Chicken Parents
Pirate Guillermo and I have been discussing at some length getting chickens. We eat eggs and chicken and I don't mind killing chickens (I don't know how I feel about plucking them, but we'll find out, won't we?) and chicken poop is amazing fertilizer. I read a few months ago about how chickens are treated in the commercial poultry business. Their lives are nasty, brutish and short, unless they're egg layers, in which case their lives are nasty, brutish and not nearly short enough.
Chickens raised with actual vegetables, bugs, grass and fresh air give better tasting eggs. They have better tasting meat (although not quite as much of it). They're less prone to salmonella and other poultry diseases that come of overcrowded conditions and poor nutrition.
I stopped working and we decided that now was the time. Now was the time to get chicks and start raising our own chickens. I'd be able to keep an eye on the baby chicks during the day, and by the time I go back to work, they'll be ready to go outside.
We ordered the smallest number you can get by mail - 25. Five each of araucanas, black australorps, silver laced wyandottes, barred rocks and buff orpingtons. I've been reading up on chickens and their care and feeding and hearing that it's as hard or easy as you make it on yourself. There are people who devote all their time to their chickens as their principle sources of income or as show birds. There are part-time chicken farmers who have day jobs and deal with their chickens at night and on the weekends.
I'm not thinking that these are going to be pets. Chickens are messy and stupid and can't really return affection the way one hopes for in a pet. Then again, one doesn't expect to eat one's pets. The people I know who have had chickens (several of my friends and my mother) think it's wonderful and are all for it. The ones who haven't are worried that we're getting in over our heads.
The beauty of this plan is that if we get into it and realize that we've made a horrible mistake, we can kill and eat the evidence and nobody's the wiser. The only way we can really lose money on this venture is if very few of the chicks survive to an eatable age, and we're just not THAT careless.
Chickens raised with actual vegetables, bugs, grass and fresh air give better tasting eggs. They have better tasting meat (although not quite as much of it). They're less prone to salmonella and other poultry diseases that come of overcrowded conditions and poor nutrition.
I stopped working and we decided that now was the time. Now was the time to get chicks and start raising our own chickens. I'd be able to keep an eye on the baby chicks during the day, and by the time I go back to work, they'll be ready to go outside.
We ordered the smallest number you can get by mail - 25. Five each of araucanas, black australorps, silver laced wyandottes, barred rocks and buff orpingtons. I've been reading up on chickens and their care and feeding and hearing that it's as hard or easy as you make it on yourself. There are people who devote all their time to their chickens as their principle sources of income or as show birds. There are part-time chicken farmers who have day jobs and deal with their chickens at night and on the weekends.
I'm not thinking that these are going to be pets. Chickens are messy and stupid and can't really return affection the way one hopes for in a pet. Then again, one doesn't expect to eat one's pets. The people I know who have had chickens (several of my friends and my mother) think it's wonderful and are all for it. The ones who haven't are worried that we're getting in over our heads.
The beauty of this plan is that if we get into it and realize that we've made a horrible mistake, we can kill and eat the evidence and nobody's the wiser. The only way we can really lose money on this venture is if very few of the chicks survive to an eatable age, and we're just not THAT careless.
posted by Aoibheall | 8:26 PM
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