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  • From: sjc <indexer AT localnet.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] How many hens?
  • Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:02:10 -0400

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.
-------------------

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






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