Hello- We have a small acreage in Coastal Oregon and are about to construct a coop for our first round of chicken keeping. Sure we will have some questions but so far so good. It will be the Garden Coop plan and perhaps adding a Chicken Moat to it as the colony expands. We're primarily interested in eggs as we do not generally eat meat. Can you eat them when/if they die of old age, though? Good for soup stock even?
from arizona!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ummm i dont know about eating them when they die.... may wanna post that in the meat bird section for answers?
Welcome from Eugene Oregon! Congrats on your soon to be new addition. Just a quick story to help answer your questions. I recently got enlightened on this subject. My husband crab fishes in Alaska. They came back to the harbor to sell a small amount of crab off the dock. I watched a crab that climbed out of the crab hold and was actually on the floor boards of the boat. It died fairly fast for some random reason and then hubby walked over and threw it overboard into the harbor. I said, "Why did you do that..it's a perfectly good crab" and he said....."would you eat a cow or pig that died on it's own?" At that point, it made sense. So to answer your question, I wouldn't eat a chicken that died on it's own. Any animal that dies on it's own is probably not quite eating material. I think most people who use their chickens for eggs and meat actually cull them around 2 years......once they are off their top producing egg laying years. This is just my novice opinion.
