozen - 6 1/2 dozen a month.
During that time we spent $14.30 on feed - an average of 26 cents per dozen eggs. In our locality eggs sold for 60 cents a dozen. In short, we had saved $32.40 on eggs and at any time could have sold our hens as fowl for 25 cents a pound or $11.20.
But with our eggs only costing u s 26 cents a dozen instead of 60, we began using more. That's why we have increased our flock. The next spring we raised 25 of the finest R.O.P. (Record of Performance) New Hampshire pullets (cost: 50 cents apiece as day old chicks), culled them down to 20, and began getting more eggs than we could use. With these better laying birds our eggs cost only 16-18 cents a dozen for feed costs. We sell the surplus at 60 or 65 cents a dozen - and right where I work I have more customers than we can supply.
How to Start
When we began studying up on chickens we found that there were many books on how to make a success of poultry commercially, but little information on raising a barnyard flock efficiently. Now, however, there are a number of good books - for example, G. T. Klein's "Starting Right With Poultry."
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