Underground meatbird farming

[puddle_drinker]

I'm doing it. I don't care anymore. You can't force me to feed my family trash from the supermarket.



I have raised a lot of meat birds over the years but I had to move into an area where owning chickens is outlawed. I'm going to run a batch of cornish x in my garage. Anyone done anything similar? My thoughts are that in 8 weeks someone has to find out, tell someone that matters, the town has to get a warrant to go inside my garage, effectuate said, warn me, wait 2 weeks, then come back and give a ticket, wait for a court date, etc. It's not all going to work out in an 8 week span and frozen chicken parts simply aren't evidence of anything.

Tips for avoiding detection?

Detection by whom? A government agency could take a significant amount of time to serve you with a cease and desist order. If the chickens are in the freezer, and not in the yard, there is nothing to cite you for. Someone from the HOA might be quicker. If you don't have roosters and you pasture raise them across your yard in a low profile chicken shelter it's possible no one will notice until you've already harvested them.

If you raise them in a garage without sunlight, grass, and bugs, that doesn't seem that much different from CAFO raised chickens. Research your local laws well so you understand the boundaries and give your poultry the best life you can.

 

[K0k0shka]

If you raise them in a garage without sunlight, grass, and bugs, that doesn't seem that much different from CAFO raised chickens.

This is such a good point. Same breed, tight indoor confinement, how would they be any different from the so-called “trash” from the store?

 

[gooseapplefarms]

If you wanted to raise just a few birds here and there, doing it in the garage might be feasible. Trying to do 20+ at a time, there's just no way. Someone is going to notice all the feed you're bringing in and all the crap you're hauling out.

Let's so you can feed and clean the birds without much hassle. You still need to butcher 20 chickens in your garage. The logistics of this sounds unreasonable. Most pluckers use a lot of water, and that's going to make an incredible mess in your garage. If you decide to pluck by hand, you're going to be plucking birds round the clock.

If you're going to attempt this all anyway, I suggest staggering the birds. Rather than doing 20 every 8 weeks, I'd do 10 birds every 4 weeks. This way you're minimizing the amount of full sized birds you have on hand, which means you need less floor space dedicated to the birds, and less poop at one time to keep down on the smell.

Anyway, I'd definitely do the rabbits over chickens in your scenario. People keep pet rabbits, so having them itself isn't cruel. People butcher animals in humane ways, so that's not cruel either. I don't think you'll actually be arrested, there's no way those charges would stick, at least not in the US. They'll need a warrant anyway, they're not going to waste their time, and if the goal is nobody finding out, it shouldn't be a problem anyway.

 

[Molpet]

Detection by whom?

by me in Illinois, animal control enforces by complaint. I got 6 chicks from a person who said free to first person. He said he had a week to get rid of them or it was $150 per bird everyday.

 

[AprilWC]

I couldn't imagine raising birds in a garage. I hate raising chicks indoors to the point of getting them outside and to me CornishX are messier and stink more than regular chicks. Plus, as others have pointed out, if they never see the light of day, is it any better than what you get from the store?

Rabbits are very easy to raise and keep humanely indoors. Although I don't have to keep them a secret at my home, mine reside in my basement. At my previous home I DID have to be covert, the rabbits were in a spare bedroom. I unloaded feed and hay inside my garage. I litter trained the breeding stock so manure was contained to one small area and all of the clean up could fit in a grocery bag. I raise a small breed so litters were small and didn't add much more cleaning or feed. I butchered behind my garage - the back of the property was wooded and the screened porch blocked the view of the nearest neighbor. Inside the garage is also a possibility for butchering. No plucking, no scalding, definitely no noise. I knew someone who wanted the hides and gave heads and organs to my dogs. I was fortunate to me able to compost anything else. You could triple bag butchering waste and add it to regular trash. Actually, as I type this out, I wonder why I added chickens to the farm anyway.

 

[puddle_drinker]

by me in Illinois, animal control enforces by complaint. I got 6 chicks from a person who said free to first person. He said he had a week to get rid of them or it was $150 per bird everyday.

So if you have good relations with your neighbors, no complaints. No complaints equal no enforcement action? Get involved in shaping local laws, you're not alone.

 

[Tonyroo]

Strange how certain states or counties have serious chicken bans. I'm glad I'm not in one of them.