Chickens and resilience

Many in smaller communities, including our own, have chickens. Having chickens is a great way to support resilience and is kinder on a family budget. Not to mention the immense benefits of children knowing where their food comes from.

The poultry industry is a cause of environmental degradation in the United States. It kills fish and other wildlife and it makes people ill. In nature, chickens and turkeys range in small flocks over wide areas. In poultry factory farming, thousands of birds are crammed unnaturally into extremely small areas. Filth and disease are the result of this unnatural confinement.

U.S. slaughterhouses kill more than 30 million birds every day, 10 billion birds a year (NASS). This pollutes land, air, and water with diseased carcasses, feces, bacteria, parasites, and viruses.

Having chickens, allows the individual family to raise and harvest their own eggs. They are no longer contributing to the financial and land costs of store bought eggs. The chickens are raised humanly, in our case - they are part of the family.

We have five different breeds of chickens - polyculture. This breeds resilience into our flock. Also, I would add insect control, naturally aerifying the soil through dust baths and digging, and natural fertilizers.

(National Agricultural Statistics Service-USDA. Poultry Slaughter.) 

Contribution by January Sadler, April 2015