So Hi, I have not written in my blog in a long time. I don't know why. I guess I really have not had anything blogworthy to say. Well now I do. yay!
So I recently got into chicken keeping. I guess you can credit a co-worker, a neighbor, and my niece for this. A couple years ago a co worker got some chicks for he and his son to raise together. He lived out in the country and I figured thought "that's cool" I guess he can do that where he lives. All the while shelling out 5 to 6 bucks every few weeks for my free range eggs.
See. I absolutely refuse to purchase Normal Grocery Store Eggs or NGSEs. See NGSE's are hatch from most likely Amberlink chickens housed in tiny cages, crammed in next to thousands of other chickens with nothing to do all day but sit, be miserable and lay eggs like little egg factories. It's like Handmaids Tale for chickens. Conditions in these facilities are terrible. Come on, I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. These chickens are usually killed just before they go into their first molt and stop laying eggs.
The free range or cage free eggs i purchase are pricey, and i really really don't know if the manufacturers are really telling the truth. Plus, do they keep the chickens past prime laying years? I doubt it. Are molting chickens allowed to live out their molty weeks while not laying eggs yet still consuming food and snacks? I doubt that also. I mean, if you are in this for profit, you really can't keep a non producing chicken for any length of time.
These facts about our feathery egg layers led me to decide I may want to raise my own chickens. I knew I could do it in my neighborhood also. See, years ago i lived in a patio home less than a mile from my current home and across the street was a home on the corner of a large block that had a large back yard. In that back yard was a lovely chicken coop and dozens of little brown feathery egg layers running around in the yard. Then when my niece in Fayetteville got her own little flock going, I, now living in a home with a rather large partially fenced back yard, decided it was time.
