Dryland CornRaising Chickens
Get a chicken coop and run prepared before purchasing eggs. Chickens grow faster than expected, and you may end up with more chicks than initially planned.
Part of our plan has always to raise livestock for meat, eggs, and milk. When I was young we had chickens and rabbits, and when older I ran a goat farm producing fresh milk and Feta cheese. Goat are a lot of work and require more effort to setup housing and provide food (as of Spring 2025 the alfalfa hasn't yet been planted). Quail are another option since they used feed very efficiently and can be housed in a small area.
We got both quail and chicken eggs and some hatched from both but we weren't fully prepared and quickly found that quail can not be kept with chickens. Unfortunately the few quail that did hatch died. Quail grow faster that chickens and have a higher feed conversion ratio, but are less resistant to diseases that don't affect chickens. Quail are timid and get picked on by the chicken chicks even if the quail chicks are larger.
We bought 12 Olive Egger and 6 Buff Orpington fertilized eggs and got 6 Olive Eggers and 3 Buff Orpington chicks. The Olive Eggers all looked like little penguins when small and a couple have feathers on the face. We were disappointed with the hatch rate we got 21 more eggs from a nearby farm and a friend went on vacation and gave us 12 more eggs, we did try to refuse. From that we got 16 more chicks, 7 from the farm eggs and 9 from the friends eggs. We got the chicken coop setup we moved the original 9 to the coop with the 16 other chicks in the brooder. All of these survived but overcrowded, and some of smallest were bullied by others and missing some feathers on their backs. We got the chicken run completed and moved all the chicks to the coop/run with a total of 240 square feet which comes out to 9.6 square feet per chicken. For the first week the smaller chicks cowered in the corner and were rushed by the larger roosters, but now they have all intregrated. Several of the larger roosters are crowing. Eventually we'll reduce this number by processing roosters we don't want to keep for breeding.
We still need to build a roof over part of the run to shade the chicks. It would have been better if the chicken housing was ready before buying hatching eggs, and so we could have devoted more time managing weeds when the corn was most vulerable.
When the chicks were little we gave them chick crumble and they enjoyed finely chopped alfalfa. Now they are a little older and we give them kitchen scraps and sometimes pizza dough that is thrown out behind the pizza place. We also get reject fruits and vegetables from the food bank and mix it with the crumble and they love it. We also mixed in some sorghum flour from 3 years ago. They go crazy overthe occisional grasshopper if we catch them. We also tried fermenting the crumble but this just makes a smelly mess and more cleaning. Soaking the food in water decreases waste and improves digestability, but we don't feel fermenting, soaking more than a day, is worth the benefit.
Chickens need about 15% - 20% protein and corn by itself only has 8% protein, not enough for chickens. Sunflowers are very drought tolerant, sunflower seeds are 20% protein, and sunflower head can be given directly to chickens. Previously we grew sunflowers but didn't grow them again since they competed heavily with the corn, and we don't have any equipment to process and shell the seeds. Since we now have chickens and they can be given sunflower heads directly, we'll plant sunflowers again in 2026.
Drought Tolerant Hopi Corn Seeds
Dryland Hopi Corn 2025
Dryland Hopi Corn 2024
Dryland Hopi Corn Experiment
Dryland Sorghum
Winter Wheat 2023