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07-23-2015 12:20 AM
From REUTERS Oddly Enough😀
"A Pennsylvania couple has come up with a solution to soaring U.S. egg prices: Rental chickens.
RentTheChicken.com is the brainchild of Jenn and Phil Tompkins, of Freeport, Pennsylvania, northeast of Pittsburgh. More than just a cost-beater, they see their business as a way to change how people think about food.
"It changes the mindset of people when they know where food comes from," said Jenn Tompkins, 38. "Pretty soon they'll have tomato plants and be turning the chicken manure into compost."
Since starting their home-based business in the summer of 2013, they have rented chickens, either directly or through affiliates, to about 200 customers in 12 U.S. states as well as Ontario and Prince Edward Island in Canada.
Interest has been spurred by a surge in U.S. egg prices, which rose a record 85 percent last month after an outbreak of bird flu led to the culling of millions of laying hens nationally, according to U.S. Labor Department data.
For about $400, depending on location, the service provides two laying hens for the four to six warm months of the year, plus a chicken coop and a guidebook.
The hens typically produce eight to 14 eggs a week, and at the end of the rental period customers have the option of buying the chickens or returning them.
The venture is one of a handful that have sprouted up around the United States in the past few years, capitalizing on renewed interest in local food production.
Municipalities vary widely in their attitude toward urban chicken farming. Philadelphia bans it, Tompkins said, while Pittsburgh earlier this month relaxed its licensing requirements to allow homeowners with lots of a minimum size to raise small numbers of chickens, ducks or hornless goats, or to keep bees......."
07-23-2015 07:14 AM
A couple chickens in the yard would drive Kitty up the walls...............
07-23-2015 08:16 AM
I'd rather pay more for eggs.
07-23-2015 10:07 AM
If you're vegetarian (and not ovo-lacto), the rise in egg prices has little effct.
07-23-2015 10:10 AM
Oh I'd love to have chickens again! They're so much fun. I got an incubator, fertile eggs, and hatched some myself. I'd also like to have some ducks...
07-23-2015 10:48 AM
@debc wrote:I'd rather pay more for eggs.
me too
07-23-2015 12:00 PM
I'm not sure the cost of feed, bedding & cleaning would offset the cost of the eggs when included in the intitial cost.
07-23-2015 12:12 PM
Every time I hear of someone who wants to bring chickens into their lives I think of my grandmother. She and my grandfather had quite a farm in Michigan which I visited many summers as a child and teenager. The large chicken coop was one of my grandmother's duties and she taught me the ins and outs of keeping chickens.
When I was a sophomore in high school she became ill and then died, surprising everyone in the family. The family paid for an autopsy because aside from a marked limp and old age creeping upon her, everyone was taken aback. Turns out the official cause of death was viral emphesema which she conracted from the chickens that she care for over so many years.
I have no idea what kind of issue this is today, but I'd look into it if I were considering bringing chickens into my life today.
07-23-2015 12:16 PM
I don't eat $400 worth of eggs in 6 months, so not a deal for me.
07-23-2015 12:32 PM
Wow, Ms SF this is quite a tragic story to read of your grandmother. I'm sorry to read about this. Just a couple of days ago I mentioned to my husband that we should get a couple of egg layers and raise them ourselves. He chuckled at me, but them I remebered friends of our's living not far from us have a few chickens. This is in the city mind you. There is also a fox in their neighborhood who comes out at night trying to get after the chickens. Not a good thing.
Matters not to me how much I pay for eggs, I'll still be buying them as we like to eat eggs.
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