our chickens have been making frequent morning forays up the flight of stairs to our front door. we're not sure why- we have never fed them on the porch or invited them inside for a drink. what do they hope to accomplish by stopping by? perhaps it is exclusively for the purpose of pooping on the steps and annoying the hell out of me, in retribution for me stealing their eggs every morning. it is interesting to note that usually only three of the four chickens come to the door. the other one is busy laying her egg at some inaccessible location in the woods. i imagine she's developing quite a stockpile somewhere.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
chickens come to call
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3 comments:
Do you use your chickens for meat? Would that require more work, besides slaughtering? How long will chicken live/lay eggs? How often and how much do they lay? I heard recently that chicks are alive for only 6 weeks before they are used for meat, though I'm not sure if this is true. I'm curious about the nutritional value of say two eggs compared to a chicken breast.
we don't use our chickens for meat, although we have discussed doing this if we ever managed to rear one to the end of its egg-laying lifetime. there are different breeds of chickens normally raised for meat and for laying. our birds are rhode island reds, which makes them better for laying than for eating- they don't gain weight as fast as a meat bird would. meat birds can grow to eating size in a period of just 5 weeks for a cornish game hen, 7-9 weeks for a broiler, or more for a bigger roaster.
as far as egg production goes, we have noticed a decrease in the number of eggs produced over time. they start off laying one egg per day, but the eventually (after about a year), they molt (replace their ffeathers) and it seems like egg production never achieves those historic highs again. last year, i learned that the chickens need a minimum number of hours of light each day in order to keep laying eggs. in the winter, we had a light on a timer over their coop, both to provide warmth and to keep the eggs a'coming. i think after two or three years, egg production drops off to a point where most people would get rid of the bird. you can eat a laying hen after a couple of years, but the meat will be tough and, if the birds have been free ranging as ours have, it would likely also be gamey.
i know you can find information about nutritional value as well and needed inputs of energy (calories) and water in order to produce an egg vs. a chicken breast. google it. google knows everything.
fascinating. eggs skeeve me out, but i still eat them on occasion. luckily, cage free eggs (whatever that means; i hear it's still not happy) can be bought readily in the grocery these days.
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