Tasty healthy, SURVIVAL eggs and chicken. Baby chicks to barter with.
Included: How to raise chickens without catching the attention of local thieves...
One of the surest things about preparedness is that very few things are absolutely sure, and that applies to raising animals of any kind. Raising animals for food takes time and flexibility and the ability to go from Plan A to Plan B without losing your cool. The key to success is minimizing losses and maximizing harvest numbers. Chickens are one of the easiest animals to raise for eggs and meat, and that's why farmers choose them as a first flock before goats, sheep, or other ruminants.
If you are in a location where you can have animals, there are a few things you'll need to get your chickens started as a renewable food source. You'll need some place the birds can sleep at night, but the shelter doesn't have to be fancy. Just shelter from the cold and/or heat, with food and water. Here's a good resource for DYI chicken coops:How-to Books
DIY Chicken Coops: The Complete Guide To Building Your Own Chicken Coop
Sign Up for our free email newsletter packed with survival tips and tips on preparing for widespread disaster. Topics covered include survival foods, martial law, government collapse, living off the land, self defense, survival hunting, survival fishing, and MORE...
They usually crow all day, but since they do it to establish territory over hens, keep him in his own cage (and away from the sight of the hens) most of the time and he will be more calm. When you are ready to increase the size of your flock, you can bring the hens to his cage one at a time. Once the new brood is hatched and you identify the new rooster you want to keep, you can harvest the old rooster for stew meat. For more ideas on keeping a rooster quiet, here's a brief how-to article on stopping a rooster from crowing.
One of the greatest challenges in raising animals of any kind is keeping the water containers clean. All animals, including chickens, don't understand the need for keeping away from dirty water and if left to themselves will urinate and defecate in their water bowls if they are left on the ground. There are all kinds of inexpensive hanging DIY water container systems that solve this problem. Some of the best designs for these water containers can be made from empty two-liter soda bottles or plastic buckets. If none of these items are available, you can give the chickens water in any clean bowl you have available, but you will need to make sure the water is checked every day.
How-to Books
Chickens also eat scraps and will enjoy eating many leftovers such as wilted greens, vegetable stems and roots, even cleanings from a fish catch or fresh butchering of wild game. Some farmers insist that feeding chickens the butchered remains of other chickens is risky due to the potential for genetic weakness being passed down and/or latent bacterial infections; others say it is fine. My personal preference is to avoid feeding any animals the remains of the same kind of animals, but use your own judgment. Certainly you should avoid feeding them anything that has come in contact with chemicals or toxic waste. You are going to be eating those eggs and meat eventually, so don't take any chances in making you or your family sick.
If you have more time to develop your chickens as a source of food, a compost bin in a plastic bucket with a lid can be used to grow earthworms or fly larvae to feed your chickens. This is another way to provide food for your chickens without having to feed them anything from your own table or supplies. If you only have a few chickens to feed, this will not be a problem. If you have more than six chickens, you will need to supplement their feed in winter with grain such as corn or oats or some type of layer feed.
Organic Feed for Chicks -- First 8 Weeks
For this reason, some farmers with a small flock will cull (harvest) chickens in late fall so that they only have a few to feed through the winter. Then when the weather warms in the Spring time, they will allow their flocks to build back up with new baby chicks that should be big enough and weigh enough to be ready to eat in eight or nine weeks.
You will need to gather eggs daily and either eat them immediately or refrigerate them. If you can refrigerate, or store in a root cellar kept at a cold enough temperature, the cold will stop fertilization so that the egg will not hatch. If you only have hens and not a rooster, the hens will still lay eggs but since they are not fertilized, they will not hatch.
As we mentioned before, chickens can be noisy, especially roosters. If you are hoping to lay low and go unnoticed in your location, you will need to keep your flock to just the laying hens. Unfortunately, the hens will only be good layers for a couple of years. Then you will need to replace your birds.
Next the bird needs to be placed in a pot of hot water to loosen the feathers; then the bird is plucked. You'll find similar videos of hunters harvesting wild turkeys, a process that involves removing the skin of the bird, which hangs loosely on the body, and the feathers come off with the skin. One hunter shares that this method saves a lot of time and and you're able to then get the bird onto the grill quickly.
If you are off grid and have no refrigerator or freezer, of course you will want to immediately cook your bird or any meat. There are ways to preserve meat with salt and smoke and drying techniques, but that is the subject for another day and another blog.
How-to Books
A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish & Game
If you start hatching too many chickens, you may even consider giving away some chicks to other local families with the backyards or other space to raise them.