The Historic District

Yes, I have some chickens.

Spam and chicken.....yummy!

As an update, my chickens are doing well. There was a week of -30*C temps (-20F) where we kept them inside the coop, although they still ventured out into their run and would roost outside. The coldest day I was an hour late getting the eggs and here's what I found. Hard as rocks!

Wow, that's impressive.

So we took the plunge and got 10 meat chickens. We've had them for a week, and they are growing at an exponential rate! They also eat and poop like there's no tomorrow.



They are pretty lazy in the small coop. I am looking forward to getting them outside where they will have a little more incentive to free range.

Chickens are champion pooper. I keep telling myself it's good for the soil.

Another week closer to the freezer. We are hoping in another week we will be able to put them outside. Right now they are taking up space in the garage.

The chickens grew so fast that their feathers had a hard time keeping up. We had some good weather and managed to get them into their outdoor coop. They are about 4 weeks old in this picture.


This was the chickens at 9 weeks old. We waited until week 10 before sending them to the processor. We weighed the as we loaded them and had 140lb of live chicken.


Today I just picked them up from the processor. The total was approximately 70lb. With gas, food, and processing fees it works out to be about $2.50/lb. For reference, grocery store chicken in my area of Canada is about $3.25/lb.


It was certainly an interesting experience bringing them to the processor. The chickens had a fairly idyllic homesteady life, and when they go through processing it's very mechanical. Still, I feel ok about the whole process and I'm glad to know where my food came from.

I was curious if anyone has spec'd out the cost of the eggs gained, just as Shaz did for the meat. My understanding is that it is quite a bit more costly than buying eggs from the grocery, but I think it would be interesting for my kids to make the connection between animals and the food we eat.