What Will the Neighbors Think?
Fact: you can’t control what anyone thinks, much less your neighbor. Once folks gain more experience with the advantages and charms of chickens, most prejudice and fear evaporates; especially when you share some of those fresh, heart-healthy, good-for-you eggs from your family flock.
There is one huge advantage to family flocks that is often overlooked during chicken debates. That is their role and value in solid waste management systems. Chickens, as clucking civic workers, are biomass recyclers and can divert tons of organic matter from the trash collection and landfills.
Chickens will eat just about all kitchen “waste”. They love people food, even those “gone-by” leftovers that have seasoned in the refrigerator. Combine their manure with grass clippings, fallen leaves and garden waste, and you create compost. Composting with chicken helpers keeps tons of biomass out of municipal trash collection systems.
All this can save BIG TIME taxpayer dollars, which is especially valuable in these times of stressed municipal budgets.
There is precedence for employing family flocks as part of trash management. It is being done very successfully in some European towns. One example is the town of Deist in Flanders, Belgian. The city buys laying hens to give to residents who want them. The chickens’ job is to divert food waste from the trash stream and not having to be pickup by workers, transported, and then disposed. The savings are significant."
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