To Chicken or not to Chicken?

[ning]

I've fenced my yard for the safety of my orchard, cats and chickens (27), against deer coyotes and bobcat.

Yes, the gardens are fenced (with lower simpler fences) against the chickens. The chickens dig through wood chips in the landscaping which makes some mess, but they don't bother the plants. Once the gardens are well established, we occasionally open the gates and let the chickens come through.

My area is rife with ticks and fleas and people but a lot of products for their cats and dogs against them here, but my cats rarely show up with one despite not wearing tick collars - thank you chickens and occasional mowing of grasses (though the cats also frequent more brushy areas). Possibly fencing the deer out helps with ticks too.

There's positively a difference in egg flavor everybody notices it and that's why we're able to sell our extras. The birds themselves taste different too (slightly more gamey).

Letting the chickens free range during the day reduces my their eating of the supplementary feed by about 70% (we put the feeder away when we let them out in the morning).

 

[Bill Guenthner]

That's an interesting hypothesis. Care to cite your sources? I've heard vegetarians argue the same thing about soy burgers, but the one time I tried one I didn't finish it. This study, Flavour Chemistry of Chicken Meat: A Review
from the National Library of Medicine* indicates differently.

They conclude that the primary differences in flavor have to do with the Maillard reaction and differences in cooking methods such as boiling versus roasting. As to the final sentence, you could just as easily be raising a breed that tastes worse than the breed from the KFC chicken farm, as better. Anyway, I think it would be cool and fun to raise chickens, and I might even decide to do it at some point as a hobby, I just wouldn’t enter into it thinking I’d save money or get a decidedly better end product.

 

[kcflhrc]

Chickens for me is a hobby. And like any other hobby not profitable at all. They eat bugs and lay wonderful eggs. And one hen in particular for me is my buddy. She will fly up on my legs when sitting then on up to my shoulder. Crazy bird.

 

[EddieWalker]

I didn't want to have chickens, but my wife did, and I didn't realize that when I said yes, that it would become a never ending project. But I also didn't realize how much I would enjoy having chickens. They have different personalities, and it's fun to watch them wonder around the yard and pasture.

We have about a hundred of them in 3 coops. We collect about 4 dozen eggs a day, but there are some birds that lay there eggs under the hay bale, and in odd corners of the barn, or in the shed with my tools. I just found two dozen eggs in my cement mixer!!!

We sell them for $5 a dozen. It used to be $3, but when Covid hit, we went up to $4 and now we're at $5. My wife brings them to work, and I sell them to clients, and some people come out to our place to pick them up. We also feed a dozen eggs a day to our dogs. We probably eat them once or twice a week. I enjoy fried eggs, but rarely seem to have to time to cook them.

Probably the biggest surprise to having eggs was when the shutdown happened and the stores ran out of eggs. Instead of selling them, we traded for stuff that we didn't have.

Now with shortages getting worse, we're seriously considering raising meat chickens. We feed our dogs about ten pounds of chicken breasts a week. My wife makes their food in a crock pot, and the cost of chicken breasts increasing so rapidly, we're wanting to make sure that we can always have meat for them.

The same is true for buying food for my wife and I. Almost every week, there is something at the store that we cannot find. Some times it's meat, other times, it's something else. We're expanding out vegetable garden, and I'm working on fencing in 24 acres so we can get a few cattle. We already have goats.

I feel that it's going to get worse before it gets better, and the more that we can produce, the less we will be affected by shortages and inflation.

 

[ning]

I didn't want to have chickens, but my wife did, and I didn't realize that when I said yes, that it would become a never ending project. But I also didn't realize how much I would enjoy having chickens. They have different personalities, and it's fun to watch them wonder around the yard and pasture.

We have about a hundred of them in 3 coops. We collect about 4 dozen eggs a day, but there are some birds that lay there eggs under the hay bale, and in odd corners of the barn, or in the shed with my tools. I just found two dozen eggs in my cement mixer!!!

We sell them for $5 a dozen. It used to be $3, but when Covid hit, we went up to $4 and now we're at $5. My wife brings them to work, and I sell them to clients, and some people come out to our place to pick them up. We also feed a dozen eggs a day to our dogs. We probably eat them once or twice a week. I enjoy fried eggs, but rarely seem to have to time to cook them.

Probably the biggest surprise to having eggs was when the shutdown happened and the stores ran out of eggs. Instead of selling them, we traded for stuff that we didn't have.

Now with shortages getting worse, we're seriously considering raising meat chickens. We feed our dogs about ten pounds of chicken breasts a week. My wife makes their food in a crock pot, and the cost of chicken breasts increasing so rapidly, we're wanting to make sure that we can always have meat for them.

The same is true for buying food for my wife and I. Almost every week, there is something at the store that we cannot find. Some times it's meat, other times, it's something else. We're expanding out vegetable garden, and I'm working on fencing in 24 acres so we can get a few cattle. We already have goats.

I feel that it's going to get worse before it gets better, and the more that we can produce, the less we will be affected by shortages and inflation.

My wife decided to hatch some eggs last year
She got a big incubator and put 75 eggs in o.m.g.
Luckily only 50 hatched.

Right down the middle we got 25 roosters 25 hens.

Most of the roosters are in the deep freeze now; a few have made it into the soup pot or pot pies - these weren't meat birds per se so they didn't have as much meat as store bought chicken but they're very tasty.

Quite a mess to process. I'd prefer not to but it's good to understand how to do it.

 

[Diggin It]

A. I'm one of those 'food comes from stores' people. If I feed and house it, I ain't eatin' it. Pets ain't food.

B. I'll never pay more than $2/dozen for eggs, no matter the source. Even at a buck and a half, I gotta have a major egg Jones to buy any.

 

[forgeblast]

We have ducks, and i love the eggs, my wife no so much. So our old coop we tore down and rebuilt a nice little one perfect for 4-6 chicks. Just enough for us. I like them, they are great garbage disposals. We went with some heritage birds this time and some different color egg layers since we do psyanky eggs and wanted to get some interesting colors.

 

[JethroB]

I worked in the commercial broiler industry for 30+ years. The avian/bird flu scares the bejezzes out of the poultry industry. In about 2014 there was a big scare from migratory birds which can quickly spread it around the world. Backyard flocks can too. Preparation was mostly centered around “How do you euthanize and destroy potentially millions of infected broilers, layers, and turkeys very very quickly?” It’s not a pretty scenario.

 

[Oaktree]

We sell them for $5 a dozen. It used to be $3, but when Covid hit, we went up to $4 and now we're at $5.

Wow, pricey down your way. Going price around here is $2/dz.

 

[shooterdon]

I didn't want to have chickens, but my wife did, and I didn't realize that when I said yes, that it would become a never ending project. But I also didn't realize how much I would enjoy having chickens. They have different personalities, and it's fun to watch them wonder around the yard and pasture.

We have about a hundred of them in 3 coops. We collect about 4 dozen eggs a day, but there are some birds that lay there eggs under the hay bale, and in odd corners of the barn, or in the shed with my tools. I just found two dozen eggs in my cement mixer!!!

We sell them for $5 a dozen. It used to be $3, but when Covid hit, we went up to $4 and now we're at $5. My wife brings them to work, and I sell them to clients, and some people come out to our place to pick them up. We also feed a dozen eggs a day to our dogs. We probably eat them once or twice a week. I enjoy fried eggs, but rarely seem to have to time to cook them.

Probably the biggest surprise to having eggs was when the shutdown happened and the stores ran out of eggs. Instead of selling them, we traded for stuff that we didn't have.

Now with shortages getting worse, we're seriously considering raising meat chickens. We feed our dogs about ten pounds of chicken breasts a week. My wife makes their food in a crock pot, and the cost of chicken breasts increasing so rapidly, we're wanting to make sure that we can always have meat for them.

The same is true for buying food for my wife and I. Almost every week, there is something at the store that we cannot find. Some times it's meat, other times, it's something else. We're expanding out vegetable garden, and I'm working on fencing in 24 acres so we can get a few cattle. We already have goats.

I feel that it's going to get worse before it gets better, and the more that we can produce, the less we will be affected by shortages and inflation.

Around here no one will pay more than $3/doz. Friends raised chickens for eggs a few years ago and we would buy them to help them out; but would throw half of them away. We were paying them $2/doz when eggs at the store were $.80. Our friends were poor so we "sucked it up" to help them.

Thankfully they stopped trying to make money from eggs after two years.

Just yesterday, my fiancé, brought home a dozen eggs she got at bible study from a lady who raises chickens and cannot sell what she produces. I think they were free but I did not ask. We have got them before and we will wind up throwing them out too.

I do not know many people who go through a dozen eggs a week willingly. Friends and family who buy your eggs for $5/doz are more than likely doing you a favor and hope you stop selling eggs...LOL. Not too hard to throw out cheap eggs but throwing our $5 bills gets old quick and having to eat eggs to use them up gets old too.

Reminds me of the stuff folks with gardens give out because they cannot use it all. Most of it gets wasted. People are too kind to say, "Please stop giving me all this stuff".