Raising Chickens In The Back Yard

I remember two years ago when I was really getting into gardening my wife caught me looking at backyard chicken books at the book store. She gasped and said, “Oh no! We are not getting chickens. I’m just getting used the compost pile.” If I recall she sent email updates to our friends suggesting that I was going off the deep end, and this was just for looking at the books. It took a while but she warmed up to the idea enough to accept the possibility that we might get some chicks last Spring. The only problem was that while I had been researching and designing our chicken coop, I wasn’t even close to building it. So without knowing exactly what to do with them when we got them home, the girls and I took the leap and got the chicks/ Craig Goodwin , Year of Plenty. More here and here . (2007 SR file photo)

Question: Have you ever raised chickens? Was it a good experience or a bad one?