We had free ranged happy chickens at our old place. Here in town though, since we're renting I don't know if we'll have them but I wanted to share this article with you all.

http://www.ecospace.cc/food/back-yard-chickens-0208.htm

Today I biked by a yard full of freely roaming chickens, and decided to knock on the door to check out the situation. A generous woman named Alice let me in, gave me some fresh colorful eggs, and then took me outside for a tour of her small but productive yard.

She has had the chickens since they were each 2 days old, she explained, so she loves them and knows each one individually. “They like to be scratched on the back, right here,” she showed me. She picked up one of the smaller hens, scratching her back; the hen’s eyes closed in pleasure like a cat’s!

All together, the group of hens lay about 15 eggs a day, which Alice uses for her family and gives away to friends and neighbors. Though Alice has a compost pile, she uses most of her kitchen scraps to feed the chickens. Raising chickens is more work than most people think, she said. Her husband jokes that they’re the most expensive eggs in town, with organic feed costing $21 for a 50 lb bag, and as she told me, “they eat a lot!” I have heard the opposite, that chickens are cheap to raise, so I wonder if anyone out there in cyberworld has tips on how to feed them cheaply?

The work and money is worth it, Alice said, because she just loves having them around. “My husband jokes that I come out for chicken therapy,” she told me, “they just make these sweet little noises when they greet me, and they’re so soft,” she told me, picking one up gently. She clearly has a very close bond with them, and these chickens are much luckier and happier than most commercially egg-laying hens.

She keeps the price lower with a freebie of excess sawdust from a woodworking store down the street, in place of buying pine shavings for the bottom of the coop. The chickens roll around in it like dust baths. The coop is a wire enclosure that her neighbor sold her. The hens lay their eggs inside an old doghouse which she found ditched at a dumpster beside a grocery store.

Alice warned that raccoons are a big predator of chickens; she knows someone who just the other day lost 3 out of 5 chickens overnight to some raccoons. They will even dig under the coop to get to chickens, so she has wiring on the floor of the coop to protect them.

To start raising chickens, there are a lot of people, websites, and books that are great resources of information. I did a quick search of “raising chickens” and came up with a few informational sites:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/simpleliving/chickens.shtml
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/2003-02-01/How-to-Raise-Chickens.aspx

I got "chicken therapy" too. When I was having a bad day, and I'd go out to feed the girls, they were so happy to see me, and they always followed me around, especially when I would dig up the garden plot. They were especially fond of grubs and would talk to me about how many juicy bugs there were and how tasty they were, and how grateful they were that I'd turned them up. They are good companions, and very soft It really doesn't take many to get enough eggs for a family to use. The kids enjoyed being the "egg hunters" as well.

Hope you all enjoy this as much as I did.

Hi lx :),

Did you eat your chickens too, or just their eggs? I don't think I'd be able to eat them after raising and caring for them. Any animal that I raised and took care of for that matter.

after they stopped laying, we stewed them, which takes at least a year or two.

I just thanked them for the companionship, and told them I was grateful to them for all the many eggs they provided me. In short I did my best to be respectful of the life.

I honestly don't feel bad about eating meat if the animal has a quality life, which ours did. Their lives had meaning and dignity. I attempted to follow a indiginous path when taking a life for eating. Plus, we never gave them names...that's the key you know. You don't name it if you are going to end up eating it. It was a good, valuable lesson for the children to see where meat actually comes from and what it takes to get it from live animal to cookable condition. Not that they were forced to watch, just explained the process to them. That we would kill the birds today and clean them for later eating.

Hi lx,

I understand what you are saying, and think that is the way to go/do it, but I personally don't think I would be able to eat them afterwards.

It reminds me of my cousins... when my uncle bought a small 12 acre farm, they got a cow, some pigs, & chickens. I don't know if they named all of the animals, but the cow I remember was named Elsie. When it came time to butcher and eat her, my cousin Sharon just sat at the table and cried saying she couldn't eat Elsie. I think everyone else did (maybe not that meal), but I'm not sure, I just remember her response. I guess they shouldn't have named her.

I thought this whole thing was beautiful.

I'm probably like kel, in that I would have a hard time going through with it.. But it's a reality of the meat eating life, that animals die for our nourishment. It's so wonderful that you gave so much of your time and love to them..so much more than many chickens get. In effect, much of what you consumed, was what you'd invested..in the form of love and good energy toward these birds.

Plus, the way you approached teaching your children about the realities of eating certain tasties that most of us take for granted..was inspiring.

Thank you so much.

daf

Very touching, indeed.