I have really enjoyed your blog throughout the year. Both my wife and I find it very inspirational as we build our own ‘tiny farm’ here in the North of our province. Chickens are a great addition to the tiny farm, and in S. Ontario you have access to the processing facilities to legally sell up to 300 broilers. 99 laying hens may be kept in our backyards without infringing on the holy ‘quota’, but in order to sell those eggs in the farmers market they must be ‘graded’ at a licensed egg grading station. However the ungraded eggs can be sold from the farm gate as far as I know. A small scale vegetable farm is mercifully exempt from the ‘marketing boards’ and their attendant regulations, the fact of which I am sure we are both grateful. Chickens can add beneficial manure to the compost pile as well as eggs and meat, but they do have the unwanted ability of putting one on the ‘radar’ of the ‘powers that be’. Chicken feed, for example, is monitored as to who purchases how much, where they live and how often they buy it. Every sack that leaves our local feed stores (N. Ontario) has to be accounted for since the inception of the monitoring program last spring.
Of course you could grow all your own feed, or buy the ingredients from neighbors and mill it yourself, probably saving money in the process and certainly learning a lot. But thats a different kettle of fish….

Happy New Year!

Carl