So You Want To Raise Backyard Chickens? First, Read This Cautionary Tale.
Imagine: ultra-fresh eggs, all the time. Sounds great, right? And, it is! At least until your fine feathered friends get too old to lay them. Then what? The Journal News offers a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of keeping backyard chickens, a trend that began more than a decade ago and now finds some urban homesteaders abandoning their birds once the egg production drops off. It seems that many owners are "too chicken" to slaughter the creatures. So, officials in places like Clarkstown, New York, find the jettisoned critters now wandering the streets. Some upstate farmers say that disowned chickens are even being dumped onto their properties in the middle of the night.
If you find yourself "scrambling" to find a new home for your own unwanted fowl, the Journal News helpfully points to the Barnyard Sanctuary in Blairstown, NJ, as a possible destination. Or, as Philippe Gouze, general manager of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, suggests, just grow a pair, grab the thing, slit its throat and make soup: "I just keep the chicken under my arm and aim for the artery. I'm able to collect the blood in a small container....It's very quiet, very respectful."
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