As food prices soar, and especially the cost of meat, many are finding it to more economical to grow your own.
As someone interested in becoming self-sufficient you can never be truly self-sufficient until you grow your own meat.
If raising your own meat is something that you do not think that you can do you can start small.
As a means of becoming more self sufficient Josh & I decided to start with chickens.
We weren’t sure if we would be able to raise, and then slaughter, the animals for meat. By choosing chickens we were able to get dual purpose chickens. This way, if we were unable to process the chickens for meat, we could still benefit from their eating bugs, producing fertilizer for our garden, producing eggs for us to eat and they are fun to watch as they are very entertaining
Raising chickens is so easy that nearly anyone can do so. Chickens also eat mosquitoes which are prevalent in our area.
With the diseases that are transferred by mosquitoes raising chickens is an important part in becoming self-sufficient and helping to keep your family safe from diseases such as West Nile and Malaria- among others.
Our first chickens were Barred Rocks as they are a great dual purpose chicken that are also pretty calm and friendly. They produce brown eggs
This Spring we decided to try raising a few meat chickens. They are growing well and if we had continued to feed them corn we could have harvested them at any time.
But, to save money, get rid of more mosquitoes and produce a grass fed meat, rather than grain fed, we have switched them over to ‘free range’. They have been allowed to run around outside before but we fed them corn until such time as they were big enough to be able to eat the grass, and bugs, to feed themselves.
They still get scraps such as potato peels, apple cores, etc. but for the most part are self-sufficient as far as feeding themselves.
Other than making sure that they are let out in the morning, closed in at night for their safety and giving them fresh water- they are not difficult to take care of.
We clean their area when necessary and gather the eggs.
You can buy layers which are hens old enough to be laying eggs. This is a bit more expensive than buying straight run chicks and raising them yourself but it can be a time saver. It could also be cheaper in the long run as they would be of an age that they could be more self sufficient with feeding themselves and they would produce eggs sooner.
BUT, you would also lose out on the joys of raising chicks. They are a bit more work but nothing that difficult and a true joy and learning experience.
Tags: chicken, chickens, grow, meat, potato, red, self, self sufficient