Place: Csíkszentdomokos or Sândominic
Several times when we went to visit someone, I thought that we had arrived at the wrong place. Having arrived in a village and turned left onto a grassy cul-de-sac, I thought that my driver had made a mistake for a change. Instead, having called someone in Hungarian, he reversed his car and parked it on the opposite road. Next, we walked to where we had just been and entered a gate where a young couple were waiting for us. They were Norbert and Tímea, a married couple in their 30s and their young daughter.
Their house and the chicken farm were located next to each other, and both were fenced in to prevent the hens from running away and hindering foxes from entering the courtyard. The house and the surrounding property originally belonged to Nobert’s parents, and he had inherited it.
They had 5 goats, but they sold them because a male goat was aggressive when Tímea was pregnant, and she was afraid of getting hurt.
They stayed 7 years in the UK, working in hotels as cleaners in Brighton, learning the language and having a good time although they weren’t satisfied with the food they were eating. Both prefer a slow life and not earning a lot of money, meaning that they went back to where they came from, that is to the farm where Norbert grew up.
They don’t throw away food, they want to know where their food comes from, and they buy honey from local beekeepers. They have planted apple trees, which give shade to the chickens, and they also eat the fallen apples. They make their own bread, and they receive leftovers from some restaurants, but they aren’t allowed to do dumpster diving. The parents of Tímea have pigs, from which they can get meat, they buy milk from one of their neighbours.
They started raising chickens as a hobby, then they increased the number of chickens to 400, while now they have about 250. They have been raising chickens for 4 years and they are still learning how to do it. They can’t get advice on raising more than 200 chickens even though they behave very differently from 20. They buy 100 chickens at a time, costing about 1000 euros, but they can’t see which sex they have upon arrival at their farm. Anyway, the male ones are slaughtered and eaten when they are recognized. In fact, Tímea and Norbert kindly invited us into their house where they served us lunch consisting of soup made from the meat of some of their male chickens.
Foxes are trying to attack the chickens and sometimes they kill several at a time. Their three dogs stay with the chickens and that’s why they don’t have traps for the foxes. In addition, they don’t hunt.
Norbert works as an electrician at Csíki Sör brewery , but he doesn’t drink beer, he’s very occupied with fixing the machines, though. Tímea stays home with their daughter.
In addition to cereals, they only give the chickens vitamin D and calcium. A young female veterinarian is very helpful even though she knows very little about chickens, and she can identify what they need. The main diet of the chickens is cereals.
The hens may peck each other, if they see blood, they will keep on pecking. At dusk, everyone goes inside the small house. Next, they close the door to keep foxes outside. They stay inside at night on wooden racks, some of them stay in a corner of the house. The chickens produce about 1000 eggs a week. They have adjacent houses with straw on the floor where the chickens lay eggs and their owners pick the eggs twice a day. They have a separate house for the youngest chickens, that is up to 1 month.
In winter, they give the chickens hot water every 2 hours, while in summer they can drink from tubes with holes.
After lunch, we went to their egg house a few minutes’ walk from their house. It was located next to the food shop.
The egg house was called Szapona, which was a bad nickname of Norbert’s father. The egg house has a fridge with max 10°C and people can pay with cash. The egg house is monitored with 2 cameras. Of course, they can’t compete with commercial chicken farmers and the egg prices of this couple are somewhat higher than the shop prices. Some customers pay too little or too much, but, in general, it’s averaged out over time
Some people just want eggs, and they don’t care about where the eggs come from.
There is a great demand for eggs at Christmas and Easter.
The price of chicken feed has risen substantially after Covid, and they have been thinking about giving up raising chickens, but they keep on doing it. In fact, Norbert wants to be a full-time farmer and both want to raise rabbits for meat production.
They have Indian ducks for fun, and they eat snails, while their eggs and meat are inedible.
