Urban Chickens Network blog

Backyard Bunnies are NOT the Next Urban Chickens

2010-03-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

An article appeared over on the GOOD blog this week proclaiming backyard bunnies to be the next urban chickens, and it seems this proclamation has some resonance amongst the sustainability crowd, as it was tweeted and retweeted quite a bit over the last few days.

Let me set this straight. Backyard Bunnies are NOT the next Urban Chickens for one simple reason: you don't kill your chicken at harvest time.

Urban chickens will provide a regular supply of protein-packed eggs for at least three years (sometimes much longer) and there's no blood on your hands. Raising chickens means entering a nurturing relationship with an animal that rewards you sustainably and over time.

Bunnies, on the other hand, only give up their protein once: and that's after the slaughter. And I'm not so sure mainstream America are ready to have a bunch of slaughter operations going on in the suburbs. (Heck, they're having a hard enough time with the chicken poop).

Sure, there are many reasons why rabbits are, indeed a good source of meat, as the GOOD article details, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

If you want to know how difficult it is to kill a bunny, I recommend reading Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter as she goes into great detail what it's like to move from raising fowl for eggs to fowl for slaughter to bunnies for meat.

Of course, many of you may already be thinking about raising your chooks for eggs and meat and so the whole slaughter bit doesn't really bother you. I, on the other hand, see urban chickens as bug- and weed-eating sources of chicken manure and eggs. The thought of raising chickens for meat is beyond me, and I prefer to stay one step removed from that process for a good while now.

What about you? Are you keeping your chickens for eggs or for meat or for both? How did you come to that decision?

Photo credit: Justin and Elise on Flickr

Reason # 372 to keep urban chickens: they make us self-sufficient

2010-02-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

This week has been a great example of why I love writing this blog. Readers know the other day I posted about how efficient chickens are as composters in our backyards.

In response to that post, I got a delightful comment from Pat Foreman going deeper into the issue of chickens and sustainability and how, by raising urban chickens, we're actually doing quite a bit to help sustain this big green planet of ours.

It turns out Pat has written a book based on another book written over 50 years ago, The Have-More Plan: A Little Land – A Lot of Living which inspired millions of people, recovering from World War II, to be more self-sufficient. (NOTE: I haven't read the book yet, but it's on order)

Pat and I exchanged a couple messages and she agreed I could re-post her comment here so we could all benefit. Here it is:

City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Supplies was written in the same spirt as Robinson’s “The Have-More” Plan from over a half-century ago. The City Chicks book has the ambitious intent of exploring three subjects.

1. Enhancing Backyard Agriculture. Urban gardening and farm-yards are on the verge of a giant leap forward, ushering in a new — and necessary — era of local and home food production. People have a right to grow their own food and chickens have valuable skill-sets that can be employed in food production systems. Some of these “skill-sets” include producers of manure for fertilizer and compost, along with being mobile herbiciders and pesticiderers. And of course, they also provide eggs and meat. City Chicks shows how you can have a good meal of eggs and garden goods that only travel the short distance from your backyard.

2. Diverting Food and Yard “Waste” Out of Landfills. Chickens can help convert biomass “wastes” into organic assets such as fertilizer, compost, garden soil and eggs. This can save BIG TIME tax payer dollars from being spent solid waste management streams.

3. Decrease Oil Consumption and Lower Carbon Footprints. Commercial food systems cannot work without oil. Over 17% of America’s oil is used in agricultural production and, about 25% of this oil is used for fertilizer. The total energy input of food production, processing, packaging, transporting and storing is greater than the calories consumed. It is estimated that every person in this country requires about one gallon of oil per day just to bring food to the table. How sustainable is that? Chickens can help America kick the oil habit by decreasing the amount of oil products used in feeding ourselves ... and, at the same time, keep landfills from filling up with methane-producing organic matter.

City Chicks ushers in a new paradigm of how to use chickens in a variety of roles that help decrease carbon footprints, save tax payer dollars and support local food supply production. And all this is done in a way that is biologically sustainable, economically equitable, and serves us, our communities, our Earth and the future generations of all beings.

How do you become a Chicken Have-More Club member? You already are! Anyone who is participating in the local foods movements, who believes they have a right to produce their own food, and/or who is interested in conservation ways to help restore and preserve our environment is automatically a club member.

So Pat's comment, coupled with my attending a delightful workshop on raising urban chickens led by Alexis Keofoed of Soul Food Farm and hosted at 18 Reasons in San Francisco has made this a wonderful week for the Urban Chickens Network.

Here's hoping you have a wonderful weekend with your chooks if you've got them, or with your planning and prepping if you don't.

And as Pat likes to say, "may the flock be with you!"

Flock Observations with Chicken as Muse

2010-02-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

It's time to share yet another beautiful essay crafted from spending time with a flock of chickens.

This particular essay, Pecking order, was written by Peter Lennox and appears on the Times Higher Education site.

I can't possibly do justice to Lennox's words, so I'll merely quote a paragraph that really speaks to me (I got my degree in Linguistics from UC San Diego, so all things word-y appeal to yours truly):

Watching chickens is a very old human pastime, and the forerunner of psychology, sociology and management theory. Sometimes understanding yourself can be made easier by projection on to others. Watching chickens helps us understand human motivations and interactions, which is doubtless why so many words and phrases in common parlance are redolent of the hen yard: "pecking order", "cockiness", "ruffling somebody's feathers", "taking somebody under your wing", "fussing like a mother hen", "strutting", a "bantamweight fighter", "clipping someone's wings", "beady eyes", "chicks", "to crow", "to flock", "get in a flap", "coming home to roost", "don't count your chickens before they're hatched", "nest eggs" and "preening".

In the essay, Lennox makes great observations about chickens' environmental preferences and territoriality, their personality traits and behaviour and their inquisitiveness, teaching and learning.

If you have (or had) your own flock, you'll find yourself nodding your head in agreement with many of Lennox's observations.

If you've yet to experience a flock of your own, you'll see why we urban chicken farmers so love our hens.

So, grab yourself a cup of tea or glass of wine (depending what time it is and how early you crack open your bottle) and enjoy the Pecking order essay. Then come back and share with us your favorite bits and how your own flock is similar or different.

urban chickens are excellent composters

2010-02-22T17:08:00.000-08:00

Putting it bluntly: urban gardeners are silly for not also having urban chickens.

It turns out nitrogen-rich chicken poop isn't the only way that urban chickens rock the compost pile.

According to an (otherwise mediocre) article in the Columbia Missorian:

A study found that a hen can consume about 7 pounds of food scraps a month, or about 84 pounds a year.

"If a city had 2,000 households with three hens or more each, that translates to 252 tons of biomass that's diverted from landfills," [Andy "the Chicken Whisperer"] Schneider said. "They are really good compost-ers."

I'm surprised more cities and towns aren't taking this into consideration when debating whether to legalize urban chickens.

Think of the cost-savings in reduced traffic to and from (and within) the local landfill if more folks had their own backyard egg-producing, insect-eating, weed-eating scrap composters!

I know our girls loved grapes and blueberries and lightly wilted greens as treats. What have you been surprised to find your urban chickens will eat?

Photo credit: Watt Dabney on Flickr

Do urban chickens attract urban rats?

2010-02-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

Ewww, what's up with all these @#$! rats?

The sudden arrival of rodents in the neighborhood is an issue no one particularly likes. And when they do arrive (or simply come out of hiding), folks are quick to try and find someone or something to blame.

Enter urban chickens to take the blame.

I fear some urban chicken proponents might be too quick to state that urban chickens are NOT the reason rats show up in a neighborhood.

Let's look at the rat facts as related by Judy Haley in her ChronicleHerald.ca article, "Urban chickens bring urban rats":

rats flock to food sources;
they remain close to the food source and breed;
rats are attracted to bird seed and chicken feed;
if rats were already present, they multiply once a new food source is introduced; and
areas of clutter also provide nesting spots for rats.

I won't argue with any of the above facts (I had a pet rat in college and can see each of these as true). Moreover, I can see where irresponsible storage of food or upkeep of one's yard could contribute to many of the attractions for rats.

However, to link the appearance of urban rats solely on the keeping of chickens in an urban setting seems to be using a bit too broad a brush to paint the blame. There are many food sources, not the least of which is improper keeping of trash in between pickups, leaving kibble in a bowl for "outdoor cats" or yard-kept dogs, seeds and pellets in a bird feeder, etc.

Responsible urban chicken farmers know to keep a clean coop, to only put as much feed as necessary out for the chooks while storing the rest in an air- and water-tight container, and disposing of any coop clutter (poop, nesting material, etc) quickly and thoroughly.

So, yes, the opportunity is there for irresponsible urban chicken keeping to attract rats, but common sense (which unfortunately seems in short supply in some places) should help keep rats from becoming a problem.

Have you noticed rats around your hen house? How have you taken care of the problem?

UPDATE (2/22): Following a discussion on rats on a listserv, I found this great resource from UC IPM on how to "manage" rats: Rat Management Guidelines.

Photo Credit: Matthieu A. on Flickr

Urban Chickens help teach children about food

2010-02-14T07:02:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of Jamie Oliver, naked chef and -- more recently -- food activist.

Just a year after I became an urban chicken farmer, I started seeing Oliver's work in England on behalf of chicken welfare. He's been credited with convincing some of the larger grocers in the UK to stop purchasing battery hens -- those chickens raised in horrid cramped conditions for the 39 days it takes to get from chick to plucked carcass in the local meat section.

Now, Oliver is setting his sights on the obesity epidemic caused by the crap food the majority of us eat day in and day out. I'm thrilled to see he received a TED prize this past week. You can watch the video here: Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food. It's about 21 minutes long, but it's worth every moment.

There's a jaw-dropping section at about the 11:00 mark (captured above) where Oliver is in a classroom with kids, holding up vegetables and quizzing the kids what they are. They can't identify them. They simply don't know what fresh vegetables look like. It's insane.

One of the things I love about raising urban chickens is that it teaches kids, in such a remarkably visceral way, where their food comes from.

Yummy eggs come from happy chickens. And happy chickens are loved and cared for daily. And that's why they, the kids, should be taking good care of their chickens. It just makes perfect sense to them when they see it. I'd dare say it'd make perfect sense to anyone when they see it.

Which is why we need to find more ways to get people to know where their food comes from.

Go, watch the video now. As a Valentine's day gift to the ones you love, watch it and learn and then do something to help teach kids about food.

May you be flooded in eggs this year.

Urban Chickens Strengthen a Community (video)

2010-02-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

(note: updated the embedded video to point to vimeo version on 3/3/10)

Lisa Schneider's created a nice mini-documentary showing just what happens to her El Cerrito neighborhood with the introduction of backyard chickens.

Are we bowling alone? Think again! Schneider shows how the act of owning urban chickens helps weave connections within and across a neighborhood. She shows that they're not just one person's chickens, they're the community's chickens.

Chickens Create Community on Elm Street from Linda Schneider on Vimeo.

In interview after interview you can see a social community has been created resulting in greater emotional and social support for everyone involved.

I found I could recognize many of the same reactions that Schneider's neighbors had mirrored those of my own neighbors. Have you seen the same thing happen when people discover you own urban chickens?

Georgia to Legalize Urban Chickens at State Level?

2010-02-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

If you've taken a look at the nascent Urban Chickens Network Legal Resource Center, you know that trying to keep track of the seemingly endless variations of ordinances regarding keeping chickens in the backyard is a difficult task, at best.

It seems every town and city has to have its own version of the law allowing urban chickens (if, indeed, they are allowed), and depending on just where you're geographically located, you may not enjoy the same chicken-owning rights as your next door neighbor.

Thanks to frequent reader Linda S, I've been alerted to an interesting approach being proposed in the state of Georgia. The Georgia General Assembly is considering a statewide law governing the growing of crops and keeping of small animals in HB 842 - Agriculture; preempt certain local ordinances; protect right to grow food crops; provisions.

The First Reader Summary says

A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Chapter 1 of Title 2 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to general provisions relative to agriculture, so as to preempt certain local ordinances relating to production of agricultural or farm products; to protect the right to grow food crops and raise small animals on private property so long as such crops and animals are used for human consumption by the occupants, gardeners, or raisers and their households and not for commercial purposes; to define a term; to provide for effect on certain private agreements and causes of action; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.

Now, whether or not the bill passes, I like this approach: deal with matters on a state level so that the constituents don't have to scratch their heads wondering whether something legal or illegal based on the whims of the local government.

It'd sure go a long way toward simplifying the process of knowing where your food comes from.

Does anyone know of another state that is considering (or has even passed) such a law?

Oh, and have you yet added your own town's urban chicken ordinance to the Urban Chickens Network Legal Resource Center? We're at 36 cities and growing!

Photo credit: atlexplorer on Flickr

Urban Chickens on the Martha Stewart Show? Be There!

2010-02-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

Got an email this morning from Anne who works in the audience department at the Martha Stewart Show in NYC. They're taping a show on urban farming in March 2010 and are looking for urban chicken farmers (among others) to be in the audience.

If you're interested in being there, you have to request tickets and help them understand why you should be in the audience. The details are in Anne's email:

If you or someone you know have recently turned your backyard space into a chicken coop or turkey pen, we have a special show that's just for you! We're filling our studio audience with individuals who raise livestock in urban environments as we celebrate the backyard farming movement. If you're interested in attending this show, please be sure to tell us about yourself and your backyard farm, as well as why you'd like to be part of this special audience. Please feel free to spread the word and request tickets as soon as you can if you're interested!

The link to request tickets is www.marthastewart.com/get-tickets; scroll down to ‘calling all urban farmers.'

I hope to see you there next month (if they approve my request to attend, that is... fingers crossed!)

benefits checklist for urban chickens

2010-02-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

It's one thing to own urban chickens and live day-to-day with the benefits of raising your own backyard hens. It's quite another to be able to clearly talk about these same benefits so others can understand just why you keep your chooks around.

Lucky for us, the fine folks running the Windsor Eats blog have shared a list of benefits that urban chickens bring to a community by way of documenting the efforts of Steve Green of Windsor Essex Community Supported Agriculture to legalize chickens in Windsor, Ontario (just across the bridge from Detroit, Michigan).

Some of the key benefits to our community:

Chickens can provide healthy, pesticide free eggs

Reduction of weekly food bills

Reduction of green house gases through reduction in food transport costs

Chickens consume kitchen waste, reducing municipal waste problems

Chickens produce great compost for the garden

Chickens are a great way to teach kids about food sources, hands-on

Chickens make great pets, for big kids and little kids alike

The path to global environmental sustainability begins with local initiatives and urban chickens are one of those initiatives

Chickens kept in back yards are generally living in much more humane conditions than their battery cage industrial chicken counterparts

This list is a great start... are there any others you'd add to the list?

Photo credit: Windsoreats.com

Fresh grass for urban chickens all year long

2010-01-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

Urban chickens love their greens, sometimes (often?) to the detriment of existing landscaping. Hens don't much care how much a plant costs you to replace, they just care if it's yummy or not.

Yes, there's been many an urban chicken farmer who, with best intentions, has moved their run on top of the grass for a day or so only to come back to find a patch of dirt under some rather content hens. So, how to provide your girls with greens, especially when it's still cold and snowy out still (in most of the country, at least)?

Mary D was kind enough to send me an email sharing her instructions for providing fresh greens to your urban hens.

I get unhulled seed, (whatever is available) at our local Co op, and rotate four trays of seed growing continuously. When I start seed, I lay it down thick on potting soil, cover with a piece of newspaper, keep the newspaper moist, and keep covered with a plastic wrap, until seed really gets sprouting.

I do all of this on a grow rack in our house throughout the winter and each day our hens get a 1/2 flat of fresh grass.

This is wheat berry growing in the above pictures, but I experiment with any grain I can find. They love it!

As soon as one tray is empty I start another. From seed to "chicken ready" is usually 7 days. 4-6 trays keep you in grasses for 8 hens.

Bonus: you can find all kinds of quantities of grass seed ready to be shipped from Amazon.

Thanks for the tip, Mary. I know you're making a lot of snow-bound urban chickens very happy!

What do you do to keep your urban chickens getting their greens during the long winter months?

UPDATE: Derek, from mypetchicken.com, chimes in with this little tip he got on growing grass in trays: "add a hardware cloth top to the trays (might have to make the trays out of wood) and let the grass grow through. This way the chickens can eat the grass, but not scratch up all the dirt and require reseeding the trays every time. You can cycle a couple of the trays so that they always have fresh grass"

Food Curated's Brooklyn Chicken Video

2010-01-24T14:13:00.000-08:00

Got a nice note from Liza de Guia about a video posted to Food Curated about Brooklyn's Backyard Chicken Keepers. The high quality video and the enthusiasm of Megan and Katrina (the owners) make the video worth the 3 minutes to see the whole thing.

Brooklyn's Backyard Chicken Keepers *food curated* from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

It's especially great that they got their four day-old chicks from MyPetChicken.com and you can see in the blog post update that Megan and Katrina got their very first eggs over the holidays (after the video had been shot). Reminds me of when my CBC Radio interview happened just prior to our first eggs and then the day after broadcast, the girls decided it was time.

Urban Chickens on the Rise? Follow the Money

2010-01-20T07:24:00.000-08:00

At last, there's some interesting economic data about urban chickens in an article by Brendan Murray over on BusinessWeek.com.

Brendan had interviewed me about urban chickens earlier this month, and when he asked how big the urban chickens movement is, I gave the answer I give all reporters: I'm not sure, but there's got to be sales data for feed and chicks and whatnot available to show this urban chicken movement is real.

And when his article about the fight to legalize urban chickens in Washington, DC, posted online, I was thrilled to see he'd actually done some investigating on the economics.

Two highlights:

Ideal Poultry Breeding Farms (Cameron, TX) says sales to customers who buy just a few chicks has grown from less than 2% of Ideal's sales a decade ago to almost 35% of sales last year. (They shipped 4.5 million chicks last year)
Land O'Lakes Purina Mills, while not disclosing the numbers, sees sales increasing of its 25- and 50-pound bags of feed for adult birds, and this year is marketing a 5-pound package of feed for baby chicks, tailor-made for us urban chicken farmers. If a company that size is getting into the market, you know the MBAs have crunched away the data and see significant money to be made.

I know our local Feed & Fuel has seen a dramatic rise in selling chicken feed (again, no numbers, just an anecdotal observation by the owner) over the last few years.

Anyone else out there have firm data showing the growth of the urban chicken market?

I have a hunch that our showing the economic benefits of allowing urban chickens might be another arrow in our quiver trying to get hens legal inside city limits.

Photo credit to zizzybaloobah on Flickr

Urban Chickens goes to Thailand

2010-01-17T03:53:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long lapse between posts, but I've been on a business trip to Thailand. You can bet I've been taking pictures of all the urban chickens I've seen here in this beautiful country (they definitely free range them here, unlike the States).

So, until the next post, please enjoy this lovely little rooster I caught outside a wat (temple) in Chiang Mai up in the northern part of Thailand.

2009 Urban Chickens Year in Review

2009-12-30T07:25:00.000-08:00

By most accounts, 2009 is the year urban chickens, the phenomenon, the trend, the craze, hit the mainstream.

During the first half of the year, news outlets across the country were reporting every other day on this "new craze" for keeping chickens in your backyard. Just on this blog, I've shared links to stories on ABC, NPR, CBC Radio, CBC Television, Marketplace, CNN and NBC's Today Show so we're not talking personal testimonies in small-town dailies here.

The year 2009 also saw the long-awaited release of the Mad City Chickens movie, followed by producers Tashai and Robert's cross-country screenings tour, lending more weight to local efforts to legalize chickens in back yards. If nothing else, Mad City Chickens galvanized the movement, providing a readily-accessible, highly educational and imminently entertaining re-introduction to why we keep chickens in our backyards (and why others should, too).

All the media exposure may have contributed to the shortage of chicks during the Spring, with people having to wait months to get their peepers. Large hatcheries took advantage of the seller's market and prices for immediate-delivery chicks rose accordingly. Feed and fuel stores that took six weeks to sell 800 chicks in years past sold out within ten days this year. (I expect a repeat in 2010, but my predictions post will appear here Friday). This demand could also explain why this year's most popular blog post was "where to buy baby chicks."

While national pres coverage piqued interest in keeping chickens, local frustrations flared with people trying to find out whether they could keep urban chickens and, if not, then trying to get chickens legalized within city limits. It seems the keeping of chickens is a strong indicator of a small city's evolution from rural to urban status, and in the surge 40-50 years ago to urbanize, many anti-chicken ordinances were put on the books.

Looking across the landscape, the urban chicken laws are inconsistent when they're on the books, and open to interpretation depending on with whom you speak at city hall when you call to inquire. To try and address the issue of where are chickens legal, I've recently launched the Urban Chickens Network Legal Resource Center, and you'll see more about that in early 2010.

2009 saw lots of success in getting chickens legalized across the country. The folks in Asheville, NC, did a masterful job of using social media to successfully pass a new ordinance allowing urban chickens. Among the places we saw celebrations happen: Huntington (NY), Gulfport (FL), Vancouver (BC), New Haven (CT), Longmont (CO) and Provo (UT).

The fight to legalize urban chickens remains an uphill battle in many places, but we're getting better at busting the myths about bad things in keeping chickens (too much poop, spreading bird flu, enforcement costs, hosting salmonella). And we're getting smarter at knowing how to change the laws.

And thanks to success stories like that in Fort Collins (CO), where they celebrated a year of legal urban chickens in 2009, we can see that many of the fears expressed by those seeking to keep the status quo are as unfounded and absurd as any rational person would believe on first hearing them.

It's been a wonderful year, all around. I'm amazed we had over 92,000 unique visitors come to read something here on the blog this year, and almost 2,500 people fanned our Urban Chickens Facebook page, to boot. I'm grateful for all those who left a comment, sent an email or shared a link. I find it tremendously rewarding you've chosen to give me your attention and I hope to earn the chance for more of it in 2010. I'm also grateful to our blog sponsor this past Spring, MyPetChicken.com for helping us afford some extra chicken scratch around the house.

A review of 2009 wouldn't be complete without noting events in our Redwood City backyard. We had a bittersweet year with our own urban chickens, Sophia and ZsuZsu. After years of companionship, egg production and entertainment, our lovely Sophia died suddenly in August. After much hand-wringing, research and outreach, we found a new flock in Los Altos for our remaining chicken, ZsuZsu, to join so as not to have her all alone in our now-empty coop.

So, we end 2009 "in-between chickens" with plans to get new birds early in 2010. I can't wait to share with you our experience of raising even more chickens in our backyard, and to help bring this experience to more and more backyards across the country (and Canada, too!).

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope 2010 is your best yet!

Animal Sanctuaries Need Your Help

2009-12-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

With so many people deciding to try their hand at raising urban chickens, it's inevitable that some aren't finding success and have to give up their chooks. Whether they find themselves with a rooster due to inaccurate sexing or simply didn't understand the responsibility of caring for an animal 24/7/365, someone ultimately has to take care of the birds.

While Craigslist and online chicken groups are good resources that conscientious urban chicken farmers use to try to find new homes, less savvy folks simply take their birds to the local animal shelter and drop them off, or worse, take the birds to the edge of town and let them loose.

Here's where animal sanctuaries step in to help. And what with the surge in popularity of urban chickens, the sanctuaries are busier than ever. So, while we're celebrating this season of giving, I hope you'll consider donating to your local animal sanctuary.

A few animal sanctuaries have formed a Coalition Concerned with Chicken Welfare and you can support them at their web sites (listed below). While I don't condone the Coalition's ham-fisted approach to chicken welfare by urging municipalities to outlaw urban chickens, these organizations provide a valuable service in providing chickens a refuge of last resort.

Animal Place (Northern California)
Chicken Run Rescue (Minneapolis/St Paul area)
Eastern Shore Sanctuary & Education Center (Vermont)
Farm Sanctuary (New York and California)
Sunnyskies Bird & Animal Sanctuary (New York)
United Poultry Concerns (Virginia)

Photo credit: LiminalMike on Flickr

Peeps, Clucks and Cackles: Translating the Urban Chicken

2009-12-16T11:41:00.000-08:00

Did you know that chickens start talking even before they are born?

Chicks start peeping about 24 hours before they're ready to hatch so as to tell its mother and siblings it's getting ready to break out of its shell. The mother hen listens for the peeps to understand how much longer she needs to stay sitting on the nest (since some of the chicks are stillborn inside their shells).

The web of communication gets even more sophisticated once the chicks follow their mother out to forage and explore with peeps and clucks serving as a call-and-response to keep track of the flock.

Later in a chicken's life, their vocabulary expands to include nesting calls, egg cackles and "here's food" songs among many other sounds from the coop.

To learn more about each of these sounds, Karen Davis published a wonderful guide to Chicken Talk. although it originally appeared in print in 1994, everything she's written is still true today. She does a great job helping us understand the noises chickens make whether they're in your backyard or down at the farm.

Coalition Sees Sky Falling Due to Urban Chickens

2009-12-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, a coalition of animal sanctuaries "Concerned with Chicken Welfare" sent out a press release calling for an end to the practice of keeping backyard chickens.

Their big beef? Too many roosters (which remain illegal in the majority of places where urban chickens are legal) are winding up at sanctuaries, overwhelming the resources of said sanctuaries.

I can't argue with their concern about the roosters, but I can, and will, argue about their proposal to remedy the situation by taking away the rights of anyone to keep chickens in their backyards. They seem think that if urban chickens are illegal, it will dry up the demand for chickens and solve the problem of abandoned roosters.

We've seen this movie before in America's so-called War on Drugs, haven't we? By making drugs illegal, the problem magically solved itself, right?

Wrong.

And the coalition's Position Statement on Backyard Poultry (beware: it downloads a PDF) reads like a well-meaning but ultimately feeble attempt at singling out urban backyard flocks as the cause of poultry raising ills. My scan of their list of concerns brings the following alternatives to mind:

If, as they say, there are no legal requirements dictating how breeding hens and roosters are kept, let's change the laws to require humane treatment (as is required of the egg-layers)
If, as they say, shipping day-old chicks is cruel, let's figure out a better way to get chickens from the breeders to the customers
If, as they say, sexing chicks is such a problem that "between 20-50% of purchased 'hens" are actually roosters," let's figure out how to sex chicks better
If, as they say, professional medical care for urban chickens is lacking, let's educate our veterinarians

And the coalition's list of problems continues trying to present problems as insurmountable, so-let's-ban-them-all.

While I'm in favor of the service these sanctuaries provide, I'm dumb-founded as to their backward thinking on how to solve the issue of unwanted roosters. Shame on them for their tactics.

It's a pity this is how they have to behave to get attention. I'll follow up later this week with more about the coalition and how you can support their efforts to provide sanctuary for unwanted birds despite their bungling the call to ban urban chickens.

Photo credit: hghwtr on Flickr

On the Barnyard Stigma of Urban Chickens

2009-12-13T10:37:00.000-08:00

Today's Sacramento Bee carries an article discussing efforts to legalize chickens within Sacramento city limits. It's yet another well-written story detailing the advantages of keeping backyard chickens (sustainability, locavorism, nutrition, etc) while touching on the downsides (none?) aside from dealing with ignorance regarding the hows and whys of keeping urban chickens.

The story lede caught my eye, though, as I feel it hits the main stumbling block to legalizing chickens dead-on (emphasis mine): "Sacramento leaders have spent a generation trying to shed the city's cow-town stigma. Now they are facing a movement that wants to turn the capital into chicken city." One simply can't underestimate people's desire to prove they're no longer farm folk, even in a city as big as Sacramento, the capital of California, with a population of over 437,000.

Chickens, for better or worse, still strongly represent the rural roots that many moved into the city to escape. In any story of the urban chicken movement, look at the opposition quotes of anyone over the age of 50 and you'll see them recounting the days when they used have to take care of (nasty, pesky, stinky) chickens on the farm and why the [expletive] would anyone want to do that to their backyard willingly?

More to the point, simply take a look at the municipal codes pertaining to urban chickens and more likely than not, chickens are lumped in with all other manner of barnyard creatures (goats, sheep, cows, horses, etc) who've been banned within city limits.

So, the quest to legalize urban chickens isn't just a logical one. If it were, there'd be no contest. When you compare the attributes of chickens and dogs, you have to wonder why the dirtier, smellier, messier, furry one is legal everywhere.

The challenge in legalizing chickens in your backyard is one of convincing city councils that different animals have different attributes and can't all be conveniently lumped into a single banned category. And mentally separating chickens from their barnyard brethren isn't an easy thing to do with anyone who's marking progress based on physical distance between city center and the nearest pile of manure.

But it can be done, and the list of places that are doing it keeps growing. Won't you add your own?

Photo credit Overdaforest on Flickr

More Urban Chickens on the Radio

2009-12-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late to publish this, but only recently have I been able to listen to the fascinating Think Out Loud show all about urban chickens over on Oregon Public Broadcasting. The show doesn't examine the "how" of keeping chickens in the city as much as the "why."

The show's guests include:

John Carr: Backyard chicken keeper and designer of The Garden Coop
Barbara Palermo: Animal health technician and founder of Chickens in the Yard
John Kilian: Dentist who spoke out against backyard chickens in Gresham
Ken Stine: Gresham planning commissioner

As you're listening to the show (I recommend downloading the mp3 instead of trying to listen from the web page, as the datastream drops often), take a look at the comments left on the show's web page. Once you get past the first comment re: El Caminos, there's a string of rather endearing stories about why people are keeping chickens in their own backyards.

Enjoy!

Conan endorses Extraordinary Chickens!

2009-12-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

If you watch the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, you know that Conan has proclaimed himself "The New Oprah" what with her deciding to quit and all next year.

And as The New Oprah, Conan's making recommendations on what Americans should buy, hoping to have the same rocket-to-the-top-of-the-charts effect that Oprah's book club has had all these years. His first recommendation, a DVD, got a 126% boost in interest the week after he pimped it (not bad).

His second product recommendation is the Extraordinary Chickens 2010 Wall Calendar and it's zoomed up the purchase charts, too.

Now, I know he's doing this to be funny (evidenced by the audience laughter), and I'm sure he's laughing with us, not at us, right? But damn, those are some good looking chooks (urban or not!)

I think I'm going to have to get me one for my wall.

Enjoy the clip of Conan announcing his recommendation below (you can walk away for 30 seconds so as to avoid the annoying commercial embedded up front):

urban chickens: controlling the feed of your food

2009-12-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

This little gem about how keeping your own urban chickens means truly knowing where your food comes from is just one of the great soundbites from the wonderful two-part video interview of the "Toronto Chicken Lady" posted by David Sheen over on the Green Apple Landscaping blog. The video interview is a followup to his earlier post on Backyard Chickens.

Since chickens are still illegal in the Toronto's residential neighbourhoods, the interview subject's identity is obscured, but that doesn't hinder her from sharing tons of urban chicken wisdom from the ins-and-outs of daily urban chicken keeping to all the benefits that come from keeping hens in your backyard.

If you're thinking about keeping chickens in your own backyard (or trying to convince your partner that it's a good idea, really!), you could do a lot worse than spending 15 minutes listening to the Toronto Chicken Lady talking about the benefits of raising your own hens.

I notice that she's got a partial list on her Toronto Chickens site of places where chickens are legal. It's no surprise that there are so many more places where they're legal in the USA than in Canada, but wow, you'd think our neighbors up north would be a bit more progressive on this front.

And you've heard it before, and I'll say it again: I've started to compile a list of the exact ordinances making chickens legal over on the Urban Chickens Network Legal Resource Center where visitors can easily see the technical language employed by cities to legalize chickens. If you live in a place where chickens are legal, please add your city's name to the list so we can capture the municipal code and flesh out the resource center. Thanks!

when urban chickens are technically legal but practically illegal

2009-11-30T17:07:00.000-08:00

What to do when your city passes a law to allow urban chickens but then writes it in such a way that it's impossible to conform to the restrictions set forth in the law?

Bryan sent me an email this weekend to explain that just such a law is on the books in Mobile, Alabama (pop 182,000).

The urban chicken ordinance says you can have up to 25 hens in Mobile (no roosters) but they must be kept at all times inside a chicken house/yard that is no closer than 200 feet to a neighbor's residence, and following exacting restrictions on the materials and size of the chicken yard.

But, as Bryan points out:

The first issue I have is with the 200 feet or more distance from other residence. This seems to be extreme. Many of the subdivision have 75 to 90 foot wide lots. Place a house in the middle of each and you soon realize that you can't meet the 200 foot requirement.

The second issue I have is (2) Walls, etc. four inch (poured!) concrete wall that extends 12" above and 18" below the surface of the ground. This again seems extreme.

I know many people that reside in the country and have happy chickens that live in a wood and wire chicken house that has a dirt floor.

This is where I need your help. Is there any model language by any recognized group? I am sure that our code is many, many years old.

I agree with Bryan's frustrations, and it seems rather, um, political to legalize something on the books that can't practically be done. I told Bryan I don't know of any model urban chicken ordinances out there, but it seems to me the simpler, the better.

Do you know of model language to use in writing a good urban chicken law? You can contact Bryan directly at bryan2373 [at] comcast [dot] net.

I've started to compile a list of the exact ordinances making chickens legal over on the Urban Chickens Network Legal Resource Center (shh, it's not yet launched, so you're the first to know!) where folks like Bryan can easily see the technical language employed by cities to legalize chickens. If you live in a place where chickens are legal, please add your city's name to the list so we can capture the municipal code and flesh out the resource center. Thanks!

Photo credit: bsdubois00 on Flickr

Find an urban chicken farmer near you!

2009-11-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

While sites like MyPetChicken and BackyardChickens are great resources for figuring out how chickens work in a general sense, there's nothing like having someone from your neighborhood to chat with about local sources of supplies, the effects of weather on the flock, and how to keep local predators at bay.

With urban chicken owners popping up all over the place, it's getting easier to find someone in your neighborhood who's got chickens in their backyard:

Search Yahoo! groups or Google Groups (each of these links drops you on the results for "chicken") to see who's already talking about chickens near you. Join the group and have the discussions emailed to you in a daily digest so you can scan the topics to see what interests you. Listen first, then jump in and ask or offer advice once you're comfortable.
Join a Meetup of fellow chicken enthusiasts. There are at least 835 urban chicken meetups happening across the country each month! The best thing about meetups: you get to mingle with fellow chicken owners face-to-face and swap tips and tales in real time. If there's no meetup already existing around you, you can sign up to be notified when one does get started (or start one yourself!)
Find the 4-H nearest you and ask about their poultry program. Do a google search on 4-H and your town name to get the contact coordinates for the local program. Unfortunately the National 4-H program is a complete mess when it comes to helping you find a local poultry program, so you're best off just using google to find what you need.

For those of us in the Bay Area, here's just a short list of sources for connecting with fellow urban chicken farmers:

Silicon Valley Chickens on Yahoo
San Mateo Chickens on Yahoo
Santa Cruz County Chickens on Yahoo
Alameda Backyard Chickens on Yahoo
East Bay Backyard Chickens on Google
Fairfax Chickens on Google
SF Pet Chicken Meetup
Santa Cruz Pet Chicken, Duck, Poultry Meetup

Know of others here in the Bay Area? let me know, and I'll be happy to add them to the list.

Got a list of local resources of your own? Please share it in the comments below!

Photo credit: Daniel Miller/My Standard Break from Life on Flickr

simply put: get your urban chickens now

2009-11-11T00:12:00.000-08:00

Caught this nice summary of why you'd want to raise your own chickens over on the FriendsEAT blog:

It’s a way to save money on grocery bills, it allows families to take control of their food supply by practicing “eating local,” it encourages sustainability and reduces the carbon footprint of industrial agriculture. Plus the eggs, which are an excellent source of protein, will be fresh, flavorful and plentiful, depending on how many hens are in your harem.

Lots more goodness in the rest of the post, but I haven't seen the "why urban chickens?" put so succinctly well before. What are you waiting for?

Photo credit: ztephen on Flickr