How many hens for a 4 person household?/Potential oversupply??

[MegsAndFeatheredFriends]

You said it's a raised coop. Like a pre-built from a feed store, or something custom? Please do a size check before you get more birds. Feed stores (in the US anyway) sell coops that advertise how many chickens they house that are greatly exaggerated. Hopefully Australia is better. Chickens need at least one square meter in the coop per bird, and 3 square meters outside per bird.

The woman who lived here before us built it herself . Havingit raised is smart for this location cause it can flood.

I'm not sure on square meterage so I'll check that out, but so far I have been working by what a friend of mine in town has said - she is a chicken breeder. She came over to have eyes on the coop and run herself before giving me an estimate number.

 

[MegsAndFeatheredFriends]

I'm envious! I hope to be able to find a black orpington next time we get more chicks in a few years. That or a jubilee orpington. I dream of a flock that's just a rainbow of orpington fluff.

That sounds AMAZING. What a good dream

 

[DobieLover]

I'm not fussed about the EE not having a predictable 'look', I'm getting them cause they seem to produce more eggs per yr than a lot of other breeds.

Over the years I've owned about 10 Easter Eggers. Two are still in my flock. I can tell you that they do not lay consistently during the winter months. They only laid during the winter months when they were pullets.
The only bird in my flock that has laid relatively well through the winter is my Australorp. But she's now 7 years old and I doubt that she'll be doing that for me this winter.

cause if i get too many for the amount of eggs

You can find venues to sell excess eggs. You can advertise on local social media platforms. You may get lucky like I did and establish a long-term reliable customer base. I now only sell my excess eggs to one woman who lives about 2 miles away. She meets me where I run my dogs whenever I have excess eggs to sell to her. And she understands that she won't be getting these eggs during the winter.

Selling surplus eggs helps to recoup some of your feed costs. But because you are in a residential area you are going to have to expend the money to buy them quality feed as they will not be able to forage it for themselves. If you do not buy them quality feed they will not produce eggs. Because you want consistent egg laying throughout the winter you are going to have to cull your older hens in order to have the room for your replacement pullets.

 

[Demarvell]

How many laying hens do you have, and how many eggs do you regularly collect?

I have 3 pullets but i'm considering getting more. We have 1 orpington and 2 sussex at the moment. I want to get Easter eggers too for more consistent egg laying, but I'm also interested in other breeds (as well as EE) because, well, they're pretty.

I'm concerned that I haven't looked into the ongoing costs of keeping chickens enough (although I know our current lot are covered), and maybe I don't even need more..?


How many hens would you recommend for my egg loving household? And will I be inundated with eggs if I have up to 8 hens? We go through about 1-1.5 dozen each week.

We have 23 Gold sex links, (chicken math thing), and we are getting 11 or 12 eggs a day. 8 chickens will probably be enough for your use.

 

[MegsAndFeatheredFriends]

We have 23 Gold sex links, (chicken math thing), and we are getting 11 or 12 eggs a day. 8 chickens will probably be enough for your use.

Thank you!

 

[RedwoodCoastChick]

This is the second year I've water-glassed excess eggs from our 8 young hens. (BYC has lots of how-to info on that, it's very simple.) They've stayed nice & fresh for over 12 months with no refrigeration, stored in wide-mouth gallon jars in our basement/garage. Just need clean UNwashed eggs (preserve their protective bloom), pickling lime (calcium hydroxide - I use "Mrs. Wages"), pure water and clean jars with tight-fitting lids. The eggs work for everything I've tried except over-easy type frying (yolks break); we use them for baking, scrambling, quiche, custard, hollandaise, etc. Now that their egg production is tapering off for winter/molting, I wish I'd preserved a lot more - but our household of 5 enjoys them so much!

 

[Limepink]

I have 4 hens.
They are 7 months old, and generally lay every single day now. They are supplied with organic flock pellets, but mostly are pasture raised in a wooded 10 acre area. It was sporadic when they started laying, and we also had about 2 weeks of extreme heat in our area. In the heat weeks we were getting 1-3 eggs a day, but most days were 2.
We are a family of 3, and are currently up to our ears in eggs..
I would imagine/hope that the amount we are getting now will carry us through the molt/winter months if we were to glass the eggs.