Every year we buy a bunch of chickens (this year 42 -- 12 laying hens and 30 for the dinner table). When I lived in the city I'd go down and buy a dozen eggs and a package of chicken but that's too easy. Instead we now "invest" in the real thing. I know eggs and chickens purchased in the store come from the "real" thing but believe me there is a distinct difference. The taste and the quality of the meat is ever so much better and the eggs .... well, the eggs are magnificient!
Do you know why the quality is so much better? They eat bugs, grass, and weeds. We let them roam the yard and at dusk they head back home.
I have to laugh now because my inital reaction, the first time I was involved in "processing" chickens, was one of "I don't want to do that!" But after 12 years of doing what needs to be done I'm OK with it now.
Have a wonderful day,
2 comments:
Hi Chuck. I know what you mean about chickens. Twice in my life I've kept chickens. Once when I was very young, my mother and I kept chickens (father being away fighting a war) because eggs were rationed; and once for a while when my kids were young, and we had a couple of acres of land to use. Thoroughly enjoyed it both times. Now we only have a small garden, so it wouldn't be practicable, but I still rather like the idea. Regards, Mike.
Hi Chuck. Before I started keeping chickens for the second time (about 30 years ago) we used to buy our eggs from a smallholder in the next village, who kept several hundred birds in a deep litter house. One day he sold me a dozen 'end of lay' birds for the oven. When we saw the birds they looked so dreadful (about a dozen feathers between the lot of them) that Ann didn't fancey eating them. So I turned them out into our (disused) stable yard to try and fatten them up a bit first. Within a week they were starting to fledge up a bit. Within a month they ALL started to lay again. So we kept them and they lived out their natural lifespan keeping our family in eggs, and raising their own broods of chicks.
Natural lifespan of a chicken, if I can remeber the old rhyme :-
The simple sober, bone dry hen
lays eggs for years and dies at ten.
But sinful, gin full, rum soaked men live on for three score years and ten.
Warm regards, Mike.
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