LOL, we never had anyone watch the place, but I do understand the weather is different although chickens live up north too. Our made it here at 5 F , 10 or 15 years ago. of course that is freak weather for us in North Florida.
Yeah, chickens do very well in the north but they still need to be fed and watered and, if we were going to keep chickens, they'd be in a backyard coop, which could be difficult for someone to get to while we're away if it snows. It's just a lot to ask someone.
I know it's aggravating as heck! I still working on the links and Walmart needs to improve their web page. I had to use Walmart search to get to coops.
Let’s see. $109 for the bird cage and not accounting for food or water. That would mean that the chickens would have to lay 18 dozen eggs to break even at today’s prices for eggs. When the price of eggs goes back down to around $2.00 a dozen, they’d have to lay 54 doz+ just to break even. If we get a ticket for having them, I will have spent $364 for…..fresh chicken. If we get none of the above…….priceless.
I know ,I was just teasing with y'all. Aslo if you don't eat or use a lot of eggs, probably don't need hens. We don't have roosters.
If the chicken coops on Amazon or Walmart are anything like the houses for outdoor cats that they sell, the lumber used is far too thin to do much good in cold weather, and they serve more as a model for something that would have to be build up with better lumber on the outside. Chickens that are accustomed to being in a warm place would have trouble without some protection against the cold in cold-weather climates, but chickens can be raised to withstand some pretty cold temperatures. My uncle's chicken coop was completely open to the elements on the front, and this was in the UP of Michigan, where the weather is a little harsher than here in Maine, and his chickens did just fine, it seems.
Peeps grow so fast they will be laying eggs in about 5 months. If you buy pullets aka teen ager chic's they will lay in a couple months. They are un to watch too, we raise ours inside first month, then put them out under heat light. Way I see it is its a good source of protein and other vitamin's. They will eat all kinds of insect's, kitchen scraps and weeds if you run out of feed. Grow fast growing green, yellow crops. Or raise worms.
I grew up on a farm. We had several kinds of chickens (including Turkens), guinea hens, ducks, and geese, as well as a cow, sometimes a pig, and a bunch of horses. As a kid, I hated the chickens, mostly because they were free-range chickens (by design or, more likely, the inability to maintain an effective chicken coop), and I hated stepping in chicken crap. Chicken crap makes for good fertilizer but I don't want it on my feet.
Just don't feed them around the house, that was my mistake, now they come up to the porch clucking for it. My vison is tunnel and blurred so I have trouble spotting it now. But lucky so far haven't stepped into it a lot. Animals can be messy, no fun caring for them at times.