Sunday, March 9, 2014

Reader Question - Raising Chickens

Rick and I have talked about adding chickens to the menagerie mix next year, but one question is kind of stopping me in my tracks.  What to do with the girls when they stop producing eggs.

As a person who prefers not to eat meat, I would not consider turning them into chicken stew.  A friend gave her brood to a rescue farm when their egg-laying days were over, but I'm assuming you can only do that so many times before they politely refuse.

A friend recently said, but why not just keep the "spent" girls as pets.  My thinking runs this way.  If you build a coop for "x" number of hens and your numbers keep increasing as you add girls to keep your egg supply sound, over time you have twice as many as when you started.  And can't they can live to be 10.

So for my blog buds out there who are chicken "farmers", what do you do?

2 comments:

  1. We have about 20 chickens, including two roosters. Ours just hang around even after they stop laying. They seem too much like pets to kill them. My husband say these are expensive chickens. We do sell a few eggs. There is usually someone who will take the chickens. Just recently, a lady near here was looking for some chickens for her yard to eat ticks and insects.She didn't care if the hens laying or not. Good luck!

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  2. Well I just keep them around as pets and let them be my insects buster...

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