Hardy's Poultry Farm on Rt. 133 in Ipswich - they sell chicks, though maybe not till spring.
The Agway on Wenham St. in Danvers. The woman who runs the poultry consignment there gets interesting stuff like Welsumers and Comets, plus ducklings, guinea keets and bantams. She will also make a...
I think those people with farm houses to rent, are out there. You could put your name in with local realtors in the towns that interest you, and give them a good idea of what you're looking for.
Northampton is a beautiful town. I have a friend there with a yoga/bodywork studio in the middle of...
Anything you see about busy pace in Mass., is in Boston and the immediate area. The smaller cities are much more laid back -- Worcester, Springfield, also the cities along the NH/VT, NY and CT/RI borders... much less rush-rush. But of course the rural towns are even more laid back! :) Look into...
Welcome to the Nawth Shaoh.
Try Hardy's poultry hatchery on Rte. 133 in Ipswich. They sell chicks and hatching eggs. Not sure what they have at the moment, but they always have a selection of popular breeds in the spring.
Also, the Agway on Wenham St. in Danvers sells chicks from spring...
PatQ,
Typical of bureaucracy, the left hand often doesn't know what the right hand is doing in city and town governments. lol
I'm in Salem, and the animal control officer told me he's required to keep a barn book. Annually, he e-mails me and I send him a list of what I have, and when he has...
You can call your town's dog/animal control officer. They would know. The state agriculture department requires that each municipality keep a "barn book" which is a census of all livestock and poultry in the town/city limits. Technically, all households or businesses with even one chicken, or...
You definitely could be allergic to chickens (or generally to birds) - the tiny flakes of keratin that they shed off new feathers growing in, and they shed skin flakes all the time too. It can make a fine dust in the air.
Daylight has been gradually decreasing since the summer solstice, and today is the first full day of fall, so it could be that your hens are just reducing their egglaying because of the shorter daylight. My flock is also laying less right now, including my ducks that have been laying since...
Good point about a table and chairs to work on, Arielle. I set up a couple of concrete cinderblocks and plywood for a table. Works great with the chickens, though when I had my turkey, the inspector just would just stand him on the ground and straddle him like a pony to take a sample. lol.
One thing I learned the hard way years ago... when you get the poultry inspector to come do blood tests, round up your birds before she/he gets there and have them either in a hutch, coop, box, etc. that you can pull out one bird at a time to hand to the inspector. If your birds free-range or...
I've never been to MV or Nantucket either. Block Island (RI) is the closest I've gotten. lol
But I do live in a major tourist area too... Salem. It's craziest in October thru Hallowe'en because of the witchy stuff, but really the place is a tourist hotbed all year except for that "dead" zone...
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Oh, there are a lot of us BYCers in Massachusetts! And even more chickens (and poultry) than BYCers! I've been keeping chickens and waterfowl since I was in my mid-teens, here on the North Shore.
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Thanks for the reminder that it's time for a visit to Klem's AND Bemis's! (I'm way east of Spencer --- on the coast in Salem, but I have friends in Spencer and get there regularly, have to stop at The Farmer's Daughter on the way!).