Stealth Animals

As you know, we need to move closer to town (doctors, physical therapy, etc), which  means we have to follow city rules. Limited chickens, no roosters, no turkeys or ducks, and certainly no goats.

At first, I rebelled. I can’t imagine buying milk again. Not with how much my son goes through! And I prefer goat milk, raw, from our own antibiotic- and hormone-free goats. And goat baby meat.  Turkeys and chickens producing delicious orange-yolk eggs and free-range meat.

I just can’t imagine doing without these.

But I’m getting the feeling, as I speak with zoning and planning commissions, that unless we suddenly get rich, we will not be able to have farm animals of any kind, in town.

There might be a way around it. Well, for poultry.

Quail. Maybe we can buy a big enough house with a super-large garage where we can have 50 or so quail to produce eggs and meat.  We can sell the extra eggs (just got a call last week from a customer asking about buying quail eggs) and if we hatch out eggs once every couple of months, we will have lots of replacements.

But chickens … they walk around and poop, are more personable, and keep weeds and bugs down.

Quail … have to be kept confined so no weed or bug control, and poop needs to be cleaned more often. Not much personality.

Chickens … larger eggs.  Larger meat. Processor charges $3.00 per bird to butcher.

Quail … smaller eggs so we need to have 3-5 to equal one chicken egg.  We could butcher inside our home. Meat on one quail is just enough for one person.

Chickens … outside with fresh air.

Quail … inside a garage with hopefully air from a window.

What a conundrum.

How can you stealthily raise meat / eggs for your family?