Meet Gnarler, Rosie, Powerranger and Heihei our new chickens.
Previously I wrote about the carbon footprint of the average Kiwi household. One third of the footprint is food related mostly caused by emissions of eating red meat.
Another little step in our journey is getting chickens to provide more local and low carbon food. As master recyclers they also help us getting rid of our food scraps, are a natural pest control for the garden and organic fertiliser. Watching chickens is supposed to lower stress levels and while reading about chickens they are even used as therapy where their calming effect helps with symptoms like anxiety, emotional distress and social frustration. No need yet for that (maybe after the build of our home:)) but the kids now have two pets each to tend and care after and at least in a survey won’t fill out eggs are made in a factory.
Since I didn’t really like the chicken coops that were for sale in the shops I thought it would be fun to design a chicken house in the same design style as our future home. As with every of my projects there are some amateur errors but I am still quite pleased with the result. If any of the chickens dares to shit on the chicken deck they will be the first local food served on our plate…
Now all that is left is finding egg recipes and find the “how to keep chickens for dummies” book.
Margriet