Last updated
05 February 2012
Quest for the Good Life 
Welcome to our livestock pages. You can move on to specific parts of our chicken
pages by clicking on the relevant links beneath or read on. May we recommend watching
the video below with regards to the raising of commercial meat chickens, quite an
eye opener.
Breeding Chickens -
Our Light Sussex started out as a quartet (1 cockerel and 3 hens), their purpose being breeding stock. Some of the young they produce will replace our 2 year old hybrid egg laying hens, others will be grown for meat and spares will be sold to other keepers as different blood lines.
The chickens for eggs is based on our 6 hybrids we have brought with us from our previous house. We have grown them from chicks which we purchased in March 2009. They started laying in July and we have discovered a lot about how they perform in response to day light as winter approached. We have collated considerable data on egg production versus costs as well as the effect of day light on egg production. This will be of interest to any back yard chicken keeper.
If you eat meat then you should know where it comes from and how it is produced. If not then you are in danger of being sold poor quality, unhealthy food. You should know what an intensive chicken farm looks (and smells) like and how 30,000 birds live together (see video below). You should know how they are slaughtered and how it goes from crowded farm to high street chicken meals. Only then can you make choices about what you eat. Ignoring the fact that your supermarket meat, on its foam tray covered with cling film, was once alive and kicking is burrowing your head in the sand.
Growing your own meat is not as convenient. It takes planning and effort, as well as husbandry skills. In practice we probably eat less meat than someone regularly visiting the famous burger outlets several times a week. We know what we have eaten is as good as it gets, can the burger customer say the same?
Convenience food is cheap, readily available and of course “guilt free”. It is only guilt free because you cannot see the truth behind the ingredients and you are not forced to think about the consequence of your actions. Perhaps more honest labelling of food and transparency into the practices and processes to get your cheap food to the table would make many consumers think again. Many would become vegetarians, others would reconsider their meat eating options. Some would grow their own.
So if you think keeping your own rabbits, chickens or even pigs is a little on the barbaric side and some kind of primitive regression, then please take a look at the you tube video. It is a look at the way in which your cheap chicken is produced. We have seen this ourselves too so we can verify this. Watch the video and then think about your finger licking good next meal of cheap chicken. Enjoy!