Chicken or Eggs?
That is the question isn’t it?
I call it the great chicken debate. In a world where fresh homegrown organic chicken eggs are going for between $6 and $7 a carton, it’s hard to not think about raising your own chickens.
How hard could it be?
Fresh organic eggs taste way better than typical grocery store-bought eggs. Unlike regular white store-bought eggs their yolks are huge and bright yellow. The eggshells themselves come in a variety of colors—like the chickens themselves. They look like Easter eggs straight from the hens.
It would be great to have chickens running around the yard. They eat just about anything, which means that they will eat your kitchen scraps. They will even eat your neighbor’s scraps. They will also eat snails and slugs out of your garden.
Chickens are cheap to buy. You can drop a buck or two or three and get some cute little, even exotic chicks down at the local hardware store and they’re even sexed for you.
You can make an inexpensive pen for them and they live outside.
The downside: An egg laying chicken doesn’t lay very much in the colder winter months. An egg laying chicken is in it’s prime during the warm summer months, and lays about one egg every other day. In our family we go through about a dozen eggs every two days, more if I’m in a baking mood. In order to keep our family in eggs we would need approximately two-dozen chickens.
But chickens can’t exist on kitchen scraps alone, so you would need to buy chicken feed. You’d need to buy a chicken feeder, and a warming light. You might have to raise the chicks in your house until they’re old enough to stay warm outside or until the weather changes.
You might even have to watch TV with them.
Chicks are really cute but they only stay cute for a very, very short time. You will see them change within the first week you have them. That gorgeous downy coat you bring them home in disappears in a matter of days.
Now there are some people that think chicken poop is one of the best things about chickens. It is really great manure that can be worked right into your garden. Yeah. Well guess what? Chicken poop smells.
As a matter of fact, it stinks.
If you let your chicken have the run of your garden during the day they will not only poop in your garden but als on your patio and your deck. I had a friend who’s chicken’s favorite place to poop was on her outdoor dining table.
I had a chicken that roamed my garden during the day besides pooping all over my patio and never in my garden, it’s favorite things to eat were all my seedlings. It never touched a snail or a slug.
Even though the chicks you get at the hardware store are sexed there is no guarantee that a male won’t sneak by undetected. As a matter of fact it’s very common.
Plus—if you didn’t know this already—roosters are mean and noisy. They also have a tendency to beat the heck out of the hens, and roosters don’t lay eggs.
Chickens only lay eggs for about three years and after 12 months of laying, their egg laying ability starts to decline. Now chickens live on average about six years. So you can keep the clucking, pooping eating machine around for three more years after they have outlived their usefulness. Then feed, water, house, and pay their medical expenses for the rest of their days or you can cull them, something I could never bring myself to do.
When you bring the chicks home you’re going to need a place to keep them, a chick brooder. This isn’t a big problem since they are so little. All you really need in a large cardboard box, a 100 watt bulb preferably on a clamp, pointing to one corner of the box. Throw some pine shavings in the bottom of the box. Make sure they have food and water and you’re set.
Then, as your chickens grow into adulthood, you’re going to need to build or purchase a chicken coop. There is a wide variety of ways to go here, you can go with a simple homemade coop or you can drop several hundred dollars on a fancy custom coop. Personally I would skip the whole thing and GO to the store and get some eggs.
The two things that scare me the most are the fact that if one of my chickens got sick I KNOW that I would be sucker enough to take it to the vet.
And I KNOW that the vet would say something like “this treatment will be very expensive, but with some TLC, your chicken will be just fine.” Because there is hope, and by now I will have formed a bond with this stupid chicken, so I will not even consider the other option of just putting the poor thing out of it’s misery and saving myself a shite-load of money.
Hell, if it was a couple of decades back and the chicken got sick or stopped laying eggs, you would just lop it’s silly head off and call it dinner. But now you would knit a jacket for it and keep it in a box in your bedroom, feed it with an eyedropper every three hours and watch TV with it.
I tried chickens once, it didn’t work out for me. I am lucky though, because I have friends and neighbors who love to raise chickens and who provide me with fresh organic eggs.
But it is winter now, so I must drive to the store to buy eggs.
"Winter?" HA, this is Cali! All our hens are laying now. We laugh in the face of winter. ;-) Want to harvest eggs next week while we're away?
xo
Posted by: Jacqueline | February 10, 2011 at 11:54 PM
Hmmm...I raised hens for a few years. We only had three or four at a time. I liked nothing better than getting up in the morning and collecting fresh eggs for the family. The neighborhood children were fascinated by them, but so were the foxes and the coyotes! There was nothing worse than a predator breaking into the hen house & finding a back yard decorated with feathers and chicken parts in the morning.
The chickens were easy to care for. Those who have gardents are correct when they say that chicken manure is a great garden fertilzer.
I live in the city of Boston now and am thinking of raising a few hens again. They are a less expensive backyard investment than a swimming pool!
Think spring...today began at 4 degrees.
~Jean
Posted by: Jean M | February 11, 2011 at 04:47 AM
One of my neighbors has gotten into the raising chickens thing, and even though she lives across the street, sometimes I think I can smell the chicken poop clear over at my house,and after watching what she's going through I've decided raising chickens is not for me!
Posted by: Kalynskitchen | February 11, 2011 at 07:14 AM
Jacqueline,
Do you recognize the chicks and the chick handler? I would be more than happy to pilfer...uh...I mean collect your eggs.
Jean,
I watch my friends chickens when they go out of town, see comment above, so I have seen the carnage that come with chicken predators, icky.
Raising chickens is not for me, but my friends that do it love it and I have to admit I actually like their chickens and they each have their own personalities.
See, I'm too much of a sucker to own chickens.
Hi Kalyn,
Yep, that poop is nasty stuff you really have to keep them clean and I just don't have the time. But it is good manure.
Posted by: chigiy | February 11, 2011 at 09:56 AM
I am so with you! I really thought I would be all over the chicken thing -- totally fits in with my ideal of that farm-type experience, being frugal, organic, local, sustainable, etc. etc. etc...
Until I took care of a friend's chickens for a week.
Yep, not for me.
~Angela~
Posted by: Angela (Cottage Magpie) | February 15, 2011 at 11:19 PM
Angela,
Yep, it takes a special chicken person to keep chickens. That being said, my son is taking care of my friend's chickens and I just ate two of their most delicious eggs. Yum.
Posted by: chigiy | February 16, 2011 at 12:37 PM
Oh Chigiy - love your always sharp & funny take on a subject! Organized groups of Austin Henfolk have hosted tours of Chicken Coops and we really enjoyed seeing how people raise them in back yards, but we haven't seriously considered trying it.
It's illegal to keep poultry in our subdivision and even if I wanted to defy the covenants, there's no way I could guard chickens against an entire neighborhood full of free-roaming cats.
We'll just be content visiting chickens.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Posted by: Annie in Austin | March 04, 2011 at 07:39 PM
Hi Annie!
How are you?? Yah, you have to really love chickens to raise them. I could have them here if I wanted because we are up in the mountains. If I was going to do it I think I would have them in a chicken tractor so I could move them around the yard.
Thanks for visiting.
Posted by: chigiy | March 06, 2011 at 10:35 PM