Chickens At Home?

As the news of meat shortages hit the airways in the last couple of days there is one business who saw this as an opportunity. Wayfair e-mailed me today with the headline of Chicken coops for sale. As a company I usually think of for sofas I was curious about what kind of chicken coops they had.

I was astonished to find they had 36 different models on offer. My favorite part of the descriptions was how many chickens each coop held. The majority were two chicken coops. Lord, it is a lot of work to keep just two chickens. Two chickens hardly produce enough eggs for one person.

Most of these coops are for laying hens so that does nothing for the meat shortage. When I was a kid my father used to tell me about the chickens his family raised during and after the war. They had both laying hens and eating birds. My Dad as a very young boy, say five or six, would be in charge of catching and wringing the necks of the chosen dinner bird.

It used to make my dad really mad that on Sunday when the preacher would come for Sunday dinner after church the family would have one chicken and the preacher would have a whole one just to himself.

I can’t imagine having to clean a chicken I raised, much less wring it’s neck. Having laying hens is great, as long as you are stuck at home. It is going to be interesting to see how long people keep their chickens once they are allowed to go on vacation. Can’t you see the Animal Protection Society now having to accept chickens.

Rather than investing a few thousand dollars in a chicken coop large enough for seven birds it might be a good time to lean in to veganisim. This Covid thing is really doing everything good for the planet. No travel, to cut down on pollution. Less meat to cut down on pollution. Maybe it can cut down on bad politicians too.