Backyard Chickens and Fresh Eggs: A Simple Step Towards Sustainable Living

Did you know mass-produced farm eggs have absolutely no flavour? Unless you’ve owned and raised chickens, you’ll never know what’s missing from the humble store-bought egg. The commercial version’s shell is thin, the yolk colourless, and that eggy taste isn’t all that good.

What we had before moving west has disappeared, and I miss our homegrown cluckers and their cackleberries. It’s time to resurrect a little of what we had by bringing in the specialist egg producer: the laying hen!

Most visitors come to this website because of my writing work. I spend a ridiculous amount of time at a keyboard creating dark fiction, maintaining this website and occasionally admitting what writing the SEETHINGS trilogy cost me. My personal life outside that work is much less sinister. Margo and I raise chickens, maintain a beehive and encourage wildlife to visit our coastal home. I’ve even had a go at finding a bee colony a new home (and successfully brought one or two back from the brink).

Meanwhile, the wild birds occupying our outdoor feeder come and go as they please. The chickens aren’t being offered that arrangement. They have accommodation, food, water and security. In return, we expect eggs.

Yes, Margo wants chickens so we can produce our own fresh eggs. This time, we’re doing it in suburbia.

We had a lot of building products left over from the house renovations. There was timber, roofing iron, hinges, locks, bolts and steel purlins, all nicely stored behind and inside our new garage. We looked at them and thought, We’ve got enough to make a chook pen out of all of that stuff. What we didn’t have was cage wire.

Roll-it-out chicken wire wasn’t our preferred choice. We’ve tried that before. That thin hexagonal stuff looks sloppy and daggy if it isn’t stretched taut. There’s also the fox problem to consider. Foxes can easily bite through it, snap it and fold it back. A determined fox doesn’t look at flimsy wire and see a fence. It sees packaging.

We wanted something much sturdier. The only thing we had to buy new was welded mesh. It’s 3mm thick and rigid enough to span a good distance. We buried it about a foot into the ground and then laid it across the walls and part of the roof to create an open section where the chickens could sun themselves. One-third of the pen is roofed and walled in corrugated steel. That came from the leftover house cladding, and the timber was recycled too. Apparently, we were already reusing building materials and household leftovers before anyone had to remind us it was a good idea.

During the day, chickens like sitting in sand or dirt and flicking it over their backs. They dig shallow hollows, wriggle into them and throw dust through their feathers as though bathing in filth is a perfectly sensible cleaning method. For a chicken, it is.

They also like roosting in a safe, weatherproof place off the ground at night. When it comes to egg-laying, they are total mothers and look for a soft, quiet corner to put their babies in. At the other end of the cage, we built a nesting box, complete with its own roof, soft shavings and two compartments for the girls to do their business in private.

Ordinarily, boxes like these are set in the same roofed area where the roosting occurs. That didn’t suit us at all. The roost is at the rear of the cage, but we wanted to collect our eggs from a more accessible place at the front. A long ramp leads from the ground to the box. A hinged lid lets us reach the eggs from outside the main cage. Luckily, we only need to go inside to change the food. The water is accessible from the front.

Anyhow, we finished it today, and Margo wanted to get the chickens right away. She just couldn’t wait. We found the number of a local supplier and picked them up immediately.

The girls now have a secure home, and we have the promise of breakfast. Their first efforts may be tiny—a young hen needs a few attempts to produce a full-sized egg—but flavour isn’t measured with a ruler. We’ll also know exactly where every egg came from and, should anyone ask, whether a rooster was involved.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)