We love having chickens. They are easy to keep and easy to process at home. We do want to buy a picker/plucker this spring to speed up the process. Of course, grid down it will be right back to hand plucking. *sigh*
We do a wide variety of breeds since we’ve only been doing this a few years. We have a lot of fun getting to know the different breeds.
We keep a laying flock of 20-30 and plan on doing about 200 meat birds for ourselves and family/friends this spring/summer. There is nothing like pastured chicken! I can put it in the crockpot with NOTHING and it is better than anything in a restaurant.
Predators are sometimes challenging in our area, but my husband tends to over-construct things and that prevents 99% of the problem.
A cheap way to get started in chickens is to find out if any local schools are hatching eggs as a class project and need someone to take them afterward. We ended up with ten extra laying hens and dozen roosters for the freezer this year that way.