Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

BUT, there are definite upsides:

- Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and can become quite tame. They can purr.

- I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them

- It's fantastic to get ~8 free eggs per day (from 13, 3 are not laying this winter)

- Morally/ethically, it seems like the best way to eat eggs if you're caring for them in a loving manner (compare to factory farms)

Consider the downsides:

- You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation. It still ranks among the worst things I've ever had to do in my life. Imagine euthanizing your dog or cat by hand...

- Predators, foxes and hawks, you need defenses

- Veterinary services can be harder to find. Most vets don't want to deal with chickens. However, it also tends to be cheaper than a vet for a dog/cat.

- Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...

- If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them.

I think there are more upsides than downsides, but you should think about these downsides before taking the plunge. Don't let it dissuade you. Overall, they have enriched our lives immensely and I would recommend it to others!

1: https://www.anthonycameron.com/projects/cameron-acreage-chic...

They are in fact very lovable little beings. They have interestingly complex relationships between them, they are very social and I do have a special bond with the first I got, especially because we hadn’t the necessary hardware to keep her hot enough for multiple days, we had to literally keep her warm between our hands.

Now she is a grown up chicken and she loves it when I go outside.

Also they are in fact pretty intelligent animals, and they are really curious about what happens around them.

I’d ever go as far as saying that they could be the perfect household pets if only the evolution gave them sphincters.

That was a nice personal discovery.

I was living in San Jose in a dense suburban neighborhood. It became legal to have backyard chickens so I jumped at getting three chickens. (We had three young daughters, see.)

One mysteriously died. Of the remaining two, the bossy one decided she was a rooster and started crowing, of a sort, in the morning hours.

So we had one asshole neighbor complain and I was obliged to send them off to live with a friend who had some property in the Santa Cruz mountains. Sad. And afterward, neighbors strolling by said they missed the chicken sounds in the neighborhood.

I'll spare you the unfortunate ends for the two. I'll say the Santa Cruz mountains represent more predators and require someone with a little more responsibility than my friend showed. (I don't blame him. It was really my fault — having more or less dumped them on him.)