--- title: Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap | TIME description: Whether they want fresh meat and eggs or just want a low-maintenance pet, fowl fanciers flock together at chicken swaps across America canonical: https://time.com/video/F27dgURG/ og:title: Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap og:description: Whether they want fresh meat and eggs or just want a low-maintenance pet, fowl fanciers flock together at chicken swaps across America og:url: https://time.com/video/F27dgURG/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/F27dgURG/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap twitter:description: Whether they want fresh meat and eggs or just want a low-maintenance pet, fowl fanciers flock together at chicken swaps across America twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/F27dgURG/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap [Watch (HLS stream): Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/F27dgURG.m3u8) (2:54)  _Published 2010-07-05. Whether they want fresh meat and eggs or just want a low-maintenance pet, fowl fanciers flock together at chicken swaps across America_ --- Jul 27, 2023 2:22 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Bird Flu Was Found in Chickens at the Largest U.S. Egg Producer](/video/PbLybli2/) ### Bird Flu Was Found in Chickens at the Largest U.S. Egg Producer [Watch: Hagel on Bergdahl Swap](/video/nr21G8Br/) ### Watch: Hagel on Bergdahl Swap [Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made](/video/SaofBvUJ/) ### Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made --- ## Transcript >> One pinch put in the dryer and one- half. >> People think, " Oh, you're gonna have chickens. That's gonna be a disaster ." But it-- you know, usually it's quite the opposite. >> Yeah. >> Steph and Jason Oplinger are host of this year's Northeast Regional Chickenstock in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania-- >> Oh, yes. >> where people come to trade eggs and buy chicks. >> And they do an egg farm. Usually after they lay an egg they'll [ unk ] >> Fresh eggs, you know right out of the coop in the morning are the best thing you could ever eat. >> Is that a gorgeous chicken or what? Look at that hair. >> And I came with my friend, Gretchen, and her 3- horse trailer which was loaded to the ground with ducks and geese and chickens, baby chicks and boxes [ unk ] the chicks [ unk ]. And lots of crates. >> Keeping backyard chickens is a part of a flourishing movement towards sustainability and eating local, all- natural food. >> Hey, so silver laced is what you're looking? >> If you have any [ unk ] >> Basically, backyard chicken farming is just anybody that wants to do a little bit extra to try to take away from the carbon footprint out there. >> From here, though, I started thinking about getting chickens. Friends of ours have chickens. I always wanted to have fresh eggs, organic, free- ranged. And you never know in the grocery store what you're gonnna get. >> The lure of fresh eggs gets most people interested in the hobby, but pretty soon they find the broods make affectionate pets, too. >> Nice [ unk ] >> They're adorable. What are they? -[ unk ] >> Are they [ unk ]? >> Yeah. >> And I decided that I wanted to raise a house chicken. We can paper- train them, and she'll be bonded to me, and she'll be a lap chicken. Everybody doesn't understand the chicken thing. Even an animal lover doesn't necessarily understand the attachment to chicken. I have other animals and they all have their own personalities and their own attraction. So, this is a little different. But I see my daughter's chicken was so attached to her. So I figure if you really work at it, you can get a really great pet. >> Backyardchickens. com, a sort of Facebook for chicken owners, has seen its membership grow from 50 members in 2007 to more than 61, 000 today. >> They had a chicken stock in Redding, PA which is not too far from here. Actually, we-- they only had about 15 people. And we thought that's kind of what this was gonna be. So it's turned in to about 350 people. >> Meanwhile, due to popular demand, the Oplingers are already planning next year's Chicken Stock. >> I would say it's kind of like a disease. It just-- you get like a couple of chickens and then after a while you got a couple more, and there are so many kinds of chickens you want like more and more and more and more and more and after a while you have too many. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap","description":"Whether they want fresh meat and eggs or just want a low-maintenance pet, fowl fanciers flock together at chicken swaps across America","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/F27dgURG/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2010-07-05T21:09:37.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/F27dgURG.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/F27dgURG/","duration":"PT2M54S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/F27dgURG/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```