My beautiful wife (
I'm going to take my stance here to say that I do believe it was indeed the chicken that came before the egg.
We have been purchasing eggs from a young man that lives about twenty five minutes north east of where we do. He's fourteen years old and runs an operation of about 100 chickens. It made him uncomfortable when I called it an "operation" but I told him at fourteen having a 100 chickens under your watch is one as far as I was concerned.
I originally thought I should name this post "went and checked out a fourteen year olds cocks last night"... but I'm going to save those comments for a project that I'm working on called "Verbal Hijab" - Stay tuned for more on that in the future!
Wife and I, and Rex and Mumin (the dogs) eat roughly half a dozen eggs per day. We are purchasing our eggs at a cost of $3 cdn per dozen, and they're much better than the quality of "grade A" eggs we used to buy from the supermarket.
My mother was born and raised on a farm in Norther Saskatchewan. Her mother, my grandmother kept chickens - and neither her, or my mother had anything fond to share about their experiences. I always remember hearing "they're dirty and they stink".
-There definitely was an odor to the chickens in their barn that took some eye-watering-getting used to.
When wife and I looked at the amount we were spending on eggs it opened my mind to the idea of keeping chickens, whereas it had only been quail that we had planned for previously.
Simple calculations 6(eggs/day) @ $1.50 x 365 (days/year) = $547.50 cdn, or $435 usd per year on eggs eaten for breakfast. It seems a bit of a balancing beam when trying to figure out the rest of the numbers. I believe that we will be content to raise enough chickens to provide eggs for ourselves, our immediate family, some of the folks in the church and a couple other friends.
I'll break down the calculations to show you cost for chickens, feed, housing and then what we have gained as we go along. This is just an introduction to my chicken works. Also, I'll provide the blue-ish prints for the chicken tractor that I build as I promised to my friend 
Both wife and I were so pleased with our evening when we went out to meet Mike, the 14 year old chicken farmer. We both recognized how refreshing it was to have an honest, open, and beneficial conversation with someone about these things. There seems to be a lot if miss-information about keeping chickens out there. It seems much like the typical north american health care system where the solutions online are more about treating the symptoms than addressing the actual issues. DON'T GET ME STARTED.
I can't leave any conversation with a farmer without discussing the potential to hunt on their land. Mike told us that he wouldn't be surprised if there were a bunch of white tails along the road before we reached the highway.
Was he right... seventeen of them, and if you could turn your head left from this photo, the 18th is crossing the road in front of us. I soon considered a chat that I had with 
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@mtnmeadowmomma/making-homemade-cat-food-save-money-and-make-your-cat-happy
That's all for today. Stay tuned for updates on what we're learning both first and second hand about chickens, living sustainable, permaculture, and my distaste for people using the word homesteading on land that they haven't homesteaded. ;)
As always, I welcome questions and conversation.. The only secrets that I keep are ones you don't want to know anyway!