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I built a chicken coop on a Saturday in April, spent all day on it, painted it barn red and everything. It looked great. I was genuinely proud of it. Three weeks later a raccoon reached through the chicken wire — which, it turns out, raccoons can absolutely do — and killed two of my six hens before I woke up. I went out at six in the morning and found them. I’d had no idea there was such a thing as hardware cloth. Nobody told me. The internet told me a lot about chicken breeds and feeding schedules and coop dimensions and not one single article mentioned that standard chicken wire would not stop a raccoon.
I’ve since rebuilt the coop twice, switched everything to half-inch hardware cloth, and haven’t lost a bird in over four years. That same raccoon still shows up in the yard occasionally. I’ve named him Gerald. This is probably not healthy.
Anyway. Chickens.
Why Chickens Are the Gateway Drug of Homesteading
They’re stupid-easy and they give you eggs within six months. That’s really the whole pitch. I’ve never met anyone who started homesteading with goats — you get there eventually, or some people do, but the entry point is almost always chickens.
My neighbor Dave is a retired electrician. Man couldn’t keep a cactus alive. He got four hens in 2020 because his wife wanted fresh eggs, and within two years he had a garden going, a compost pile, two apple trees he planted from bare root, and was calling me on weekends to ask questions about goats. I don’t fully understand the progression, but I’ve seen it happen with enough people that I think it’s real.
If you’re working toward more self-sufficiency — food storage, emergency prep, any of that — chickens fit in naturally. Eggs daily, pest control in the garden, fertilizer for whatever you’re growing, and if you raise dual-purpose breeds, meat when the time comes. They earn their keep in multiple ways at once.
Watch: Build a Chicken Coop for $50
How Many Chickens Do You Actually Need
Six hens is the answer to “how many do I need?” for most families. A laying hen produces around 250 eggs per year — maybe five a week in peak season, fewer in winter. A family of four eating eggs most mornings goes through two dozen a week, give or take. Six hens covers that. You’ll have extras to give away, which your neighbors will genuinely appreciate.
Start with six. Maybe eight if you want a buffer. DO NOT start with twenty because you got excited at the farm supply store. I’ve seen it happen. My buddy Rick came home with eighteen chicks from Tractor Supply because “they were on sale.” His wife almost divorced him. He couldn’t give eggs away fast enough. His coworkers started hiding when they saw him in the parking lot because they knew he was coming with another carton.
Six to eight hens. No rooster — you don’t need one for eggs, and your neighbors will thank you. Roosters crow at 4 AM. And 4:15 AM. And 4:30 AM. And basically whenever they feel like announcing their existence to the entire zip code.
Picking Your Breeds
This matters more than people think. Different breeds lay different amounts. Some are cold-hardy, some aren’t. Some are docile enough for kids to handle, some will flog you if you look at them wrong.
Rhode Island Reds. My go-to for four years running. Good layers, cold-hardy, zero drama. I’ve got two right now who I could not describe as interesting chickens — they show up, eat, lay eggs, go to bed. 250-300 a year. They’ll elbow the Orpingtons out of the way at the feeder, but nobody’s getting hurt.
Barred Plymouth Rocks. My wife’s favorite. Black-and-white striped, friendly, the only chickens in our flock that actively want to be handled. She picks them up and they just sit there. You’ll get maybe 200-250 eggs a year out of them. Good birds.
Australorps — I added two last year based on a recommendation from a woman at our county extension office who’s been raising chickens for thirty years and had very strong opinions. The world egg-laying record is held by an Australorp — 364 eggs in 365 days — and while your birds won’t hit that, 250+ is realistic. Black feathers, glossy, quiet. They’ve been the easiest birds in the flock.
Buff Orpingtons. Big fluffy golden birds that look like a child’s drawing of a chicken. Gentle, handleable, slow-moving. My kids are obsessed with them. They go broody — meaning they get very committed to sitting on eggs whether there’s a rooster involved or not — which I find annoying but my son finds fascinating. Around 200 eggs a year. Lower production than the others but the kids would mutiny if I rotated them out.
Leghorns — skip them your first go. Commercial egg operations use them because they produce 300+ eggs a year. They also fly over fences, startle easily, and make a lot of noise. They’re not mean, just… a lot. Save those for when you’ve had chickens for a year and want a challenge.
Best Starter Breeds for Beginners
Rhode Island Reds, Barred Plymouth Rocks, and Australorps are the best combination for a first flock — reliable layers, cold-hardy, and calm enough for kids to handle. Avoid Leghorns until you have a year of experience; they’re high-production but high-maintenance.
The Coop: Where I Went Wrong So You Don’t Have To
The coop is the part that actually matters. I built mine wrong twice before I got it right, and both times it was expensive and frustrating. The second coop failure was especially annoying because I’d done research. I’d watched videos. I still got the ventilation wrong and spent a summer thinking my chickens were going to die of heat stress.
The space math is straightforward: four square feet per bird inside the coop, ten square feet per bird in the run. Six hens need a 24-square-foot coop and a 60-square-foot run minimum. More is always better — crowded chickens peck each other, get stressed, and lay fewer eggs.
And use hardware cloth, not chicken wire. I cannot say this loud enough. HARDWARE CLOTH. Half-inch openings. Chicken wire keeps chickens in but does not keep predators out — raccoons, weasels, even rats can get through it. Hardware cloth on every opening, including the bottom of the run if you have digging predators.
Chicken Wire Will Not Protect Your Flock
Standard chicken wire keeps chickens in but does not keep predators out. Raccoons reach through the openings and grab birds; weasels and minks fit through the gaps entirely. Use half-inch hardware cloth on every opening — walls, roof, and a buried apron around the base of the run. This is the single most important coop decision you will make.
Ventilation is where most beginners mess up. Chickens generate a lot of moisture from breathing and from their droppings. A poorly ventilated coop gets damp, and damp plus cold equals frostbitten combs and respiratory disease. You want ventilation openings near the roofline — high enough that drafts pass over the birds, not through them. I cut rectangular vents along the eaves and covered them with hardware cloth. Year-round ventilation, even in winter.
For roost bars, use two-by-fours laid flat, wide side up — not dowels, not branches. Flat roost bars let them cover their feet with their body feathers in winter, preventing frostbite. Eight to ten inches of roost space per bird. Stagger them at different heights if you have room — chickens prefer sleeping on the highest available perch, which leads to some genuinely ridiculous territorial behavior.
Nesting boxes follow a simple ratio: one box per three or four hens. They share. Twelve by twelve by twelve inches is the standard size. Fill them with pine shavings or straw, and mount them lower than the roost bars. If you don’t, the chickens will sleep in them and fill them with poop, and then your eggs are disgusting.
If you’re thinking about building your coop from scratch, the same principles apply as when you’re building an emergency shelter — use what you have, prioritize function over looks, and test it before you need it.
Daily Care: Less Than You Think
People always ask how much time it takes. Honestly less than I expected. My morning routine is open the coop, check water and feed, collect eggs — five minutes tops if everyone’s cooperating, maybe eight if one of the Barred Rocks decides she’s laying in the corner again. Evening is close the coop, quick head count, done. My wife does the evening shift most days and she’s never complained about the time.
Weekly: rake the run, spot-clean, dump kitchen scraps into the run. Twenty minutes. Monthly: full coop cleanout, swap all the bedding. About an hour, and honestly kind of satisfying in the way that cleaning out a garage is satisfying. You end up with a pile of excellent compost.
Layer pellets are the main diet — sixteen percent protein. Buy a fifty-pound bag from Tractor Supply or your local feed store, which runs about eighteen to twenty bucks depending on where you live. A flock of six will go through a bag every three to four weeks.
Supplement with kitchen scraps. Vegetable peels, fruit, leftover rice, stale bread, pretty much anything except avocado, raw potato skins, or chocolate. Those are toxic to chickens. Everything else is fair game. My birds go ABSOLUTELY INSANE for watermelon rinds. Like, full sprint across the yard, wings out, making sounds I didn’t know chickens could make.
Never Feed These Foods to Chickens
Avocado (flesh and skin), raw potato skins, onions, chocolate, and dried beans are toxic to chickens and can cause serious illness or death. Citrus in large amounts can reduce egg production. When in doubt about a food, leave it out — chickens don’t need variety to stay healthy.
Clean water every day — more than you think they need. A chicken drinks about a pint of water daily, and in summer that doubles. Use a heated waterer in winter if you’re anywhere that freezes. Nothing will tank your egg production faster than dehydration.
Grit and calcium. Free-range birds pick up enough grit from the ground. Confined birds need supplemental grit — crushed granite, available at any feed store. Laying hens also need supplemental calcium for strong eggshells. Crushed oyster shell, offered free-choice in a separate dish. Some people save their own eggshells, dry them out, crush them up, and feed them back. Works fine. Just make sure they don’t look like eggs anymore or you’ll teach your hens to eat their own eggs, and that’s a habit that’s nearly impossible to break.
Predators: The Thing Nobody Warns You About Enough
I’ve lost four birds in four years. The first two to the raccoon I already told you about. The third was a Barred Rock I’d had since she was a pullet — found her in the run one morning with no obvious entry point and no sign of a fight. The extension office vet suggested mink. I had not previously considered minks as a threat. They’re real, they live in Tennessee, and they’ll go through a half-inch gap and kill for sport without eating anything. The fourth bird was my own fault: I forgot to close the coop one evening in November and something got her overnight. A neighbor suggested fox, another said owl. Could’ve been either. I’d rather not dwell on it.
Something near you wants your chickens. Suburbs, rural, it doesn’t matter. I have friends in Nashville neighborhoods with HOAs who’ve lost birds to hawks. My cousin in Montana loses two or three to coyotes every summer.
Raccoons reach through gaps and grab birds through the wire. They figure out latches. A hook-and-eye latch won’t stop them — use a carabiner or a padlock. I watched one work a simple hook latch in about ninety seconds flat while I stood ten feet away just… witnessing it.
Hawks come during the day. Cover the run — shade cloth, netting, fishing line strung in a grid over the top. They won’t dive through it.
Foxes and dogs dig. Buried hardware cloth apron, twelve inches deep, folding twelve inches outward from the base. Neighborhood dogs specifically are a bigger threat than most people expect — more backyard chickens are killed by golden retrievers than by foxes.
Weasels and minks are the nightmare. They fit through gaps as small as an inch and kill everything they can reach. Half-inch hardware cloth, no exceptions, no gaps.
Close your coop every night. Set an alarm on your phone. The one time you’re tired and skip it is the one time something gets in.
Use a Carabiner on Coop Latches
Raccoons can work a simple hook-and-eye latch open in under two minutes. Replace any twist or hook latches with a carabiner or two-step latch that requires opposable thumbs to open. It costs $3 and will save your flock.
Eggs: What to Expect
Your chicks will start laying at about 18 to 24 weeks old. The first eggs will be small — “pullet eggs” they’re called. Kind of adorable actually. They’ll get to full size within a few weeks.
Production peaks in the first two years and drops off after that — maybe three eggs a week from a four-year-old hen instead of five. Some people rotate their flock at that point. I don’t, partly because I’ve gotten attached and partly because my kids have named all of them, which makes rotation complicated in ways I didn’t anticipate when I got into this.
One thing people always ask: what determines egg color? Breed. My Rhode Island Reds lay brown, the Australorps lay brown, if you get Ameraucanas you’ll get blue or green. It’s a shell pigment thing, purely cosmetic, has no effect on flavor or nutrition. But I’ll be honest — when I showed up at a work potluck with deviled eggs made from blue eggs, it absolutely started conversations.
Fresh eggs from your own chickens can sit on the counter for two to three weeks if unwashed — there’s a natural protective coating on the shell called the bloom that keeps bacteria out. Commercial eggs in the US get washed, which removes the bloom, which is why they need refrigeration. This surprised me when I first learned it. My daughter brings in eggs every morning and leaves them in a bowl on the counter and that’s just where they live now.
Common Mistakes That’ll Cost You
Buying chicks in winter. They need heat lamps for six weeks. A lot of hassle. Buy in spring or early summer. They’ll feather out before cold weather hits.
Not checking local ordinances. Some cities allow hens but not roosters. Some limit flock size. Some require permits. One guy in my old neighborhood in Knoxville built a gorgeous coop, bought twelve hens, and then got a notice from code enforcement that his subdivision only allowed four. Check first.
Skipping the quarantine. New birds joining an existing flock should be isolated for thirty days. Diseases can wipe out your whole flock if you just toss newcomers in. I learned this from a poultry vet at the county extension office, not from personal disaster, and I consider that a rare win.
Feeding layer feed to chicks. The calcium content in layer feed can damage developing kidneys. Chicks need starter feed until eight weeks, then grower feed until they start laying, THEN switch to layer feed. Three stages. It matters.
What It Really Costs
I spent about $450 getting started: coop materials were the bulk of it because I built from scratch, plus six pullets at $4 each, a feeder, waterer, first bag of feed, hardware cloth I should have bought in the first place. My wife pointed out that I’d probably spent another $150 on the things I got wrong on the first coop and had to redo. She was right. Call it $600 total.
Ongoing it runs me about $35 a month — mostly feed ($18-20 for a 50-pound bag every three weeks for six birds), bedding, oyster shell. Less than I spend on coffee.
What I get back: six hens at 250 eggs each is around 125 dozen eggs a year. Good free-range eggs run $5-6 a dozen at the farmers market here. The math says I roughly break even in year two, slightly ahead after that. But that calculation doesn’t include the eggs I give away to my neighbor who watches them when we travel, which is its own form of currency.
Plus you get pest control, fertilizer, entertainment value, and the quiet satisfaction of walking to your backyard instead of driving to the store. My daughter collects eggs every morning before school. She’s seven. It’s the best part of her day and honestly the best part of mine too.
If you’re working toward a more self-sufficient life — maybe alongside stocking up on emergency food and prepping on a budget — chickens are the highest-return, lowest-effort step you can take.
Start with six birds. Build a good coop. Lock them up at night. Collect your eggs in the morning. It’s not complicated. It just takes a little bit of doing it wrong before you figure out how to do it right. And the eggs are worth every mistake along the way.