There are many city dwellers that successfully raise chickens in their backyards.  Their main purpose is to provide eggs.  The ability to be an urban homesteader depends on your home owners association and/or deed restrictions.  Before ordering, please make sure that you can legally have a small flock. 

If you are like me and have no restrictions, then the hard part is figuring out which breed to order and how many.  Mature hens do not lay an egg a day.  On average, hens lay 5 times a week.  However, some breeds lay better than others. 

Brown Egg Producers (with Excellent Rate of Lay)

Production Reds
Barred Plymouth
Gold Sex Links
Black Sex Links
Rhode Island Reds
Black Australorps

White Egg Layers (with Excellent Rate of Lay)

Ideal 236
White Leghorns
California Whites
Production Blacks

Easter Egg Layers (with Excellent Rate of Lay)

Ameraucanas

I love to gather the eggs from my Ameraucanas.  The color of their legs help indicate the tint of their eggshells.  The shells can be light green, pale blue, or pastel pink.  It brings new meaning to eating green eggs and ham.  Who needs to dye eggs with these chickens on your homestead?

I prefer brown eggs to white ones for no other reason than personal preference.  I guess I equate white eggs with grocery store eggs, but regardless of the color of the shell, farm eggs are healthier for you and taste better.

I could go on about eggs, but I want to switch gears and briefly discuss chicken breeds known for meat production.  After all, eggs are not the only thing chickens are good for.  The market for pastured hens is growing. 

Best Meat Producers

Cornish X Rocks       Mature weight at 8 pounds (fryers in 6-7 weeks)
Dark Cornish             Mature weight at 6.5 pounds (known for breast meat)

These Cornish chickens put most of their energy in developing meat.  The Cornish X Rocks for example has only a fair rate of lay.  It has been bred to grow quickly in order to efficiently produce meat. 

Popular Dual Purpose Breeds

Barred Plymouth
Rhode Island Reds
New Hampshire Reds
White Plymouth Rocks
Dominikers

These breeds are the best bang for your buck.  They are good at both laying eggs and producing meat.  If you have both needs, then I would begin with one or two of these breeds.  I personally love raising Dominikers, Production Reds, and Ameraucanas.  But, I also like to keep experimenting with other breeds.

This year we are also ordering Cornish X Rocks so that we can fill our freezer with nutritious free-range broiler meat.  We go through eggs like crazy so I have to purchase more hens to keep up with our demand. 

You can order directly from a hatchery.  They ship the baby chicks to your house.  Unless you are like us, our local post office will not deliver the chicks to our home.  Instead a postal employee notifies us by asking, “Can you please come get your chickens?  They are making a lot of noise.”

Check with your local feed store.  Sometimes they will have order forms for your to fill out.  Other times they order baby chicks in the hopes that you will buy them.  Tractor Supply chains also have baby chicks for sale in the spring.  Regardless of where you purchase your chicks, it is time to pre-order your flock.

Lucky with his flock

We decided to let her be.  For two weeks she sat on those eggs day and night, only taking very brief rests to drink some water and stretch her legs.  Our kids felt sorry for her and brought her a small handful of grain each day.  Her devotion to her eggs was admirable.  We were all impressed with her mothering skills even though she was yet to become one.

One night just as dusk settled in, we heard her cackle.  I jumped up and darted outside.  Lane flooded the yard with light trying to see what was wrong.  As I approached her nest, the ground was littered with her black and white feathers.  Other than that there was no sign of her.  In fact, there was no sign of anything.  Whatever got her executed its plan precisely.  It got in and got out.

We felt sad and immediately decided to try to continue mothering her eggs.  We found a cardboard box.  Filling the bottom with hay, we carefully placed her eggs in our makeshift nest.  I put a small container of water amongst the eggs to provide humidity.  We placed a thermometer in the box to check the temperature.  Eggs need about a 100 degree temperature.  It needs to feel like it is being warmed by its mother’s body heat.  We did not want it to get too hot or too cold.  For a heat source, we hung a light bulb over the box.

Twice a day for two weeks one of us turned each of the eggs a quarter turn to help ensure proper development of the baby chicks.  After two weeks, I began to doubt that any egg would hatch.  One evening as I peered into the box contemplating unplugging the light and disposing of the eggs, a baby chick bored a hole into the side of its egg.

I called my family together and we patiently witnessed a miracle.  The chick continued to peck the side of the egg making its hole larger.  Its beak poked through taking breaths of fresh air.  Its feet and wings stretched against the sides of the shell cracking it wider and wider apart.  Wet and exhausted the chick left its birthplace and slept in the warmth of the artificial light.

It turned out to be a male and we named him Lucky.  He was the only one that hatched.  We all thought that his name was appropriate considering the circumstances of his birth.

We continued to take care of him.  Baby chicks really need water.  To teach them to drink all you have to do is dip their beaks in water.  You can put a little sugar in the water to make it more enticing.  Sprinkle some grain on the ground made specifically for baby chicks.  You can also sprinkle some grit.  This aids their ability to digest the grain.  Every third day for two weeks I also add vitamins to their water.

You slowly drop the temperature in the box to allow the chick to become accustomed to the outside temperature.  When it is about 85 degrees outside, I start putting the babies in the coop.  I start them out in a wire cage so that they can get acquainted with the older chickens in a safe place.  Eventually we work up to letting them go forth with the flock and it is up to them to fight back and claim their right to be with the birds.  It is a great day when you can turn them completely loose.

Lucky is now our rooster.  He protects the chickens and tries to wake us up every morning.  We enjoy having him around.  He is not mean to us because we did train him that we are the head rooster.  If you want to read more about that click here.  I just wanted to show that “desperate times call for desperate measures” and in a pinch you can use a cardboard box and a light bulb.  This type of incubator did not have a high hatch rate, but it did work.  You can use a makeshift incubator.