BYC members in Massachusetts?

I understand you on that. If things go terribly wrong with the economy, Russia, etc. I have an incubator and keep a rooster. All my chickens are dual purpose birds so if needed, I could hatch and raise a few for consumption. However, right now I’m enjoying eggs better than the “Eggland’s Best.” Of course, with the current cost of chicken food and supplies my backyard eggs cost more money than the grocery store offerings. With all these bitter temperatures and windchills I have collected 5 beautiful eggs from my spoiled hens today. Yum! No pullets in my flock. I have 9 hens all ranging from almost 2 yo to 5. Good old girls.
 
My flock did fine last night. They were spaced out on the roost, not even huddling together! They are outside right now, happily scratching around. Chickens are tougher than we give them credit for. But also, this isn’t the worst kind of weather for them. It’s cold, but it’s dry and sunny. Now if there was a SINGLE snowflake on the ground, they would’ve been in the coop pouting, even if the temperature was 30 degrees warmer than it is right now! 😄
 
I’m happy to hear your chickens were fine overnight. My flock doesn’t mind snow all that much. They won’t go out in fresh snow, but they’ll be begging to go out once it’s settled. I leave a few piles of leaves for them in their chicken yard over winter so the bugs that hide in them are available to my girls. With the exception of nasty weather days my chickens get out of their run and forage in their chicken yard twice a day.
 
I have an incubator and keep a rooster. All my chickens are dual purpose birds so if needed, I could hatch and raise a few for consumption.
I'm not planning on a rooster, but would like the option to buy some fertilized eggs and have a broody hen raise them up on an occasional, or even regular, basis. Which would mean ending up with cockerels, which I'd want to eat up, potentially along with other chickens that weren't suitable or needed for eggs. I'm also leaning toward the dual purpose types for this reason. There have to be some places around, once I add in the neighboring states especially.
 
I saw their website but it did not list chickens as being among the animals they process, I will still call them though, even if they don't they may know of someone else who does. Thanks!
I just googled it and I found 2 “small batch” USDA inspected facilities one is in central Massachusetts- Stillmans and in Western Massachusetts is Redland Farms. Minimum charge is $100 per batch. So that comes out to about $10 per bird plus a charge for packaging material.
 
Aha, thank you for the info! I'll have to factor that in to my thinking about how I proceed.

You know, I had asked about local chicken keeping clubs and it seemed like there weren't any, around here at least, the online group format was taking its place. But I used to have bees and the local beekeeping club was able to get benefits for its members like being able to order things that had large minimums, big supplier discounts, stuff like that. I think there might be more people keeping chickens compared to bees, at least just judging my the small area around me. I could imagine a club being able to work out with someone to get a specific date/time meeting a specific minimum, allowing individuals to bring fewer, for example. Or, some of the bee vendors were invited to speak at meetings and brought things to sell at a discount, for example, or people from regulatory places came to offer advice, like on keeping bears away, stuff like that. It was pretty useful and also fun.

I know in-person groups just might not be anyone's thing anymore, especially since the pandemic, but I wonder ...? I know as a newbie it was very time efficient to ask my ignorant questions of the group while we were all eating snacks together instead of posting them one by one! If you do know of such a group please let me know! And thank you for your patient help with these questions!
 

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