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I’ve always found that eggs are the hardest thing to get locally. The farmers markets are always sold out unless I arrive right at opening, and they are ridiculously expensive unless I find a neighbor who raises hens. Everyone wants eggs, it seems, putting them in really high demand. Of course, whenever something is hard to get from someone else, my immediate response is to figure out how I can make it myself (or get a hen to make it for me).

An article published in Grist, about a woman whose forays into raising hens for eggs has gotten a little out of hand, got me thinking how easy it is to get your own eggs if you’ve got a little space. I won’t ruin the article for you, since it’s pretty hysterical, but the basic idea is that the family’s five hens are laying way too many eggs for them to eat on their own. The author has started bartering eggs for other homemade foods in Brooklyn, where she lives.

I started thinking: how easy would it be to raise a few chickens in my backyard. Then I could have eggs whenever I wanted!

I called up my aunt, who has raised chickens in North Carolina and South Africa, to ask for her advice on the joys and pitfalls of raising chickens. To get more step-by-step advice, I also Googled “How to Raise Chickens,” and ran across www.backyardchickens.com.

According to the internet, and my aunt, chickens are pretty awesome pets. They are relatively low-maintenance, pick out weeds and bugs from your yard, lay eggs for you to eat, are playful and adorable, and spend their free time knitting socks for your children (that last one is based on accurate depictions of hens in Loony Toons episodes). According to my aunt, “Chickens may be stupid but they have some endearing qualities. After a rough day’s work I would trudge up to the chickens and sit down on the step. Arnie [the rooster] would immediately jump in my lap and rub up against me like a cat. Soon all 4 hens would be sitting on my head, shoulders and lap as well. Bliss!”

Are They Allowed

First of all, it is important to realize that your town may not permit you to raise livestock animals within city limits. You should do your due diligence to make sure its legal. Even if it is okay, you need to be considerate of your neighbors, as it is pretty easy for them to give the police a reason to confiscate your adorable cluckers.

I do not recommend roosters. Having lived near someone with roosters, it is a pain. They crow as soon as they see the sun. Sometimes they crow because they think they might miss it if they wait. Of course, roosters don’t lay eggs, so you probably don’t want them anyway.

Turns out my hometown does allow chickens, as long as they are housed more than 50 ft from the neighbors. Easy enough.

Getting the Chicks

The next step is acquiring your soon-to-be hens. According to www.backyardchickens.com, feed stores will sometimes carry chicks in the spring. The website also provides links to order chicks in eggs. I have seen mail order chicks in magazines like Mother Earth News, and I suspect that its pretty easy to get the birds if you check on farm supply websites. Personally, I would want a heritage breed, so I know it is healthy and genetically robust (I’d rather not raise a clone of Perdue’s hens, thank you very much).

As a last resort, I know a chicken farmer upstate who could tell me where he got his majestic hens.

Time to Grow me Some Chickens

So the chicks arrive from the feed store, or in eggs from the mail. The next step is to hatch the eggs in an incubator, which is a very warm box (99.5 degrees). There are all sorts of things to look out for, such as making sure to turn the eggs, checking the humidity, and watching for bad eggs. Apparently, turning the eggs can help you connect with your chicks, kind of like cradling a baby.

Once the chicks are hatched, you get to play with them (after giving them a few days to get their strength and transferring them to a brooder where they grow). But seriously, playing with your chicks is an important part of socializing them to humans. My aunt commented, “Chicks imprint if you get them early enough.  Older hens stay wild but if you handle your chicks, sit with them, pick them up, snuggle them (difficult) – they’ll follow you around and sit on you.” I imagine unsocialized hens would get really stressed out to find you rifling through their nests all the time.

Watch out for exploratory chicks. If you let them out, make sure to catch all of them and bring them in when play time is over. Keep attendance.

My aunt’s chick-raising story was a little more interesting than the how-to website suggests. She raised hers from her Orpington cockeral named Mugabe and some commercial laying hens.

“I marked the eggs I collected over the next week and when Hettie decided to go broody (they SAY they breed broodiness out of them but some still get that way) I put the eggs under her. Chickens eat eggs — something to keep in mind — and most of these 10 eggs disappeared. One however hatched — my daughter called me in the car to tell me. She wanted to know whether she must leave the chick with Hettie or take it. I told her to take it because the hens would kill the chick (I had 20 hens) but to keep it warm. So she cradled it in her hands and carried it in the house and not knowing how to keep it warm she put it in bed with her brother. ‘He’ became Jackson – who later morphed into a hen, although the moniker stuck.

“I then tried the box with the bulb (incubator) and they all rotted despite my best efforts — water spray to keep them humid, me rotating them constantly. When we noticed some black ooze coming out of them I switched off the light and decided to toss them. Before I got the chance however, one cracked open. My son found this one and promptly named it ‘Smee’.”

The Ladies Like to Lay

Once you’ve got some hens instead of chicks, you’re going to want a coop for their egg-laying comfort. You can build your own coop, or you can buy one from the handy catalog at www.mypetchicken.com. Some of the designer coops are pretty nice. There are also plans to build your own, and www.backyardchickens.com has a catalog of coops built by other chicken lovers, some of which are pretty fancy.

Chickens need about 2-3 square feet per bird indoors and 4-5 square feet per bird in an outdoor yard. If you have a fenced yard and don’t mind the chickens wandering, you can have their coop open onto the yard like the place where I get my eggs in Columbia, CT. I think the dog up there looks after the hens. Otherwise, you need to be aware of predators, including raccoons, foxes, your cat, and birds of prey.

Of course, there are a lot of details to keep in mind when setting up your hens’ coop, like litter, lighting, temperature, etc. All of these details can be found with a little research. Generally, I was really impressed with how simple the whole process seems.

After that, you just let the hens grow up, feed them regularly, and eventually they start laying eggs. In the article mentioned above, the author was a little shocked when one day there was an egg lying in one of the nests, with the hens going about their business. I guess it just happens one day.

And then you’re inundated with eggs. Like magic! Or as my aunt put it, “you’ll get way too many eggs.  With only 4 hens laying 4-5 eggs/week each — I was giving them away to the neighbors. But the taste is worth the bother. What flavour, what deep coloring! Like no egg, organic or otherwise, that you can buy in the supermarkets.”

Of course, the only real way to know is to try it for yourself and learn as you go. But from what I’ve learned, it seems like it’s pretty easy to get started.