Five Good Reasons to Raise Chickens for Eggs

Can there really be five good reasons to raise chickens for eggs? For most people fresh eggs are available at the nearest grocery store seven days a week. Purchase is quick and generally economical. In fact as a high protein food, some would say store bought eggs are a good buy. But for others the allure of raising chickens for eggs is derived from several sources.

For some folks the idea of raising chickens from eggs comes from nothing more than the realization that they can. In many states even urban states like Massachusetts, within certain limitations and with some licensing you can get after the business or pleasure of raising chickens for eggs on your own property. According to the Attleboro, MA newspaper the Sun Chronicle in nearby and relatively rural Foxboro, some 30 individuals have licenses to raise horses, llamas or chickens. Sure the licensing process can be tedious and sometimes seems silly, but the fact remains, there really are plenty of places where if you want to raise chickens for eggs, with a little tenacity you can bring that little dream to reality.

And people do have that dream. That's a second reason why people raise chickens for eggs. There are lots of people some who have grown up in rural areas but others who have lived predominantly city centered existences who look at raising chickens with the eyes of romantics. For them raising your own chickens for eggs, going out to the hen house to gather you own eggs, making breakfast with your very own farm fresh eggs are all part of their American dream right along with a home of their own with a white picket fence. They may not give much thought to the work that raising chickens for eggs really entails but they are head over heals in love with the idea of raising chickens for eggs.

Some folks don't connect with this dream until they have children. Then the attach themselves to a third reason for raising chickens for eggs which is because it can be such a fun family project. From the time when your children are mere toddlers throughout their entire childhood and beyond, raising chickens can be a wonderful and enlightening part of their lives. From an early age can help feed the chickens, clean up after them, collect up the eggs and learn wonderful egg centered recipes for great home cooked meals. While hens are not the kind of pets that dogs or cats are, for children live animals paroling around outside the coop looking for food and making their own special cackling sounds can be very interesting and entertaining for children. They will give them names and form simple attachments. Raising chickens for eggs can provide a whole new dimension to your family life - a dimension that takes your children outdoors away from technology and things mechanical and back to a simpler life style even if for just a few minutes.

In those simpler times people didn't have to worry about what some far off farmer in middle America was feeding to their chickens and whether or not the bad feed would manifest itself later on in eggs that were harmful to human beings. Everyone took responsibility for the cleanliness and feeding of their own livestock. They knew where their eggs came from and they could vouch for the condition of their eggs. That may be a fourth reason for raising chickens for eggs. After the recent massive recall of millions of eggs that had the potential to sicken people, it's not surprising that some people may have started doing some serious thinking about raising chickens for eggs. Tired of one more failure on the part of the larger economy or the government inspectors or both to keep them safe, some people have started to give serious consideration to the upside of raising chickens for eggs.

Because we live in difficult economic times at present, there is little reason to doubt that many people are sitting down to figure out the financial benefits of raising your own chickens for eggs. While the savings from home grown eggs when balanced against the initial outlay for a coop and the expense of feed are disputable, there is no doubt that having a flock of chickens behind your house can give you a feeling of security. If times really get tough you do have an ongoing source of food.

You can go into your own private chicken business for any one of these five reasons or come up with your own. Whatever your reason, if you choose to raise chickens for eggs you will be part of a growing number of similarly inclined amateur egg farmers.

Sources:

www.sunchronicle.com
www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/business/04chickens