Backyard Chickens

Another large expenditure I noticed in the "Food" category of my budget book was eggs. I was buying at least one of the big boxes of eggs (15 dozen) at Sam's Club a month. That is 180 eggs per month, 6 eggs per day! The obvious question was, "would having our own chickens be more economical?". Like Buttercup's milk and the freshly prepared dairy products it yields, yard eggs would be healthy but would they be cheaper than store bought? The answer, as you may have guessed since we have chickens, was "yes". After comparing the initial cost of the chicks and their daily feed, they are less than half the cost of store bought eggs. We have Buff Orphingtons and ISA Browns. Only the Buffs are laying at the moment, or better, should be laying! They have decreased from ~12 to only ~5 eggs per day. I think they know that their replacements are in the hen house and they have gotten lazy! As soon as the ISA's begin laying, chicken (Buff chicken that is) will be on the menu! They are funny creatures. Most of the day they are kept in a large fenced area. But at the evening milking time, we let them out to scratch in the yard. They help control the fly population by spreading Buttercup's "fertilizer" around.

We have a couple that stand out from the rest.

Ruffles would always walk around with her feathers ruffled, seemingly to dissuade our younger children from picking her up. Actually, she is very tame, easy to pick-up and seems to enjoy the attention.