Apocalypse Acres

09/04/2025

Day 26: Helping homestead and farming pages grow!
🐓 🐗 🐃

Today we recommend: Moore’s Poultry Palace 🤍

09/04/2025

Oh yeah!! I just learned what these were like 2 weeks ago 😅😅

I just love doing giveaways! I’ve met some of the coolest folks so far from them!

WITH THAT BEING SAID…..

When we reach 1000 followers (we aren’t that far off) we will be giving away a dozen kikiriki hatching eggs! Shipping will be included, limited to the USA

Like this post, make sure you follow us, share this post (make sure it’s public) & comment DONE! & for an extra entry go to the … button and select invite friends. Comment a screenshot for your extra entry!gwi

09/04/2025

This came from my silkie coop, it’s all silkies and satins. Is it a frizzle?! I’ve never had one! And we’ve bred the silkies before and I’ve never hatched a frizzle either! (This is my solitary silkie chick.)

09/04/2025

OMG IT’S QUAIL TIME!!!! We have 4 little popcorns already!!! It’s insane how fast they hatch!

09/04/2025

This is my sunset photo!! I just finished putting a new roof on this soon to be quail coop!! (Like TWELVE of my quail eggs are pipped already! 😳🤪) I’m going to add a bigger run behind it, too! I’ll put a before photo of the rotten roof in the comments.

09/03/2025

We thrifted till we couldn’t fit anymore in the car!!! 😅😅 It was a super successful shopping trip! Where are my thrifters and anteaters at?!

09/03/2025

Honestly even $25 is a GREAT deal for a laying hen!!

Why I charge $25+ for laying hens!

Every so often, someone scoffs and challenges why I charge $25 for a laying hen. And every time, I have to resist the urge to laugh, cry, or hand them an itemized list of six months of labor, feed, bedding, electricity, and emotional wear and tear.

Here’s the short version: every hen I sell was hatched right here on the property. Not scooped out of the clearance bin at the feed store, but from hand-selected breeding stock or shipped hatching eggs with specialized genetics that, by the dozen, cost more than a weeks’s worth of groceries and can arrive with the structural integrity of a wet tissue. Sometimes they hatch. Sometimes they don’t. It’s basically a frazzled game of chicken roulette.

Once they hatch, I become a full-time poultry concierge. For the first few weeks, chicks require a carefully maintained 95°F brooder, 24/7. If the temperature drops, they freeze and die. If it spikes, they overheat and die. If everything’s perfect but they spill their water and get wet? You guessed it—they die. It’s an incredibly rewarding process if you enjoy stress and sleep deprivation and learning how to make itty bitty splints for that one chick who slipped a tendon.

Feeding them isn’t as simple as tossing out a scoop of cracked corn. There’s chick starter (medicated or not???), grower feed, grit, vitamins, and a selection of treats to keep them from staging a mutiny or plucking their siblings’ tail feathers out. They also prefer to turn their waterers into a duck-soup of bedding, p**p, dander, and feathers—usually within minutes of being cleaned. They grow out of this behavior around - never.

After a few weeks, they graduate to outdoor housing, where I continue to cater to their every need like they are feathered royalty. This means secure, predator-proof coops, daily feed and water checks, constant cleaning, and multiple social interventions because - like high school- every hatch has their “clicks”. Somewhere around month five or six, they finally start laying eggs—right about the time people start showing up and asking, “Wait, why are they $25?”

Well. Because at that point, I’ve invested half a year into hatching and keeping them alive, healthy, socialized, and safe from weasles, foxes, raccoons, hawks, the weather, and each other. I’ve also endured chicken-related drama that rivals the emotional turmoil of most TV reality shows. These hens are not only laying, but they’re friendly, acclimated to humans, and used to an attended-to life outside of a plastic tote and flickering flourescent lighting.

On average, our hens will lay around 250–300 eggs per year, and somewhere in the ballpark of 800 to 1,000 eggs in her lifetime. If you’re paying $5 a dozen (which, let’s be real, is cheap for fresh eggs these days), that’s $330–$415 worth of eggs from one bird. And I’m only asking for the price of a mediocre drive-thru meal and a few coins from under your sofa cushion.

So no, $25 isn’t expensive. If anything, it’s a discount for skipping six months of brooder management, coop construction, predator panic, and 2 a.m. Google searches like “is my chick sneezing or just dramatic?” You’re getting a healthy, friendly, long-term productive bird—without the trauma of wondering if your heat lamp is about to catch fire.

If that sounds like a fair deal, fantastic. You instantly earn the respect of small breeders everywhere who are just grateful someone gets it. If not, I invite you to try raising chicks from scratch. I’ll be here when you change your mind—and I’ll still sell you a ready-to-lay pullet for $25.

09/03/2025

Isn’t this how it usually goes?? HOW MANY chickens can fit in one nest box?!? 😅🥹😅

09/03/2025

Day 25: Helping homestead and farming pages grow!
🐓 🐗 🐃

Today we recommend: Rusted Rooster Farm 🤍

09/03/2025

I also made banana bread! And went to the zoo! And chopped up a million peppers and cucumbers!! I’m exhausted 😅😅 Good night everyone!!!

09/03/2025

And tomorrow we pickle!!! For HOURS!! 😀😀😀

09/02/2025

Today we went to the ZOO!! And you know what I took photos of? 😅😅 Wild turkeys, this squirrel, tortoises, and lizards 😅😅 literally everything we could just go outside and see on our farm! Anyway the psycho squirrel ended up jumping up onto our table and stealing some of our food. I thought he was gonna attack our faces, I’ve seen videos!