Sometimes, even knowing that a product is unhealthy for you because of the way in which it was produced and prepared – imagine meat, eggs, or vegetables in this example – is not enough. What if you can’t find a decent alternative the health of which remains unconfirmed? What are you to do – simply cut that part of your diet out of the picture entirely?
Cluck Cluck Goes the Chicken
Chickens are an especially big part of the problem for many people. Many chickens are kept in unclean conditions, which can subsequently taint the meat, making it dangerous to eat. The eggs that result for these conditions aren’t healthy, either. Indeed, the way in which a chicken carcass is prepared – by boiling it in often quite unclean water, and then injecting it with massive amounts of antibacterial solution to keep it “clean” for consumption – is enough to make you go vegetarian!... At least, for a little while. The fact remains that you’re an omnivore, and you like your eggs and chicken meat. So what are you to do?
Why not take matters into your own hands? Instead of relying on the good nature and food preparation practices of big companies like Purdue and Tyson, you can raise your own chickens. You would be surprised how affordable – and easy! – it really is to raise and care for chickens. All you need is a coop to keep them in, troughs for water and food, the food itself, and then the chickens. You’ll want to “cycle” your chickens out over time, replacing them with new flocks of chickens as your layers age out of laying, but generally there is very little in the way of continuing costs outside of food – which comes quite affordably.
The Life of a Part-Time Farmer
The act of going into your coop in the morning (or afternoon or evening, as you like) and collecting eggs from under your hens, the chickens clucking around your feet as they wait for you to feed them, is enjoyable. It connects you to something essential about human existence; we lived most of our lives as a species with a real connection to our food and where it came from. Having a chicken coop for your own eggs and chicken meat means having that connection again.
The coop is the largest initial investment that you will have to make for the chickens, but it doesn’t have to be something that costs too much or gives you trouble as time passes. Many people try building their own coops, but it turns out building a sound structure for other beings to live in is actually… kind of difficult! Fortunately, you can purchase prefabricated coops with all the trimmings – an area for nesting, screened windows, troughs, ramps, doors for you and the chickens, and so on – quite affordably, and even have it constructed on your property by the people you’ve purchased it from.
It’s important that your chicken coop is secure; foxes, weasels, raccoons, and other critters will try to get into the coop and either eat the eggs or eat the chickens themselves. Obviously your chickens won’t appreciate this, and neither will you when you’re cleaning up chicken bodies and not getting your eggs anymore. That’s why investing in a sturdy, secure, high-quality coop is so essential at the outset of this new, exciting venture!
With a chicken coop and your own chickens, you won’t have to worry about where your food came from – it came from your chickens, whom you’ve raised and cared for. The food on your plate and in your mouth is the result of your own efforts, and it is as clean as you want it to be. That’s a reassuring feeling that most people don’t have… but could, if they were just willing to put up with a rooster crowing in the morning.
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