Raising Chickens
This weekend (unfortunately while we were camping on Edisto Island) a package arrived at the USPS for that contained 26 live chirping chicken chicks. Fortunately Eliza’s parents and some friends were able to set up the living space for these tiny little chickens while we were away. When we got home on Monday afternoon we were greeted by the sound of the two dozen plus little fuzzball birds.
Eliza has wanted chickens for a long time and they seem like they will be a good addition to the little urban homestead we are cultivating. We do not intend to keep all 26 of the chicks as most of the will go to our friends who own a farm out in Pelzer, SC. We’ll keep six for ourselves and utilize them as egg layers. Of the chicks we got we’ll be keeping three different breeds. The breeds are Araucanas/Americanas, Cuckoo Marans, and Rose Comb Brown Leghorns.
Our friends (the same who are keeping the rest of the chickens) have helped us a ton in preparation, going as far as constructing most of our chicken coop. Our chickens will have a good amount of space to live in, with a large coop, a big run under our back porch, and an additional fenced off area in our back yard for them to forage in.
If all goes well with our chickens we could be looking at getting upwards of about three dozen eggs a week. Obviously a lot more than we’ll need, but we intend to share with friends and family. Of course all these eggs mean that we’ll need to think of many ways to use this easy source of protein. I generally don’t eat a ton of eggs so the challenge will be interesting. I am looking forward to some serious experimenting with quiches as that is one avenue of egg use that I feel contains a lot of potential.
Anyways, I will provide more updates on chickens as we raise them and will hopefully get some pictures up soon.
General Lordisimo's Apocalypse 
I’ll add that if you want to buy chickens, get them from a local, reputable breeder instead of a big hatchery. We weren’t impressed and locally bred chickens are supposed to have a much longer laying life, anyway.
Not to mention that it is usually nice to try and support local agriculture.
So many delicious things to do with eggs! we should talk about this often…
Then let the talking commence! I am really looking forward to homemade creme brulee. A frined of our who has a duck and a chicken made us some with her duck eggs last week. It was awesome. What else?