Hey, everybody else blogs about what they had for breakfast when they’re stuck for content.
So what if the chickens are boarders from the city? They still extrude fresh eggs.
Fresh eggs. Freshly-baked bread. Put them all together, they spell mother. Maybe I could get a milk cow, and start churning my own butter.
Or maybe not.
I used to feed this stuff to weekender guests all the time, back before I moved to my own Lair. They seemed to think it was a pretty exotic way to eat breakfast. I just think it’s quick, and it tastes good, and it keeps me going till lunch.
I always used to have to buy the eggs, though. And I go through a lot of eggs. So sometimes I had to go to town when all I needed was eggs. That was a hassle I’m not looking forward to going back to.
I’m getting fired up about this “chickens of my own” thing now.
Joel, you need to scrub that cutting board with some napalm. It’s turning black.
Now make you some egg salad sammiches for lunch : )
Cow – Was machst du? Mein Gott!
whispering – goat, goat, goat, goat, goat, goat, goat, goat
Chickens are OK but I stopped keeping them recently when feed went to $14/bag. At that price it just isn’t cost effective no matter how you figure it. Eggs fresh from the chicken are so much better than store bought and I miss them.
Are those hole in the bread omelets ? You cut a round hole in center of bread (Vienna Sausage for you purists), fry both sides in butter and break an egg in middle during 2nd side cooking. Top with cheese or a little syrup – tastes a lot like French toast, good grazing
Looks marvelous! A VERY long time ago I quit eating eggs like that because the fat nazis said butter was bad… but I’ve been eating butter again for ever so long and never thought to go back to the best way to cook eggs ever invented. Thanks for the reminder!!
I know what I’m having for breakfast tomorrow… or maybe supper tonight!
And yes, Woody, if you buy all the chicken food it can get lopsided economically, but then so can gardening if you really factor all the time and expenses into it. You just have to grow or scrounge what chicken feed you can get, and factor in the non economic rewards before you decide.
Keeping animals and growing things is a lot of work and expense – else food would be closer to free, don’t you think? But it can certainly be worth all the expense and time required to have your own.
Goats, on the other hand, require real dedication and intestinal fortitude… I kept dairy goats for many long years. Love them… but they ARE a lot of work. And require a lot of expensive fence unless you wish to be running after them constantly. I can keep a cow behind a strand of electric fence. Goats just laugh at it.
Our friend in NorCal mountains has about seven “free range” yard chickens (and one rooster) that are very productive. They just wander all around, clucking and pecking away at their own food. I don’t think she feeds them “feed” – maybe she does. There are a series of half-covered beer-boxes on tables and other places in the garage, with some straw that each goes into to lay eggs…some come out green, others are speckled – the shells are all much harder than store-bought and the yolks a much brighter yellow. Sometimes the coyotes get one but I haven’t been able to talk her into getting a shotgun.
I need to learn more about what chickens eat. It’d be foolish to be tied to commercial feed if something local would do. I really don’t see ever letting them run free around here to find their own food, though. I’d have every raptor and coyote for miles around waiting with knife and fork in hand.
ML, I remember when eggs and butter were declared bad. So was coconut oil, as I recall. I don’t see much of that, though I love it dearly, but life without eggs and butter…even if it’s true, at what price health? I’ll stick to eggs, and let my arteries worry about cholesterol. Whatever cholesterol really is.
Goats and cows are not going to happen. I cleaned up after a neighbor’s goats for over a year, before they finally gave up and got rid of them. If more troublesome animals ever lived, I don’t want to meet them. And that was a flock that never tried to escape. If I had the troubles with escapees I’ve read about, I’d stake the damned things out for the predators. These things got sick at the drop of any hat. Their food was ruinously expensive. And that billy…besides the everlasting stink, that moronic animal wanted to fight me every damned time I went in to clean up after him. He was worse than a stallion. He didn’t even seem to dislike me particularly – just his idea of fun.
Dammit, now I’m hungry.
Dammit, now I’m hungry.
Sick goats? No idea what kind they were, but I never had a sick one in 17 years. Ordinary dairy goats are about as healthy and hardy as dairy animals come. But you pegged the buck goat perfectly. They just love to mess with people. That’s why I never kept one, just took the girls to the fella when necessary.
Goats WILL eat most anything vegetable. And they love to eat paper, plastic, cloth, duct tape… They are actually not pasture animals and much prefer trees and brush of all kinds – everything from roots and bark to leaves. They will eat (and waste gobs) of hay if there are no trees or brush… Unfortunately, if they eat trees and brush, especially desert sorts, their milk won’t be worth anything. The milk takes on the strong flavors of whatever they eat.
Chickens eat any sort of seed, most vegetable matter that is broken down small enough for them to swallow, (no teeth, of course) and every sort of insect or other protein source, though they don’t need a lot. Out where you are, not going to be a whole lot of stuff just laying around even if they could safely range free to find it. You’ll have to feed them bought feed, I suspect.
And yes, all that BS about cholesterol turned out to be just that… BS.