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When Timothy Masters got his first chickens a decade ago, it was easy. He lives “way out in the country” in Pennsylvania, away from urban regulations about keeping chickens in backyards. He built a chicken coop and got three hens to provide eggs for him and his wife. “It was the perfect number for us,” he says.

That’s when the catalogs began to arrive.

“I started getting these chicken catalogs, and they’d show these photos of glorious chickens in every size and color,” Masters says. He wished he could have one of each. It wasn’t long before his reasonable flock of three had ballooned to 23, not an uncommon phenomenon among chicken keepers.

Historically, most people who owned hens did so for the purpose of selling eggs. Today, many backyard chicken keepers are thinking less about the business of raising chickens or the cost of feed and a coop. For these owners, the birds become part pet and part collection — you just have to have them all — which comes with predictable consequences: “We were just overwhelmed with eggs,” Masters says.

Too Many Eggs For One Basket! Backyard Chicken Farmers Scramble To Give Them Away

Photo: Maarigard/Dorling Kindersley Collection/Getty Images