Chickens

I think that I would like to have chickens. It seems like such a great idea, have chickens that will give me fresh eggs everyday. However, everyone (including my husband) associate chickens with smelly nastiness. I don't think that free range chickens are that gross though. The problem that we have is that the town doesn't allow chickens, or they do, but they have to be 200 yards from the neighbor's house, and since our neighbor lives pretty much on top of us, that won't happen. Unless of course we put up a fence and did it illegally...would anyone really notice? Our neighbor might not even care if we gave him free eggs...The solution that I see? Having chickens at my mom's of course!

She lives just 2 houses down from us, and has about 2 acres of open land that we could use for all of my wonderful homesteading ideas (for WTSHTF). So I am thinking that I might possibly try and get chickens and keep them down at her house. There are several problems I am well aware of with this. Though we live in town, she has a zoo's worth of animals coming through her yard all the time, racoons, fox, deer, woodchucks. All of which could potentially kill the chickens. So, I would need to make sure that they had a coop that was pretty animal proof. Not sure how that would work out of course, and I am not sure I could build something like that. Well, yes, I could build something like that, if I had the time.

It would be nice though, to have chickens and get the eggs. It would also be nice to raise meat chickens and then have them in the freezer. Apparently, it only takes about 8-10 weeks of feeding the little guys and then you can take them to get processed (no way I am ready to do that myself), and then chicken for the whole year in your freezer.

We don't eat a lot of meat in my house, once in a while I do get steak, but we tend to eat a lot of chicken. I buy my chicken from a lovely organic farm about 10 miles from my house, but it is pretty expensive. Would it be less expensive to raise my own? I doubt it, at first anyways, because of the cost of a coop/tractor etc. But, maybe in the long run it would be a good idea??? I don't know. I think the bottom line is I really want goats, and if I start with chickens, maybe Matt will eventually let me have goats :-) We do have that land in West Gardiner still...that is never going to sell...so maybe my dreams of a little homestead are possible...