Urban Poultry

Raising chickens in the city is becoming more popular. Both the pros and cons should be considered before choosing to keep chickens in your backyard. If you plan on getting chickens as pets with benefits (i.e., eggs), you need to consider what you are going to do with them when they are no longer laying - because they won't keep laying indefinitely.

• Urban poultry (eXtension.org)

Small Poultry Production Flocks

An increasing number of small- and medium-sized farm owners are looking at poultry as a source of income. While they cannot compete with large poultry companies, they are well suited to meet the growing niche market for pasture and/or organic poultry products. There has also been an increased interest in using heritage poultry breeds within a pasture-based system.

• Brooding Young Hatchlings
• Egg production - Chickens
• Egg production - Ducks
• Meat production - Chickens
• Meat production - Ducks
• Meat production - Turkeys
• Raising Geese

Budgets for Small Poultry Flocks

As with any small business, you should research markets before you start construction of any poultry facilities. Make sure you have a reliable source of feed. Do the calculations to make sure that you will make enough profit to cover your time and labor.

• ASC-191: How Much Feed will my Chickens Eat?
• Poultry Enterprise Budgets (Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems)
• Growing your range poultry business: An Entrepreneur's toolbox (ATTRA)
• Diagnosing a farm profitability problem (University of Arkansas)

Pasture Poultry

While chickens are not cows, they can get some nutrition from a properly managed pasture. Pastured poultry is a growing niche market for producers looking for alternative poultry production systems.

Ducks and geese can typically get more of their nutritional requirements from pasture than chickens can. This is not due to better digestion of pasture but increased pasture consumption. With more material being consumed, more material is excreted. They can create a large mess of feathers and manure.

An acre of pasture will support 20-40 geese, depending on the quality of the pasture. Geese are excellent foragers. By 5-6 weeks of age, they should be able to get a large portion of their nutrient intake from pasture material. They do not like alfalfa or narrowed-leaved tough grasses. Instead, they have a preference for clovers, bluegrass, orchard grass, Timothy, and bromegrass.

• Introduction to pasture-raised poultry: Getting Started (University of Florida)
• Pasture poultry: Considerations before pasturing your flock (Backyard Poultry magazine)
• Profitable Poultry: Raising birds on pasture (USDA-SARE)
• Large-scale pastured poultry farming in the U.S. (Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems)
• Raising poultry on pasture (Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems)
• Introduction to pasture-raised poultry - maximizing foraging behavior (University of Florida)
• Small-scale pastured poultry grazing system for egg production (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Exhibition Poultry

There are hundreds of different breeds of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, the poultry species most commonly raised for show.

Poultry-related activities provide a wide range of learning opportunities for youth. There are several low-cost poultry projects that require very little space, making them a suitable project for those interested in animal science but who don’t have the resources to keep a cow, sheep, or pig. There are also large-scale poultry projects (e.g., managing a breeding flock), but no matter the cost of the birds or the facilities used, they have the same learning value.

• Producing turkeys for show (Texas A&M)
• Selecting and preparing poultry for exhibition (Kansas State University)
• Exhibiting 4-H Poultry (University of Nebraska)