which came first?

[chelidon]

And more importantly, was it humanely raised, and how did it taste?

For them's that's interested, here's a decent story about a local farm which is the largest producer of cage-free eggs in New England, and the growing movement towards cage-free, as well as free-range, pasture-raised, and organic chickens and eggs. Much of the large-scale factory farming today involves a variety of cruel and inhumane practices and techniques towards the animals involved, and has the economic effect of forcing smaller farmers, who can't compete with mega-farms, out of the market. Just in general, but particularly as Peak Oil effects make it increasingly uneconomical to ship food long distances, a healthy local farm economy is going to be important in every region. The kinds of trends mentioned in the story are just a start, but they give me hope. I'll happily pay an extra buck for a dozen eggs to support a local farmer who treats his chickens humanely.

Actually, we get our summer eggs from one of my partner's co-workers, who's been trying to convince us to turn our chicken coop from a wood shed and generator house back into a henhouse. Eh, not this year...raising chickens is something I'm happy to let others do for now, there's a fairly good reason they're called "fowl." ;>

Comments

[ravenedgewalker.livejournal.com]

hol's parents farmed poultry for a while - more large scale than what you'd be doing, but if you're ever interested he's a good one to talk to. - though watch out she may convince you to try geese rather than hens....

[lylythe-strega.livejournal.com]

I dunno - geese are too reminiscent of velociraptors for me... (*shudder*)

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'll put that on the list of things I want to talk ot Hol about the next time we're together! Speaking of geese, taking my beamish boy up to his bus this morning, I heard Canadian geese in the woods nearby....they're back, another sign of Spring! :>

[marys-daughter.livejournal.com]

There was this great t-shirt that had a chicken and an egg laying next to each other in bed ... guess what the caption was ....heheheh

K

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

"Guess we settled that question..."? I think I saw that as a cartoon somewhere along the way... Priceless.

[marys-daughter.livejournal.com]

Did I mention that they were both smoking cigarettes? B-P

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

*grin* Smoked chicken, yum!

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

Raising chickens is fun, but it does attract chicken-eating critters.

[ravenedgewalker.livejournal.com]

yes - our neighbours found thier cockeral buried head first in their veggies thanks to the local fox (they ate it for sunday lunch....)

a couple of weeks later fox hounds got in the garden and killed several more...

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Ah-yup. Our pen has chicken wire buried at least a foot or two underground all the way around, to help keep out burrowing beasties. Besides the usual foxes, wild cats, and so on, we have fisher cats (http://home.mcn.net/~wtu/fisher.html) here, too, very nasty for fowl. Heck, the enclosed and roofed run is nice, but the coop itself is a real Hilton -- clean laying cubbies, insulated windows, ventilation, and a power junction box to run light bulbs for heat in winter, etc. Heck, I've lived in houses that were much grottier. I'll take you on a tour when you're out ;>

I'm planning to build a new, much bigger dry wood storage area under the back deck, an area which is mostly wasted space now, and I'd like to put up a new generator shed next to the house, partially as practice for building a post-and-beam structure -- once I do that, who knows, perhaps the chicken coop will go back to housing chickens...