Chickens in the Burbs

Over the last 2 years, my wife has enjoyed reading the following two blogs:

• Section 89 – A blog about food maintained by Sandra Jergensen, a wonderful writer and friend from college
• The Chatelaine’s Keys – A Jewish home-schooling intellectual who champions living independently off your own land

These blogs promote local food production and healthy eating.

If you gaze upon something long enough, you invariably end up steering in that direction. And so we find ourselves now chicken farming in the burbs!

It’s really quite simple.

• We live on a 1/3 acre in the burbs. Luckily, we are free to keep chickens because we don’t have to deal with annoying neighborhood associations.
• The chickens lay 1 egg per day per chicken, which our children collect. We have 3 chickens and collect 3 eggs per day.
• We have a “chicken tractor” which we can slide along the back edge of our back yard, to keep any one section of grass from getting destroyed. We bought the tractor for $50 on Craigslist.
• We put a bowl of chicken feed in the coop and a bucket of water.
• We let the chickens run around the back yard in the evenings so they can rummage for insects and other grassy yummies. Sometimes we toss them the scraps from dinner.
• All the kids on our street, including our own kids, love the chickens and are learning something useful in the process.

The scariest thing is that since this is so easy, we are now tempted to go for the milk-producing Nigerian Dwarf Goats – somebody stop us before this spins out of control!

Tagged as: chickens, eggs, family, farming, health, kids