By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

Raising chickens has become Kathy Bonham’s passion. She and her husband Mike grew up with chickens as kids in Iowa, but since marrying at the age of 18, the couple hadn’t been around farm animals in many years.

Kathy Bonham's growing flock

After moving to Missouri a year ago, they decided to start a  “chickens for eggs” enterprise. It seemed like a good idea now that their five children were grown and their new home was situated on four acres.

Because she hadn’t been around chickens for so long, Bonham started researching the project. “I initially wanted to raise chickens for the eggs,” she says.

Many home chicken farmers get into the business to raise their own cage-free, vegetarian-fed, Omega oil-rich eggs, which have been shown to be nutritionally superior to commercial eggs from chickens raised in industrial settings.

“The eggs from your own chickens taste so much better than store-bought eggs,” Bonham says. “People at work buy eggs from us. They say they’ll never go back to store-bought.”

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