Keep only the chickens that are efficiently meeting your needs: If you just want eggs, then make sure you have a lightweight, egg-producing breed like the White Leghorn. \u00a0If you have a lot of access to foraging, be sure to get pure breeds that are naturally active and on the hunt for food.<\/p>\n
Cull inefficient and unnecessary flock members:\u00a0This means you\u2019ll need to butcher, sell or give away excess roosters, old hens (older than 2.5 years) or those that are genetically undesirable (low production, susceptible to disease, aggressive, etc.) to minimize your input while maximizing yields.<\/p>\n
Think small:\u00a0What\u2019s the minimum amount of chickens to meet your needs? \u00a0The smaller your flock, the easier it will be to maintain creative resources.<\/p>\n
Ration:\u00a0Believe it or not, your chickens can eat too much! \u00a0This isn\u2019t just a problem for the budget; it can actually decrease egg production. \u00a0I encourage experimentation with your chickens. \u00a0You can stop serving their food \u201cfree choice\u201d (free choice means all-day access to their feed). Start rationing out ? of a pound a day per chicken. \u00a0Begin cutting back slightly every day until you notice a drop in egg production. \u00a0At that point, return to the amount of feed that didn\u2019t affect egg production and go from there. I wouldn\u2019t ration their feed as they are growing. Once they start consuming more than 1\/3 pound of feed a day, then you know it\u2019s time to ration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Keep only the chickens that are efficiently meeting your needs: If you just want eggs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":113205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chicken"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113206,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113204\/revisions\/113206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}