Becoming Self Sufficient - 4 Ways To Become Part Of The Sustainable Living Movement

Keeping chickens in your backyard is a great way to have fresh eggs around all the time. If you are really brave, you can also have fresh meat for you and your family.

Some commonly asked questions are:
- Can I break even keeping a flock of chickens?
- How old do my pullets have to be before they start laying eggs?
- Which chicken breeds are best for producing the most eggs?
- Which chicken breeds have the best meat?

You can find the answers to all of these questions and more by CLICKING HERE. This site has a ton of useful information about keeping chickens and chicken care. You can also sign up for a FREE chicken keeping newsletter

Click the image to get your FREE e-course on the "7 Deadly Mistakes When Keeping Pet Chickens At Home". Once you click the image, go the very bottom of the page and get your FREE e-course.

The goal of more and more people these days is to become more self sustaining and to do that they turn to raising animals and growing vegetables to reduce their dependence on the national food chain. Being part of the sustainable living movement also means that you are reducing waste and your carbon foot print.

There are a lot of options available to become self sustaining or self reliant. A growing number of people who are becoming part of the sustainable living movement are chosing to go all the way and grow their own food, make their own bread and slaughter their own meat. They barter and trade for as many items as possible so that they are as self sustaining as possible.

Is this life for you? You don't have to go all the way to be part of the sustainable living movement. There are some simple and fairly inexpensive ways that you can move towards being more self sustaining.

There are four ways that are fairly easy to implement to become more self sustaining.

Growing Vegetables In Your Backyard

The benefits of growing vegetables in your backyard include being able to plant what you can eat or what you think you can sell. Some people opt just to grow what their family can eat and that is great. There is nothing the like the taste of a freshly picked tomato, strawberry, cucumber or lettuce.

But if you want to kick it up a notch and you have the extra space, you might for example consider planting 15 or 20 tomato plants and making your own salsa, tomato sauce, spagetti sauce, etc. You can learn to can and put them up for the winter. If your plants produce enough product, you won't have to buy hardly any during the winter and you may be lucky enough not to have to buy any. You can do this with just about anything you want to grow including peppers, green beans, squash, etc. The sky is the limit for what you can grow and can.

If you grow enough product, you will have extras that you sell to people in your area. Farmers markets are popping up all across the country and are very popular. If you have enough vegetables, you can actually sell them and make money.

Raising Chickens

A big part of the sustainable living movement is to keep laying chickens either caged or as a free range flock to be able to cut dependence of grocery bought food and reduce your carbon foot print. Chicken raising is pretty easy to do as long as you have even a plot of land, some fencing and a hen house. For those people who can build things themselves, it is really easy to get something suitable set up in no time at all. There are tons of chicken coop blueprints online that you can get for reasonable prices so that you can have a beautiful, functional and unique chicken coop for your chicken flock. Even if you have a very small area, you can find a chicken coop to meet your needs.

Chickens are pretty easy to keep healthy and happy as long as you meet their basic needs of food, water and shelter. Feed them a commercial chicken feed and any fruits or veggies that you want to. If you have a garden they enjoy tomatos, cucumbers, carrots, beets, chards, lettuce, any fruit or veggies peelings that you have, etc. They will appreciate the treats and it will lead to better tasting eggs.

Raising Rabbits

Rabbit keeping is on the rise as well and the cage rabbit is easy to keep and care fore. The meat is very good and again, you know where your food source has been and what it has eaten. The main advantage of keeping rabbits is that they don't require a lot of space. They can be kept in cages or runs as long as they are kept in a well ventilated shed, barn or garage. The cages or runs need to be predator proof or you will quickly lose a bunch of your rabbits.

A quick note on how to feed your rabbits. Your rabbits, unlike your chickens, cannot be allowed to free range or you would lose too many of them. So their diet is very important and they are more expensive to keep than chickens. Your rabbits should not be fed only pellet type rabbit feed. This can lead to stomach problems over time because they don't have enough roughage in their diets. Top breeders recommend that only about fifty percent of the rabbits diet should be pellets and the rest needs to be some type of coarse grass like timothy, meadow grass or mulch grass. You can give them fresh veggies but only kale, collards, spinach and other similar vegetables.

Raising Goats

Keeping goats is on the rise in popularity these days. They are friendly little animals and make great pets. But before you decide to get into keeping goats, you need to do your research. The advantages of keeping goats are that they provide great milk and meat and they are great weed eaters.

But some of the disadvantages include the fact that they need more room to roam, they are expert escape artists so they very sturdy fencing and they are going to cost more to feed than chickens and rabbits. Your goats will need a feed made for goats as well as grass or hay. They will eat most anything, and I do mean anything so keep an eye on them.

I have a friend that raises and sells the extra kids at a local auction for extra money. It helps keep her herd under control as well as brings in extra income.

These are just four easy and fairly inexpensive ways to start becoming more self sustaining and become part of the sustainable living movement. Sustainable living is the new buzz word these days and it is becoming huge these days as more and more people. You can take this as far as you want or just dabble in it. Some people work very hard and are able to be completely self sustaining but it takes an incredible amount of work and dedication.

You can obviously just keep chickens for their eggs and goats for their milk or if you can get over your squeamishness, you can also keep them as well as rabbits for fresh meat. You don't have to do this to become part of the "sustainable living movement". This route is not for everyone but if you can do it, it is a huge step towards being more self sustaining and it is very rewarding.

If you decide to go the chicken route and raise a few backyard chickens, you will need a strong, predator proof chicken coop and chicken run. Whether you need a small chicken house for just a few chickens or you need a large chicken coop for a large flock, there are tons of designs and chicken coop blueprints online.

I don't know about your, but I personally didn't want my chicken coop to look like everyone else's but I want it to be secured, predator proof and functional. I wanted a unique yet functional chicken coop blueprint. I found just what I was looking for as well of lots of help and advice.

If you're interested in keeping chickens at home, or you already are, then you need to read this review of Chicken Keeping Secrets.

When I first started raising chickens, I bought several chicken raising books. Some of them were very basic and some were way too technical! The great thing about this book is the way it's written. Each subject in the book is clearly written and easy to understand. I keep it on my coffee table and browse through a few pages during the week. There is so much information in this book that I seriously doubt I will ever need to buy another chicken keeping book again.

I bought a number of books on chickens two years ago when I was first entertaining the idea of keeping hens. I can toss them all out now that I have this book. I sure wish it was out when I started this project!

Everything you really need to know to raise chickens is in this book. The authors give clear and reasonable recommendations on vaccinations, worming, feeding... just about everything you can think of.

The book is easy to use and clearly organized. It's also engagingly written. I have more confidence in my chicken keeping abilities.

It is a great value for the price and it comes with a full money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose.

One of the things that I love most about getting this ebook is that you can also reference the easy to use website and sign up for free newsletter covering chicken care, chicken behavior, chicken nutrition and more.

Get your copy of Chicken Keeping Secrets

This book will provide you with litterally everything you need to know and Chicken Keeping Secrets is a must have for anyone whether you're a complete beginner and don't know where to start, or you're a seasoned chicken keeping professional and just want practical "how to" advice on tap.

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In this concise, easy to read, step by step guide - that you can download instantly - you'll discover

* The 10 most commonly kept breeds of chicken including; their suitability for egg laying and /or meat production, their basic requirements and adaptability to your specific climate, and perhaps most importantly if you have children - their different temperaments and personalities.

* A brief history of chicken keeping and how to determine whether keeping chickens in your own backyard is really the right option for you.

* A complete run down on what chickens need to really thrive, the costs involved (they're much lower than you might think), and how much time you're really going to need to dedicate to the new additions to your family

* No fuss, no mess chicken coops and chicken runs

* Feeding and nutrition advice because what you feed your chickens ends up in you!

* Basic chicken health information.

I designed this lens to provide general information on chickens and chicken care for anyone looking for it. But, you should know that I do this for a living and this website generates some revenue through affiliate marketing. If you click a link and purchase something from that link, I will make a percentage off that sale.