When it comes to chickens we either have ones that won't lay and go broody, or ones that are so loud they are practically roosters. Neither one works for us in our current location. About 2 weeks ago I had put the babies out in the coop and Curious proceeded to have a chicken tantrum for well over a week. More babies were to follow since we'd planned to raise way more than we needed and keep the ones that seemed calm and quiet. But the noise level got to be too much to handle around here. I've been buying eggs from our local country market since October when all the sussex chickens went on strike. All the other breeds we've tried picked up egg laying after a molt but the sussex's didn't.
Since we purchase our eggs well over half the year it got me thinking about why we have chickens in the first place. I am starting to think that anything less then 10-15 birds is a waste of money. Jake and I talked it over and decided to get out of the chicken business. Not forever, just while we are here. The problem is Curious, since she has the freezer pass she is the one who makes a big stink about the new baby chickens. She's not mean to them, but she gripes about them constantly dawn --> dusk! If we didn't have her, we would have no problem culling old hens and rearing new ones. So for now we just have the two adult birds. I put an ad on craigslist and sold all the babies within 3 hours! Both adults, Curious and Shiny have a freezer pass, it might be temporary though. Shiny will inevitably go broody, and leave Curious all alone for 1 month so we are not sure how that's gonna go. I just don't want to butcher Curious, she's too sweet, I don't have any sentimental attachment to any other farm creatures but.... we'll see she may force my hand when Shiny goes broody.
Thanks for writing down your thought process on chickens or no chickens. Balancing the amount of eggs you want VS the time/energy/money/neighbor tolerance/quantity of having chickens in an urban setting is very interesting to hear.
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