Chickens have been shown to help the environment and lower your tax bill in a very surprising way. Since chickens are omnivores, meaning they eat just about everything - veggies, carbs, fats and proteins, if you get into the regular habit of saving all of the bits of food you normally throw out (both meal prep - carrot peels, ends of celery, etc... and the stuff left over on the plate your just not going to finish, or those leftovers in the fridge that are just not looking so good anymore) and feeding them to your chickens, none of this solid waste ends up in the landfill! In fact the amount of solid waste NOT ending up in the landfill is quite a lot (check out study below - short answer is 24 chickens reduce solid waste by 1 ton!!! Whaaaa...??!!!). Instead the chickens are thrilled and excited to gobble up all these bits you have no interest in eating and in return give you an egg. Since almost all communities have to pay for waste removal by the pound (as does the City of Saline) if you can reduce the amount of pounds going into your trash can that is picked up each week at the curbside, you will end up saving your local government money on the amount of your tax dollars spent on waste removal. So not only will your feed bill go down because you are feeding your chickens table scraps, your tax bill may go down as well. Check out the savings that Austin, TX discovered when they tracked just how much solid waste that backyard chickens eat. Study summary is below.
