Welcome to the chickenhouse…
Chicken coop? Henhouse? I like ‘em all. This weather-beaten little building has been empty for a while, but a little fix-up and it’ll be ready to go. You can see the electricity cable and water hose snaking out at the top left of the pic. All the modern conveniences! The last tenants, three years ago, were half a dozen turkeys, lead by crazy Tom, an increasingly aggressive male known for a flying drop kick that could stagger a grown human. I didn’t have any close encounters with Tom, although I was curious. Before that, when I first started the garden five years ago, a dozen or more incredibly colorful ornamental chickens roamed the barnyard, darting out of hedges, zipping under fences, you never knew where they’d pop up. These were all, like the goats, kinda pets, and were eventually given away. Now, the loose plan is to get, well, WORKING chickens, for meat and eggs. At first, it won’t be directly part of the organic veggie garden, more of a side project that I’ll do with Bob. We were going to start last season, but that wound up on the still-to-do list. Yesterday, I took a quick look at the chicken-raising regulations—here in Ontario, there is a quota system that requires buying permits to raise chickens, with an exception for small numbers, and I imagine it’s similar everywhere in North America. Oh, well, more on that as it happens!
Somewhat related posts: • Goats… • Another year gone by, and the donkey’s doing fine… • Definitely ready to lay • Chickenhouse inspection • Chickens to the slaughter
Yellow Dog Farms said,
January 4, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
Please pardon my ignorance, but what is a “chicken quota province”, or is this an example of Tiny Farm Blog humor?
Carl
Mike (tfb) said,
January 4, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
Carl: I made the quota situation clearer. I thought it was worth mentioning. Although it won’t affect getting a few dozen birds this year, it’s part of a larger issue with rules and regulations that I’ve been kind of avoiding here as I hadn’t run into it yet in the day-to-day. There is an increasing mountain of regulation that can really limit small farming and any sort of small-scale commercial food production. Like, I finally started reading about NAIS in the US. This stuff can be kinda overwhelming and depressing at the same time, a great combo… But things always work out.
Matt B said,
January 6, 2008 @ 11:34 am
Hi Mike,
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!
Mike (tfb) said,
January 7, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
Matt B: Thanks for the rundown! Tracking FEED by the bag… Oh, man! Is that like looking for pot growers by tracking electricity usage, the war on illegal chickens?! Earlier, I spoke to our local feed supplier, you order commercial chickens through them too, they require a form filled out when you buy, and there’s apparently a central database that this stuff eventually gets entered into, so you if you’re honest on the forms, you can’t go around to different suppliers and buy past your 300 exemption quota. But then I read online (Update on Chicken Issues) that you don’t have to SIGN the form (that’d be Form 300, formerly Form 36…how straightforward), and I don’t get what that’s about. I understand the supposed larger context: it’s all regulation fall-out from rules designed to protect urban masses from unscrupulous, international food conglomerates, trickling down to bollocks up local small producers. That doesn’t make it any better or even that understandable. It’s plain unsettling…
Dad Stuff said,
January 8, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
Just found you blog today. Love the farm photos.