Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch

Harper Jones, Barnwell, Alabama

My good friend, Jeanie Miller, called me one day and asked if I would like to do a story about an enterprising young lady who started her own business from chicken scratch. I said, “Sure! Tell me about it.” Jeanie drives to Barnwell to pick up fresh farm eggs from the business owner, who happens to be eleven and recently entered the sixth grade.

Meet Harper Jones, a student in her final year at J. Larry Newton Elementary. Harper and her 14-year-old brother, Pierce, live with their parents, Jamie and John Ryan, on a beautiful piece of property just west of where U.S. Highway 98 and Scenic 98 intersect in Barnwell. I scheduled a sit down to learn more about Harper and the chicken and egg business.

“What got you started?” I asked. “I thought it would be a cool thing to do, and I love animals, and I thought it would be fun,” she tells me. Her love of animals becomes more and more evident as we dive in. “It started with two rabbits, Charcoal and CoCo, and then, around Covid time, she approached her parents about getting some chickens.

“We bought four chickens from a local chicken farmer, starting with three hens and a rooster.” Next came the chicken coop they built for the hens. Soon Harper and the family were enjoying fresh farm eggs on a daily basis. 

“What makes farm eggs special?” I ask. (I realize at this point I don’t know as much as I should about chickens) “Yard eggs,” as she calls them, “are much richer and darker.” I also learned that an unwashed yard egg can sit on a kitchen counter for a long time, but once you wash an egg, it must be refrigerated. 

“There’s a bloom on a chicken egg that naturally protects it, but once it’s washed. bacteria can enter the egg.” Yard eggs also taste better because of what chickens eat from the ground, like bugs and such. “They aren't cooped up close together and they have a yard to wander in.”

Along the way, Harper has had to learn how to breed chickens by purchasing eggs and incubating them. “All chickens lay eggs, and you can either eat them or hatch them. Some chickens, called broody hens, want to sit on their eggs until they hatch, other eggs are taken for incubation. Either way, it takes 21 days for a chick to hatch.

Where do you get your chickens and breed stock? “At the Chicken Swap.” Harper and her family go to the Elberta Co-Op every month to purchase and sell chickens to get breed stock for a variety of chicken breeds. John Ryan found more chickens online in South Florida and had the Barred Rock eggs shipped to Harper’s home.

Over the next year, she kept breeding the Barred Rock chickens and taking them to the chicken swap. The process requires a hen and a rooster and, if all goes well, you will have fertile eggs to incubate or for a hen to sit on and hatch her own eggs.  

Barred Rocks are pretty chickens, “They look like a zebra, black and white with a red cone, and really big,” she tells me. She got a Barred Rock rooster, named Vanilla, from the first hatching, and he is a very nice rooster. “She has picked him up and carried him around from day one of hatching him,” her mother says.

Next, Harper’s dad found a Bantam hatchery online and bought two. “We started finding chicken breeds we really liked.” Pierce wanted some Silkies. Instead of feathers, they have fur and five toes instead of three. “That’s how you can tell it’s a Silky,” Harper tells me. They bought three.

She then decided she wanted colored eggs, so she bought some Easter Egg Chickens at the Chicken Swap. “You need an Americana rooster to breed Easter Egg Chickens.” I knew about Easter Egg Chickens because my grandmother in North Carolina had some that laid pastel green and blue eggs. When I would return home to Mobile and tell my friends about them, they didn’t believe me. I was beginning to feel validated…

In the chicken breeding business, you have to have different roosters for each pure breed. It takes about six months for chickens to begin laying eggs, depending on the breed, and some chickens don’t lay every day. Harper tells me this time last summer, she was up to about twenty chickens producing a dozen eggs a day. I’m learning a lot! 

She started selling a dozen or so eggs to her teacher at school and other friends.  She decided to increase her business and incubate more chickens. She buys and sells chicks at the swap. A chick can cost $2 to $6 depending on the breed. A full-grown chicken can go from anywhere between $20 to $40. She actively sells eggs, chicks, and full-grown chickens. “I will sell two hens and a rooster as a mating trio.” 

I asked about predators. “We did more free-range at first, but the raccoons and coyotes started finding the flock.” They had to enclose the chicken run and add automatic doors so the chickens could have a grassy area to roam but could find safety from predators at night. Harper tells me, “The chickens are smart enough to go inside when the sun goes down.”

How do you feel about selling your chickens? “She doesn’t want to let any of them go,” says Jamie. “She names them as soon as they are hatched.” Right now, Harper has about 40 laying hens, “More than we can count,” says her dad. They list the different breeds: Rhode Islands, Barred Rocks, Silkies, ISA Browns, Buff Orpingtons, White Leghorns, and Black Copper Marans. 

Soon there were too many eggs. Harper designed an Egg House that she drew on a piece of wood. With the help of Pierce and her dad, the drawing became a real Honor Box system that sits alongside her family’s driveway with a sign that reads, “Fresh Farm Eggs.” She loads the Egg House with two to three dozen eggs per day. The washed and unwashed eggs sell for $4 per dozen.

Every afternoon after school, Harper tends to her chickens, feeds and waters them, and collects the eggs. She feeds them lots of fruits and vegetables, especially the vegetables with wormholes that they grow at home, as well as out-of-date bread.

They spend a good bit of time at Tractor Supply buying chicken feed and other necessities needed to run a chicken business. She grows her vegetables from seed and replants them around the chicken coops when they sprout. The coops have undergone several expansions. The vegetables that don’t have wormholes, she puts in the Egg House for free. All her marketing is by word of mouth.

What a great story about a delightful young lady who is one year away from entering Fairhope Middle School! I don’t recall a more interesting and pleasant interview. One last thing I learned, is the roosters crow all the time, not just at sunrise and sunset. My only regret is I forgot to ask which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Thanks for the tip, Jeanie. I owe you one!