What You Need To Know Before You Get Backyard Chickens in Minnesota

11 million households in the United States have backyard chickens.  I used to be one of those.  Thanks to eggs costing all of our life savings right now, people are wondering if owning chickens is a step they should take.

Before you pull the trigger on backyard chickens, let me walk you through a few pros and cons...and show you what it is like to really own chickens.

What You Need To Know Before You Decide To Have Backyard Chickens in Minnesota

I'd still have backyard chickens but there was a little "incident" in our coop.  It was a 100+ degree, humid summer day that ended up being a bit traumatizing.  I'll share a bit more below for anyone who wants to learn more...if you don't want to hear what happened to my flock, I'll warn you when you should stop reading.

Even with that trauma, I loved our chickens.  I loved it even more when I'd go out to our coop each day and 6 or 7 new eggs were waiting for me to bring into the house.  It was crazy!  We had so many eggs I started giving them away.

Backyard chickens are the third most popular pet.  And now that the bird flu is causing egg shortages and price increases throughout Minnesota, more and more people are wondering if owning chickens would be cost-beneficial.

What Chicken Breed Should You Get For Your Backyard?

We had about 6 different breeds of chickens throughout our time of being "farmers".  Some were great at laying eggs.  Others...not so much.  You can see a huge list of chicken breeds that you could bring home at the University of Minnesota Extension Office.  But below are a few of my favorites that we owned:

This was the best egg-laying chicken for us!  This would be a must if I was going to start a flock again.

Great egg-layers and gorgeous chickens.

Some of our sassiest chickens were Amberlink's and also Orpinton's.  Great egg-layers though.

WARNING:  Do not keep reading if you don't want to know how my chickens died

I live on an acreage and we have a plentitude of wildlife that visit us.  Deer are in our yard pretty much every day.  Woodchucks live under our shed (and I hate them).  Coyotes have the worst howls and it is even freakier when they show up by your back patio door.  Owls, fox, mice, eagles...it is like a zoo at times in my yard.

One animal I wasn't expecting was a weasel.  I never knew we had those around our yard until it was too late.

When you own chickens, you've got to fill up the water, fill up the food, and gather the eggs each day.  My kids played a big role in doing all of these chores and on a hot summer day, my middle kid went out to give the chickens some more water before we had to leave for a few hours.  When he screamed, I knew something was majorly wrong.

Two of the chickens in our coop were lying on the ground near a corner.  Their heads were bent and I could see two puncture wounds.  The rest of the chickens were safe but were huddled in the nesting boxes and extremely scared.

After some research (aka calling a friend who grew up with chickens), I learned that a weasel was the reason my chickens died.  This animal was a known predator of chickens and they can get into a coop with just an inch of an opening.

I went to the store to get more chicken wire to reinforce the coop and protect the rest of the flock.  Unfortunately, the weasel attacked again while I was gone.  My entire flock was killed.

If you can handle digging graves for your chickens in 100+ heat and burying them on your own, backyard chickens might work for you.  If you can't handle burying animals that you raised, this may not be a good fit for you.

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