With war against feral chickens raging on in Bermuda, deliberately keeping them in your backyard almost seems like an act of treason.But if you like the sound of gentle clucking and the taste of free-range eggs, and have the time and patience, keeping chickens can be rewarding.Frances Eddy keeps two, and would like to see more people in Bermuda give it a go.Before the online comments start rolling in about feathery little demons who destroy crops, Ms Eddy’s chickens are Rhode Island reds. Hens of this breed can be quite gentle, although the roosters are known to be aggressive. They don’t fly much and wouldn’t last more than a minute in the wild. The feral chickens in Bermuda are bantams, an aggressive breed that can fly and is thought to be genetically more wild than domestic.Ms Eddy isn’t sentimental about animals.“I used to have about 75 chickens when I lived on a farm in British Columbia, Canada,” she said. “About 50 of them were for meat and 25 for eggs.”She never named any of that flock, so when she got two chickens from a Bermuda neighbour in 2010, she gave considerable thought about what to do. –She finally decided to call them Coralita and Octavia — grand names for two creatures whose prime business is basically making breakfast.They each lay about two eggs a day.“I was feeling uncomfortable about eating store-bought eggs,” she said. “I had a concern about how chickens were being kept by large poultry farms. I wanted to be assured that the eggs I was eating were healthy. I was also really turned off by what the yolks looked like in store-bought eggs. I think they taste better when they are free-range. It is not that I am into eating a lot of eggs; I get more than I need, so I actually sell them once in a while.”One of the secrets to a tasty egg was the greens the chickens ate, she said. They love oxalis, also known as sour sorrel, and identified by a little purple flower and thistle.“My grandmother used to raise chickens in Bermuda when I was a child,” she said. “It is that experience that I use now. When I was a child one of our chores was to pick greens for the chickens. To me taking care of them is common sense.”The result is an egg with a thick solid yolk that is a deep orange; so different from the runny, yellow yolks many of us are accustomed to getting from the store.“I definitely think they taste better,” she said.Ms Eddy thought about getting chickens for a long time, but always stumbled over the idea of the chicken coop.“Years ago you wouldn’t buy a chicken coop,” she said. “That would be a crazy idea. You would go and build it. People knew how to do things then.”Today, a coop in Bermuda can cost up to $300 and she wasn’t sure if she could make the money back by selling the eggs. She found a plan for building a chicken tractor (a movable chicken coop with wheels), but didn’t have the confidence to create it herself. In the meantime a neighbour gave her an old rabbit hutch with a run. She and her son revamped it so that it opened from the top on a hinge. This made it easier to clean out the roost and collect the eggs.“They make a different sound when they lay an egg,” said Ms Eddy. “I think they are just saying, ‘hey, look at what I did’.”Thinking that other people might also want to raise chickens, but be put off by the cost of a coop, she gave her chicken tractor plans to a group of carpentry students at Berkeley Institute. They are now in the process of constructing one. The plan is to possibly show the coop at the Annual Agricultural Exhibition, and then sell it.“The students can either use the money to buy materials to build another coop or to build something else,” she said. “I went to the school and talked to the students about it. I told them about the global situation and how in the future we may not have cheap oil and may need to be more self-sufficient. The other thing is that the food right now is becoming expensive for people, and not great quality.”The students responded with genuine enthusiasm and wanted to know if they could personalise the coop by painting their own designs on it.“I said, ‘Sure, why not,’” she said.Ms Eddy is on the Board of Agriculture, and doesn’t have a lot of sympathy with people who complain about the Government’s current feral chicken extermination plan.“I think we let the feral chicken situation go for too long,” she said. “A long time ago people could have been trapping them and raising chickens, but it has gotten to the point where they have to be dealt with, and dealt with effectively.”She said the feral bantams have been destroying farmers’ crops for years by either digging up the seeds after planting or eating the crop sprouts.“Farmers can find this very discouraging,” she said. “As far as I know, they are not poisoning the chickens. They are giving them a narcotic that makes the chickens sleepy. It just puts them to sleep long enough for someone to catch them. They put them down after that. How they do it you would have to ask the Government.“People always wait until things get to a crisis level and then start complaining if you start doing things. People are more passionate about domestic animals, but not realistic.”If you want to discuss chickens or chicken-raising she recommends the Facebook page Permaculture Bermuda.