We've been talking about getting chickens, but it would cost several hundred dollars to build a cage to keep out the coyotes and bobcats.
Jose is vegan, I can eat only so many eggs and I'd never eat my pets.
And then there is that lack of bugs — chickens can't live off aphids, there are only so many scorpions and centipedes and there sure isn't much grass growing in the desert.   We'd have to feed them.
Grow maggots for the chickens?

So, You Want to Be an Urban Chicken Farmer? Read This First.

By Jim Schutze, Fri., Jul. 23 2010 @ 1:21PM

urban-chickens.jpg
You don't want to see the other images we had for this post.

It's weird. Today I have no appetite at all, and I am seriously considering never eating again, but I have been thinking about nothing but food all day and how we don't think enough about where our food comes from. I mean really comes from. Yesterday when I went home I had a big problem with my wife's maggotometer.It's not really called a maggotometer. I think it's a Biopod or something. She paid several hundred bucks for it. It's for her backyard chickens. You put garbage in it, and, lo' and behold, it grows maggots. Some French genius invented it. I guess I should call it a maggoteur.
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I laughed so hard.  I know exactly what it's like when stuff doesn't work like it should because we're doing something wrong, when I spill the gross kitchen water on my legs while carrying it to the trees (fortunately Jose does that now) or I turn on the garden hose not realizing it's set to high pressure and I spray a bunch of gunk in my face.
Jose read this story and immediately suggested we build our own maggotometer.  Yeah right.  There's a recipe for disaster.
One more reason not to get chickens:  you don't need a maggotometer.
I'll stick with the worms.