Thanks to a new law and other supply issues, Michiganders are staring down the highest egg prices they’ve ever seen.
Many are wondering: Is keeping backyard hens cheaper than buying eggs from the store?
Well, here is everything you need to know about welcoming chickens into your Michigan life.
First, forget the Instagram homesteading influencer psyop. Chickens are dirty, their coops can smell, raccoons kill them, and you’ll have to put a wounded or sick chicken out of its misery regularly. Your HOA will be peeved, municipal codes will be stretched, your nearest neighbors will be bothered, and in the dark of winter, your hens will bear few eggs.
And, though we’re sorry to admit it, forget about saving money. After buying a coop, fencing, waterer, birds, straw, feed, and adding to your flock, you’re not saving money. If you’re lucky, you might break even. However, in times like these, you may very well come out ahead.
Despite all this, go get yourself some birds.
Why? With the right feed and access to some natural free-range food, fresh air, and sunlight, you’re getting not only nutritionally superior eggs, but also supremely delicious ones. More fundamentally: Part of being fully human is participating in the cultivation of our food.
For Starters
We should settle this up front: A hen is a female chicken, and a layer is a hen bred for egg production. A rooster is a male chicken that won’t lay eggs but will boss around other chickens, sacrifice itself to a predator to protect its harem, and crow often (not just at dawn). Broiler chickens are roosters or hens that can be raised for meat.
Chicks can take anywhere from four to seven months before they start laying eggs, and you’ll need to keep them under a heat lamp for the first several weeks. Some die of unknown causes, and others get pecked to death by their siblings and cousins. It’s a messy business.
We suggest beginning your chicken odyssey with mature hens. Procuring hens that are already laying, even at a premium price, gets you your reward right away.
What kind of chickens are best? Certain breeds are considered high yield, laying more than 280 eggs each year. You might feel most gratified starting your project with one of these. Most chicken sellers list the “eggs per year” of the breed. The majority lay brown eggs, but other varieties lay olive, green, dark red, white, and blue eggs.
If you do buy chicks, try to get only hens. Most farm supply stores sell hens only, whereas “straight runs” sold online include both females and males. And bear in mind, by a hen’s third year, her egg production declines dramatically. Then it’s time to turn her into soup.
For a coop, you can buy one pre-made or improvise. We converted part of our utility shed into chicken housing, but with some 14-gauge fencing, plywood, and chicken wire, you can get your feet wet.
These birds like to rest and roost on something like a branch. We used a two-inch diameter branch from our backyard, but any two-by-four or dowel rod can work. Build one four-sided nesting box per four birds and think about the best way for you (or your children) to fetch the eggs.
Our coop has seen many iterations over the years, as we have expanded our project and improved upon it. Just make sure you provide some open area or open access to your yard and that the coop is very secure at night. We cut a small door in our shed and added letting out and closing up “The Girls” to our daily chores.
Shower the floor of their living quarters with straw in the spring, summer, and fall (be prepared to replace the straw every month or two), and add pine shavings from time to time in the winter to avoid having to clean the coop out entirely.
Next, add a feeder and waterer, which you can find at your local farm store.
Last, insert chickens.
Life With the Birds
The excitement of gathering and eating that first egg is real. It’s likely the first true pasture-raised egg you’ve ever had. What you’re now legally required to purchase at the grocery store is not that, despite the gaslighting.
The moment you crack it into the pan, you’re likely to see the most golden-orange yoke you’ve ever seen, and you’ll wonder what the hell you’ve been eating all these years. You can see the difference with your own eyes.
Let your chickens out in early morning and close them up around sundown. Their circadian rhythms are, unlike ours, still quite intelligent, and they’ll be roosting in their beds by then anyways. During the day, just let them do their thing. Turn table scraps (except for citrus, onions, raw potatoes, and chicken products) into eggs by feeding them to your birds.
If you’re free-ranging without limits, be prepared for quarter-sized landmines in your yard and on your deck. If it starts to smell in the coop, you need to clean it. If you find yourself cleaning it every other week, you have too many birds. Either expand your run or seduce your neighbors with free starter-chickens, and form an army against the local Karens on Nextdoor.
We’re not going to engage in the Instagram psyop, but it’s delightful to watch the birds in all their peculiar glory: scratching and pecking, taking dust baths, reclining in the sunlight with one wing outspread, running across the yard, rustling their petticoat feathers, roosting, laying eggs, and bragging about it.
Leaving food cultivation to Big Agriculture denies us a core human experience. Raising chickens might not be true farming, but any effort at raising our own food makes us more capable of self-reliance and ingenuity.
And when your chickens preen their back feathers, you know rain is coming. You can put money on it, which may make chickens a good bet after all.
Mary Catherine and Jordan Adams live in south-central Michigan with their children and chickens.
