Cluckin’ About Urban Chickens
The urban chicken movement is growing as more and more folks try to move away from factory farmed food and towards self-sufficiency.
[Creative Commons photo by Linda N.]
Why Chickens?
Chickens are pretty low-maintenance. Once you have your coop set up, you just have to make sure they’re fed, watered, and get to run around outside. Most people who raise their own chickens do so for the eggs, not the meat. Instead of buying eggs from a factory farm or from hundreds of miles away, urban chicken owners benefit from a cheap, local, reliable source of protein. Chicken poop is also a great fertilizer for your garden!
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Back yard chickens become less like livestock and more like beloved pets. Some friends of mine have a few chickens in their yard. They showed me how to pick them up and were proud of the Omlet chicken coop that they’d gotten for their little ones.
Is That Even Legal?
Laws about keeping chickens vary between states and sometimes even between cities. The City Chicken has a great rundown of chicken laws in tons of cities. Some towns have incredibly specific laws, like in Minneapolis where a prospective chicken owner, “needs consent from 80 percent of neighbors within 100 feet of real estate.” Some places, like Portland, OR, just limit the number of chickens you can have. Here in Atlanta, chickens are allowed with no restrictions.
It’s a good idea to check on the laws about chickens in your town before investing in a set up. Once you’re sure it’s legal to keep them, a little research on things like the right breed and proper coop is probably in order. There are lots of great online resources for getting started, like Backyard Chickens and Urban Chickens.
I live in a rural area, but it was still a surprise to many we knew when we got chickens. We have 4 Americanas (or Americaunas, depending on whether you believe they’re actually a breed of their own!). I LOVE them. We’re currently getting 3-4 eggs a day, which is plenty for our family of 5. The eggs are beautiful, ranging in colors from light sage to an ocean-y blue to pink. My 3-year-old loves collecting the eggs, and they give us a real sense of where food comes from. Overall, I can rest assured that my little omnivorous birds are eating mostly organic feed (can’t tell you whether the bugs in our yard are truly “organic”!).
We can’t knock those who use their backyard birds for meat; it is a much more sustainable choice for eating meat. We’ll be doing the same once our girls stop laying. Though I love them, I do have to look at the big picture: if I choose to eat meat, I should also choose to harvest my own.
Couldn’t agree more that having chickens in your backyard is an easy way to get the best tasting eggs you could imagine.
Here in Redwood City, CA (Bay Area) we’ve had an Omlet coop and two Plymouth Rock hens for almost two years now. Our two chickens lay about a dozen eggs a week for us (combined). Bonus: they eat the bugs and weeds in our backyard that we’d otherwise have to tend to ourselves.
You can follow along our experience from idea to practice in having chickens in our backyard over on our blog at UrbanChickens.net.
and if you like your neighbors (and want them to like you), remember that roosters (who often are annoying with incessant crowing) are not necessary for eggs to eat
Thanks for the mention of my website, TheCityChicken.com! –Katy Skinner
Any time, Katy! Thanks for putting together such a great resource.
For anyone who is doing the backyard chicken thing, a really helpful group I found is the Organic Chickens Yahoo! Group. People there have varying degrees of knowledge and experience, so it’s a nice place to post any question.
For example: I’d never heard to give your chicken cayenne to get them to lay. My Americanas were easily 8 months old when I found this advice. I added some to their feed, and Viola! Next day, I had two eggs, and a network to share the excitement with.
It’s a good resource for anyone interested!
Chickens are a great idea for protein, but what about some aquaculture articles too! The most efficient way to get fresh greens, fertilizer and fish for dinner! Does it really work? How? Will it add variety to the diet? Are we onto something good here? Add in a solar charged battery car from China, some veggies from a compost fed,veggie plot,humanure cooking gas, and we have the “Shanty” way of life well defined - survival using American ingenuity regardless of the times we are having.