On the Naming of Chickens.... (Or, how do you eat someone so cute?)

When I was a kid, I remember meeting Arnold, my grandparents' hog, during summer vacation.

I also remember eating Arnold, my grandparents' breakfast sausage, during Christmas vacation.

For a lot of farm folk, that's just the way of things.  But we're technically not farm folk, as much as we like pretending.  Our little homestead is right in the middle of the city, and we don't have a huge flock of chickens, we have seven.  Eating them is just right out of the question, at least for us.

This is a dilemma all backyard chicken fanatics must face at some point:  are your birds for food or for fun?  While I grant that there can be some of both, this decision is really critical from a cost perspective; veterinarian bills alone could cripple your efforts at sustainability if you have some feathered friends in your backyard instead of some organic working capital.

That having been said, yes, our ladies have names:  Duck, Smokey Lonesome, Big Myrtle, Spectacles, Edna Flapjacks, and from our smaller second flock Dot and Bombarella.  Amelia and Little Myrtle, rest their little souls, fed the local raccoon population before we figured out how to properly secure the coop.

Which brings up a related subject -- depending on your local ordinances, where you put your chickens may have an effect on how you feel about them, and how you feel about eating them.  In College Station, chicken tractors and other portable devices are not allowed in the city limits.  The coop must be at least 100 feet from the nearest domestic building.  This puts them right outside our back door.

After we solved the smell problem (see deep bedding method in Bedtime for Bombarella), we were left with the no less significant problem that the ladies were now close enough to be members of the family.  We had originally intended to eat them, you see, but this is no longer possible.  They lay a lot of eggs (we're averaging 1 a day from each bird, in all seasons and all kinds of weather, including a hurricane), and we eat a lot of eggs, but we just can't eat the chickens themselves.

Oh, we thought we could find a way originally.  College Station does not allow roosters, and had any of them been mis-sexed by the feed lot, we intended to have homegrown fajitas... but they were all hens, and now we're just going to have to live with the consequences.

So, unless you are a hard-hearted sort, you might want to consider your backyard birds to be a source of delicious eggs... and not meat.  Just a thought.

Happy farming!