Hi,
I am not a chicken keeper yet - my partner and I currently live in inner-Stockholm, Sweden, and dream of moving to a more rural area about an hour out of town where we can have more land and keep chickens (we would still need to commute to our jobs in the city via public transport so can't go too far). Our tentative timeline is 2.5-3 years from now. I would sell our apartment and move tomorrow if I could, but other responsibilities on his end make it not that realistic right now. So I figure to try and keep my impatience at bay and make some progress toward this goal, I can spend this time learning about chickens and making some plans and budgets before we get started.
The main reason I would like to keep chickens is to have eggs from chickens that I know were treated well and raised with care. Right now I rarely eat eggs because I prefer not to buy from the grocery store. Also, while I am a vegetarian my two cats are not - right now I make home made cat food for them with chicken and turkey bought from the grocery store. I would much rather minimise this and use meat from chickens I raise myself (though I know I probably won't have a big enough flock to completely replace store bought chicken - they eat a lot). On the other hand I have also read that chickens are extremely intelligent and loving, so I still have a lot of thinking to do about whether I can bring myself to slaughter my chickens for cat food. As you can see I have a long way to go.
My other hobbies are working on software projects and my cats. I found this forum on Reddit and it seems like there is a great wealth of information here to get started. I'm a total chicken noob, hopefully 2-3 years is enough time to figure out what I'm doing and get started on the right foot.
Thanks!
I am not a chicken keeper yet - my partner and I currently live in inner-Stockholm, Sweden, and dream of moving to a more rural area about an hour out of town where we can have more land and keep chickens (we would still need to commute to our jobs in the city via public transport so can't go too far). Our tentative timeline is 2.5-3 years from now. I would sell our apartment and move tomorrow if I could, but other responsibilities on his end make it not that realistic right now. So I figure to try and keep my impatience at bay and make some progress toward this goal, I can spend this time learning about chickens and making some plans and budgets before we get started.
The main reason I would like to keep chickens is to have eggs from chickens that I know were treated well and raised with care. Right now I rarely eat eggs because I prefer not to buy from the grocery store. Also, while I am a vegetarian my two cats are not - right now I make home made cat food for them with chicken and turkey bought from the grocery store. I would much rather minimise this and use meat from chickens I raise myself (though I know I probably won't have a big enough flock to completely replace store bought chicken - they eat a lot). On the other hand I have also read that chickens are extremely intelligent and loving, so I still have a lot of thinking to do about whether I can bring myself to slaughter my chickens for cat food. As you can see I have a long way to go.
My other hobbies are working on software projects and my cats. I found this forum on Reddit and it seems like there is a great wealth of information here to get started. I'm a total chicken noob, hopefully 2-3 years is enough time to figure out what I'm doing and get started on the right foot.
Thanks!
