The Truth About Keeping Chickens

Don’t fall for the idyllic picture painted by chicken people.

What they tell you it is like, and sometimes it is.

Why

When I finally moved to the suburbs and had a real live actual backyard, owning chickens seemed like such a great idea.

As an animal lover, what could be better than knowing my eggs came from chickens that were happy and loved. As an environmentalist, what better way to reduce my carbon footprint than having the eggs I eat come from just outside my back door?

So I started to do my research. For me, that meant reading about other people’s experiences. I fell in love with all the glowing tales of the rewards of having cute chooks that not only gave you eggs but were bonus pets as well. The funny shenanigans alone seemed worth the price of admission. So then I did the serious research. What do they need? What do you feed them? Where do they come from? There was a lot of information on the millions of sites dedicated to keeping chickens. I was now on a mission to get chickens.

The first coop. So much smaller than I expected.

Coops

Online chicken coops are many and varied. In the end, I settled on a $350 coop for six chickens.