RIP
Posted on 06/17/2009 6:54:16 PM PDT by JoeProBono
If you hear the sound of clucking next door, you might just be hearing your neighbor's new pet.
Pet chickens are on the rise and they're making their home in city dwellers' backyards. More people are finding it attractive to keep chickens as pets, not only because they're cute, but because people want to produce their own eggs and retain a slice of rural life.
"People are turning to things that remind them of simpler times," Ron Kean, a poultry specialist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told the Los Angeles Times . "If you're smart, you can save money doing this."
Rose and Harry Koppen of Dubuque County, Iowa, recently bought six adult chickens that produce one to five eggs a day. They told the Chicago Tribune that the eggs taste better and that they use them to make fried egg sandwiches and pastries.
More cities are taking up the issue to decide whether to allow backyard chickens. The Times reports that Traverse City, Mich., and Iowa City, Iowa, are among the cities considering whether to allow people to own poultry. Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and Baltimore already allow up to four chickens per property.
Hatcheries say they are getting hit with orders around the country. Murray McMurray Hatchery , the world's largest supplier of rare-breed chicks, says there's a six-week backlog on orders for hens by urban dwellers.
"I tell people we're getting out of the country livestock business, and getting into the city backyard pet business," said Bud Wood, president of the Murray McMurray.
RIP
We had a problem with a possum once, that was it. So I guess we didn’t have a predator problem. I once saw a gigantic rat in the coop. I happened to have a garden “turning fork” in my hand and impaled it instantly, before I had a chance to freak! LOL
Thank you for the paint compliment. It is very much my personality, but you can’t paint your house like that but you can a chicken coop! :-)
See #80.
LOL!!
There's enough.
We raised laying hens and a rooster or two until I was into my 20s.
Normally we ate the extra rooster but once in a while, especially when the hen got too old to lay anymore, we had hen.
Best d*** fried chicken in Chicago!
Okay for soup, mostly...right?
Yes...
I intended to make soup out of one of our layers once...she hacked me off because she kept attacking my younger son. Never hack off a carnivore, you know? Heh heh...
Anyway, I put her in a small cage to prepare her for her fate...just gave her water for about 12 hours (over night). However, my older son didn’t want me to do it so I relented and let her out.
Well, the cage experience must’ve made a believer out of her, because she never attacked my kid again!
When I was a kid we kept chickens, not as pets, but for the eggs and we always raised, through use of an incubator, about 300 chickens a year for food. Raise ‘em up to a certain age and then kill ‘em put them in the freezer. Fried chicken all the time!:) Eggs were good too.
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