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[sjc <indexer AT localnet.com>]

Gene wrote:

Almost everyone keeps too many hens. Unless one wishes to have an egg
bizness, fewer hens works out. Eat when there are eggs, eat something
else when there aren't. We homesteader types get pretty heavy into
food preservation. I find it can become a bit onerous after a few decades.
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Quite some years ago I grappled with this issue, which was complicated by 
the facts that my family was shrinking and I live where it's cold in the 
winter.  It takes about a dozen heavy-breed hens to keep warm enough in the 
winter here; I'd calculated I could get along quite nicely on 6.....I kept 
feeding the extra 6, though, because I can't abide either the idea or the 
taste of commercial eggs and preferred to eat more expensive eggs than no 
eggs.

For me, the solution has been to 'share' chickens.  Together with a 
neighbor, we keep about a dozen hens, plus some banties for 
bugpicking.  For 3 years (arbitrary decision as to time; I forget how we 
arrived at it) at a time, the chickens live here, I take care of them, take 
care of fencing, feed, etc.  Some of the banties spend each summer with her 
and come 'home' in the winter so they'll be able to share the heat of the 
big girls.  Neighbor gets half the eggs.  Next 3 years she has them over 
there and some of the banties 'visit' me for the summer and I get half the 
eggs delivered to my springhouse.  Has worked well for both, as well as for 
the chickens---no more frozen chickens, half the work, half the expense, 
all the bugpicking, and as many eggs as we each need.

Susan Jane, in Maine