...I would raise my own food

In many countries in the world, families keep small animals at their homes to use for food and other products. When I was in Madagascar last summer, we always kept 4-5 chickens with us to use for their eggs and when there was a feast, they were killed and eaten. Most of the vegetarians in our group didn’t like the idea of killing the chickens, but the idea of raising your own food appeals to me.

I don’t eat meat for environmental reasons, due to the high resource requirements of meat and unethical forms of raising animals. However, by raising your own chickens, this eliminates a lot of the issues with meat production since they you know exactly what they’re eating, how they’re raised, and can use the eggs from them for a few years. I think this is a much more sustainable way or raising meat and I would likely eat chicken if I raised them myself.

But it seems I’m not the only one who thought this sounded like a good idea. Apparently, a number of people in urban areas of North America also decided it would be a good idea to raise chickens but now hundreds of chickens are being abandoned by “hipster farmers” as the owner of Chicken Run Rescue called them. They decided they would raise chickens for eggs but didn’t realize the amount of work they would be. In Canada, there's a number of cities that allow people to own chickens, including Kitchener, Vancouver, and Niagara Falls.
Even though it sounds like work I still think the idea of raising your own food is appealing and would be interested in keeping chickens if I did more research. Would you ever consider raising chickens at your home?