My husband and I have always wanted to be self-sustaining. Although we aren’t…yet. We work towards this goal each year to get closer and closer.
One way to be self-sustaining are CHICKENS! My mother-in-law has had chickens for a long time which was great because we would always get eggs from her. But two years ago we decided to get our own chicks and try it out. I fell in LOVE! Who would have known I would love to raise chickens?!?
Chickens are such a good resource for food! Eggs are a nutritious and sustainable food that would be perfect to have in an emergency situation. Also, when the chickens get too old to lay they are good for meat. When we had two roosters…we killed and plucked one…because really more than one rooster is too many. I have yet to kill any hens and I love them so it would be hard!!! But in an emergency, yes I could!
At the beginning, (two years ago) we got 12 chicks. A couple of them died as chicks for unknown reasons… in the end we had 6 full size brown egg layers and 3 bantam chickens. Turns out 2 of those bantam chickens were roosters. One rooster died and we still have one rooster with the hens. He is a MEAN sucker and I want to kill him everytime he tries to attack me (like today)…but for some reason I keep him around. His days a comin’…
The one and only bantam hen…Little Red…is the chicken that made me fall in love with chickens 🙂 She was the littlest among the 6 other full size hens and they picked on her. She was the bottom of the pecking order. But her secret was that she could fit through the slats of the gate and she got free roam of the whole yard while the other hens had to stay in their pen. She would follow me around, let us hold her, rummage for bugs…her days were good. Then, yes, one day I went to the coop and she was laying in the doorway dead. It was a sad day.
Now, two years later we have another set of baby chicks. We decided that every 2 years we would get new chicks since the older ones egg production will die down. So now I’m a proud momma to 19 new baby chicks. I’ll talk about those cuties next post…
So yea, Crazy. Chicken. Lady. kinda fits at the moment.
