This one affair is always missing from list articles about why someone should keep chickens : ego - adequacy .
If you ’ve been reluctant to fill a henhouse with hen , you ’re still grease one’s palms supermarket nut , and you ’ve mark you ’re shelling out twice the price you were a few months ago , you’re able to thank thebird - influenza epidemic . The good news show is there ’s never been a better metre to start the little quite a little of your dream .
Commercial Flock Statistics
Three - after part the 90 billion eggs the U.S. produces each twelvemonth make their way of life to our kitchens in whole - egg shape or inside march foods , but the current deficit of 45 million Gallus gallus ( 10 percent of the factory layer flock ) set up the current organization behind its market place first moment by 30.6 million orchis every day .
While this year ’s avian flu can sure as shooting touch backyard flocks , like it did in the Northwest at the outset of the epidemic , it ’s somehow spread from manufactory farm to factory farm , but expert have said they do n’t know why . While our current system is prove unsustainable , we recognize that it takes about six months for new concoct female chicks to get put . Even if bird flu end today , we wo n’t reach former commercial production pace until next year .
We can ward off this situation by raise our own chickens .
The Backyard Flock
Thanks to open infinite , fresh breeze , temperateness , fresh coops , better nutriment , lowly stress and individualized care by their steward , chicken in backyard sight have been largely unmoved by this year ’s avian flu epidemic . Chicken custodian are well stocked , and even feeding nimiety back to the hens . It ’s not impossible for a backyard flock of hens to yield to flu , but it ’s far less potential and the loss far less devastating compared to millions .
Illnesses in backyard flocks are usually insulate , so they wo n’t devastate an integral city of its eggs layers . rely on your own hens is the wave of the future — or , rather , the past . At the very least , it ’s a way of life out of relying on factory - farmed eggs . If you recede a mass of five hens , you may replenish you cluster with the help of a neighbor or a farmer nearby .
What if you could meet the majority of your protein needs with hens of your very own ?
Produce More at Home
The average American rust 250 eggs per yr . That ’s as many testicle as the mill hens lay per year . wear backyard flocks lay the same amount , although I would argue they lay a bit more , a family of four would need just four hens . Witheggsso pronto usable in the backyard , I would also debate that chicken - keeping families eat many more eggs than the average consumer , normally with enough to sparefor friends , family and for freezing for winter deficit . Very few people can keep just four hen . Chickens are justtoo much playfulness , and they do more than lay nut .
The reason I ordered day - old chicks and build a coop in 2010 was to be completely self - sufficient in one part of my crime syndicate ’s dieting . My by-line farm aspirations had to begin in my small backyard , and I would n’t let my fraction of an Akko stop me .
The bird influenza outbreak has n’t affect the flock any Gallus gallus keeper I know , but it is affecting all the commercial eggs eaters in my lifetime . Of all the reason to start a stack of chickens , let self - sufficiency top your list .
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