Frugal Farming

Today deemed itself to be a happy hen and rooster day at Cluck Acres!

We made a new pen and large run for our "barn hens"....each of our "barn hens" are actually full breed chickens but they have been put into a pen together because we love watching their personalities together and we do not hatch their eggs. They are our eating eggs and so it doesn't matter what the breed of the egg is. We have Buff Orpington's, Araucana's, White Leghorn, and a Game Hen.

Our Heritage Rhode Island Reds have been moved to the older barn hens run and pen while the Silver Duckwing's took over the Heritage Rhode Island Red pen. 

For those small time farmers, like us here at Cluck Acres, add to and rearrange our hens we often find that they have a short time of not laying. The changing of pens and normal daily behavior affects how a hen lays.

So often, people believe that you must have high dollar pens, coops, watering systems, and this and that to raise chickens, goats, and gardens.

In all honesty, we have bought 2 rolls of wire for goat fence, and 1 roll of chicken wire since we began our farming endeavor almost a year ago. All 3 rolls of wire we bought at a discounted price (and just recently... until the last 3 months we used scrapped material and items we had on hand or given to us) because either a piece was rusty or a corner piece was messed up. We went to our local farm and ranch store, saw the wire, asked the manager to mark the price down. He gladly accepted and marked each item down to 50% off of what it originally cost. 

For all of our goats and chickens we have spent about $100 on materials. This is for more than 200 chickens, 3 goats, and 7 dogs. We have kept our eyes out on Craigslist and our local Freecycle websites for items that were free (fencing, wire, barns that needed torn down, wood, etc) and have been able to make a decent farm life for ourselves with very little out of pocket expense.

We don't have amazingly awesome coops. We have functional coops that are well made, by us, and that we can work with and change around if need be.

The belief that a special coop, a fancy water holder or feeder, or amazingly built runs is NOT how things HAVE to be. You can do this with a few hens, scrap wood, scrap wire,  gallon buckets, a little bit of straw and some elbow grease and muscle.

If you can use your imagination you can find ingenious ways to make things work!

What ideas have you come up with that make your coops, pens, and farm frugal?