You show them a rooster once, and they think they should lay eggs after that. Chickens aren’t very smart.
You serious? Whoa, didn’t know chickens were virgin births!
The eggs they lay aren’t fertilized. :P
Some Chowhound you are.
Chowhound fails Farming 101.
Edit: This is the kind of thing that becomes important when 99.9% of the world is wiped out by a virus.
He says whipping out a picture of a rooster from his wallet. “Just in case.”
Do not feel bad chowhound. You are not the first city slicker that didn’t know this!
Thanks!
I eats the fud. I don’t really know the process by which it comes from. :D
When I see this thread title, I think of the old movie “Urban Cowboy”.
Perhaps Gary Whitta should shoot a proposal to Travolta’s agent suggesting “Urban Chicken Farmer” as the sequel.
They eat meat as well.
Which always made me nervous when feeding my fathers and they were nowhere in sight… I imagined them ready to jump me once they got a taste for meat.
My father had 10-15 in a small town. No problem - just don’t get a rooster. This means you won’t save the money by making your own chickens, but they’re pretty cheap. The noise from three hens is nothing. By the chickens small if you have smal kids - they love it… and eating them when they get older is a life lesson all kids should have (mine were three when she saw me boil a live lobster!).
Go for it. The eggs are better.
I agree, more kids (and people) should understand where their food comes from, that it comes from live animals and not from plastic wrapped lumps of anonymous nothingness you see in the grocery store.
When I was eleven or so, my uncle gave me one hundred chicks for Christmas. He got his hands on an incubator and I had one hundred chirping yellow critters.
Various flus and colds got the bulk of them. We would hold them and feed antibiotics down with a liquid dropper. Rats were the second biggest culprit. These were big bastards, like New York subway rats. They somehow would squeeze through the wire mesh to catch one unsuspecting victim. I suspect they pinned anyone too close to the wire mesh and bit it slowly through the mesh. In the morning I’d see little kidneys and hearts left :( I hate rats.
Mind you, I never had to watch MY chickens be butchered. Three survived to adulthood. By that time I had left for the US.
Oh, you can raise quails pretty easily. They stay small and won’t wake Marcus up. Their eggs are very cute. We used to have one/two every morning to eat.
Good luck! Keeping chickens can be . . . interesting.
:-)
What kind of backwards redneck raises chickens (that aren’t pets) in an urban environment?
If you did that over here you’d probably get a heavy fine for doing it, not just because of the noise pollution or the stench but because you’re not operating a regulated farm with health inspections. Having your own little amateur chicken farm set up is just inviting bird flu to spread around.
People do this kind of shit all the time in third world countries and we all know how badly they get hit every time there’s bird flu going around.
Fucking Madagascar.
I still say that people that raise chickens in the city are huge assholes.
Good luck Jason.
Keep us informed of how it goes.
As a resident in a third world country I’m also contemplating helping the spread of bird flu and other epidemics.
I think we are also allowed 3 legal chickens per household.
My father-in-law has three chickens and they do make quite good pets. Keeping two or three female free range chickens in a reasonably sized yard isn’t a problem. They make less noise and smell than the equivalent number of dogs or cats.
They also lay more eggs and taste better than dogs or cats.
I’ve never eaten cat or dog so I can’t give an informed opinion but I’m perfectly willing to take your word for it.