how about this for preps?
 

I know it is against code to have chickens in town, but when TSHTF,

it would not hurt to already have a chicken coop and some extra feed,

so that you will be ready for your own 2 or 3 chickens. You could even keep them indoors if you had to.

Re: how about this for preps?
 

why not, your third world immigrants to this country keep all kinds of livestock in apartments and residential neighborhoods

Re: how about this for preps?
 

I agree chickens and chicken feed are great preps. Unfortunately the town I live in recently passed a ban on chickens and other livestock. I wrote a letter to the mayor / aldermen / local paper saying the new ordinance was silly. If someone has chickens AND they make too much noise and odor, the city can prosecute under existing nuisance ordinances. But no, our town wanted to demonstrate that it is not "hick town, Arkansas", and went ahead and passed the ordinance. I had some good friends who lived in Memphis, TN, and had a few chickens in their back yard. Their chickens never got loose, didn't make much noise or odor, and they had fresh eggs every morning!

Re: how about this for preps?
 

hopefully the JBT's will be too busy to worry about our chickens etc.

keep them in a closet if you have to.

Re: how about this for preps?
 

I am a big chicken fan these days, I live chicken tractors over chicken coops but otherwise I like your idea. Heck, I'm living it!

There is no real difference in keeping chickens indoors(especially bantams) instead of any number of larger birds such as parrots and macaws, except the chickens are quieter. If your chicken raising efforts are generating much foul odor than you need to review your operation very quickly because your chickens are not being kept in a healthy setting. There should be very little smell associated with the birds, the feed stinks more than the poops in my setup. For a pair of bantams indoors I'm using a 2'x2' wire rabbit cage about four inches over a bed of litter that is held in a 30"x36" tray designed to catch rabbit droppings. I scoop it out daily. The litter quickly dries out any droppings so there is little odor, what I use is made from compressed pine sawdust since cedar has been shown to make small animals unhealthy and scented clay cat litter stinks bad on its own to me but most other litter would work too.

Chickens are quiet most of the day. I sleep through my rooster crowing, and all the other roosters in the neighborhood too. Aside from a few minutes at dawn the local Rhode Island Reds make very little sound all day long unless you want to go outside and play with them, then they might make some vocalizations that range from a whisper to semi-loud talking. Laws against keeping chickens are painfully ignorant, many other forms of livestock are also no worse for keeping on a small lot than many common pets. Idiots blasting gangsta rap through bass tubes are a real problem and the product of a person's deliberate attempt to force you to be disturbed by his or her "music." A few minutes of crowing when many people are waking up anyway is a completely natural sound.

You might also consider raising catfish in containers, a setup like that could be very stealthy and I don't think many busybody legislators or homeowner associations have thought of that angle yet.

Re: how about this for preps?
 

catfish in containers?

that sounds like a great idea.

Re: how about this for preps?
 

We hadf chickens at our home for many years and the sound of roosters crowing in the morning is relaxing to many people.Mine were free ranging,eggs were great.

Why did I get rid of them?...Because they were eating the wife's flowers and other decorative plants. I didn't care about that-she did.

Re: how about this for preps?
 

RR, sorry to hear about the flowers/chicken problem. If you haven't already consider it I would suggest what we do at my place, chicken tractors. Basically it's an open bottom box so the chickens are protected from predators and stay where you want them but still get most of the benefits of free ranging. All you do is move the tractor every other day or so. I keep my chickens in the tractor full time except when I let them walk around the yard under supervision so I like to give 10 square feet per bird.

Enlightened, I don't have it set up yet but I'm planning on installing a pump to circulate the catfish water through a hydroponic garden. It should be a pretty good symbiosis with the plants filtering the water for the fish. I'll let the filtered water fall a foot or two back into the tank thereby oxygenating the water and cutting down on stagnation. It is a stackable technology so you can produce a lot of food in a small area, I call it the food unit because it is a weird and generic name.

If you're in a regular neighborhood you could even fake people out by have a good sized koi pond complete with fanciful tropical plants, real or fake, but instead of koi.... catfish! Bluegill are awfully tough to kill down here, too.