Why Chickens?

Why chickens you ask?  Well the answer is simple.  We love them fried, baked, stewed, broiled many different ways!

Just kidding, we have no intentions of raising these chickens to be broilers, or for stewing but just for the eggs they will produce for a few years.  Our interest in raising chickens represents our desire to become closer to the source of our food.  Chickens are an easy step towards providing a low cost protein source that is local and ecologically more sustainable then buying corn-fed store bought eggs.  In addition to providing us with eggs our chickens will live in a portable "chicken tractor" moved around our yard to feed on insects and grass all while fertilizing our yard with their nitrogen rich poop.  Sounds like a win win to me!

This interest in becoming closer to our food source came about after a week- long trip our family took to a small island off the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island in Canada.  Two books read on this journey (Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) raised our awareness of the problems associated with industrial agriculture which essentially derives its energy from intense amounts of petroleum in the form of pesticides/herbicides and transportation fuel to produce and transport most all of the food we eat.  All of this large scale food production is far from sustainable considering the energy required to produce food and then transport it.  It is also highly damaging to our closed Earth ecosystem.   The methods of raising animals in CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations) and the tremendous amount of chemical pesticides and antibiotics needed to produce food in this system is very troubling.  This is the reason for our chickens.  

Our chickens to us represent our attempt to provide our own food source in a more sustainable manner that isn't connected to this unsustainable industrial food chain.  

-George