country to the city and a touch of the past to our busy, modern lives. Slow down. Watch your chickens scratching in the dirt, loping after bugs, being chickens. Kick back and dream of less hectic times.
2.The eggs! The yummy, fresh-from-the-hen eggs, with yolks so rich that your mouth will water. Eggs to bake with. Eggs to share with friends. And you don’t need a huge flock to supply them. Three or four young hens keep the average family supplied with tasty cackleberries, often with some to spare. And there’s a bonus: research indicates that chickens allowed to roam freely and nosh on grass and bugs lay eggs that are higher in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E. They’re lower in cholesterol than commercial eggs, too.
3.What to do with the leftover salad or last night’s broccoli with cheese? It’s bonus feed for the chickens, of course! Chickens safely and happily devour almost anything except large portions of meat or fat; raw potatoes, potato peelings, and potato vines; tomato vines; avocados, guacamole, or avocado skins and pits; tobacco (pick up those cigarette butts); and spoiled or excessively salty or sugary foods, especially chocolate. Avoid onions and garlic, as their lingering flavor taints those yummy eggs, and citrus or citrus peels tend to lower egg production.
4.Chicken manure in your yard and garden? Oh, yes! Chicken droppings are high in nitrogen and make excellent natural fertilizer. Your gardener friends and neighbors will stand in line for your chicken-coop cleanings, and if you let your hens wander around the backyard for a few hours a day, they will help green your lawn.
5.Chickens rid your yard of bugs. Cockroaches, aphids—they’re fair game to hungry chickens, and as the hens scratch around, seeking tasty bugs, they automatically aerate your soil. Chickens also eat grass and weeds, which can cut down on their feed bills. If you build a chicken tractor for your urban hens, you can put them to work anywhere in your yard.
6.By keeping your hens, you’re saving lives. If you aren’t familiar with the conditions under which factory-farmed hens are kept, research the subject. By keeping your own infinitely healthier and happier layers, you’re reducing the demand for store-bought eggs. Less demand means fewer cruelly imprisoned commercial hens. Simple.
7.And, finally, chickens are funny, low-maintenance pets. They’re surprisingly intelligent and have quirky, endearing personalities. Tame chickens like to be picked up and cuddled. What’s not to like about urban chickens?
| ADVICE FROM THE FARM The Chicken Carry When you go someplace to buy full-grown chickens, go prepared! Unless they’ve been hand-tamed, they won’t sit quietly in your lap on the way home. Airline-style plastic dog crates make good chicken limousines. Another option is a sturdy, lidded cardboard box punched with holes. If you do put a chicken in your lap, bring a towel to cover it, and wear long sleeves because scared chickens scratch. Another thing beginners may not know: don’t carry chickens by their legs! It can hurt them, it’s undignified, and it scares them silly. You should carry a chicken close to your body with your right arm hugging his body against yours. Then, your right hand can hold his feet while your left hand can support his chest. —Marci Roberts |
First Things First: Check Those Statutes
Before you scope out a place for your coop and before you pick out hens, you must carefully—and I mean carefully—investigate your municipality’s laws and regulations regarding chicken keeping. Just because your neighbors down the block have hens doesn’t mean that you can have them, too. Perhaps they are illegally keeping chickens or have applied for a personal zoning variance. The lay of their property might allow compliance to setback regulations that yours doesn’t.
Many cities publish municipal statutes online. If yours doesn’t, take a trip to city hall and ask to be directed to the office that oversees municipal laws. Request a printed copy of the appropriate statutes and then take them home and go over them with a fine-tooth comb. While most towns and cities do allow chicken keeping within city limits, a long list of stipulations may apply. You will be limited in the number of hens you can keep (roosters are nearly always verboten) and where and how you can keep them.
Consider some of the statutes in Duluth, Minnesota, where urban chicken keeping was legalized in 2008.
•A license is mandatory and costs $10 per year. Persons convicted of cruelty to animals in Minnesota or in any other state may not obtain a license. A representative of the animal-control authority in Duluth must inspect chicken facilities prior to licensing. If the chickens become a nuisance, as evidenced by three violations of Duluth City Code within twelve consecutive months, the license will then be revoked.
•Chickens may be kept only at single-family dwellings as defined by Duluth City Code. No person may keep chickens within the single-family dwelling.
•The maximum number of chickens allowed is five hens. The keeping of roosters is forbidden.
•Chickens must be provided a secure, fully enclosed, well-ventilated, windproof structure in compliance with current zoning and building codes, allowing 1 square foot of window to 15 square feet of floor space. It must have a heat source to maintain adequate indoor temperatures during extreme cold weather. The floor area or combination of floor area and fenced yard for keeping chickens shall be not less than 10 square feet of space per chicken.
•Fences around yard enclosures must be constructed with mesh-type material and provide overhead netting to keep chickens inside and predators out.
•Chickens must be kept in their roofed structure or attached fenced yard at all times.
•No chicken structure or fenced-yard enclosure shall be located closer than 25 feet to any residential dwelling on adjacent lots.
•All droppings must be collected on a daily basis and placed in a fireproof covered container until applied as fertilizer, composted, or transported off the premises.
•No person shall slaughter chickens within the city of Duluth.
These are examples of typical statutes. Many cities allow renters and dwellers in two-family housing units to keep chickens but require them to first obtain permission from their landlords and neighbors. Some allow free-ranging chickens. Some municipalities, such as Duluth, do not allow the keeping of house chickens.
Once you have a copy of your city’s chicken laws, keep it handy in case a neighbor complains. Go to great pains, however, to keep your neighbors mollified.
Choosing a Breed
Nervous, squawky chickens that fly are not good prospects for city living. Don’t overlook bantams. Bantams take up much less space than full-size chickens. As with full-size birds, some breeds are more suited to become urban layers than others. I suggest bantam Cochins, sometimes also called Pekins, like my birds Dumuzi and Marge. Cochins are gentle, quiet, attractive chickens, and they aren’t prone to flying. Bantam Cochins generate less manure (and thus less odor) than full-size breeds, and their small, light brown eggs are so tasty.
If you plan to raise your birds from chicks, you must buy sexed chicks, not straight-run packages, to get all pullets. Even then, there’s a certain amount of error in sexing day-old chicks. If you get a cockerel in your box of pullets, what will you do? A very workable solution, if you want good layers but don’t have your heart set on the standard breeds, is to buy hybrid sex-link chicks. Newly hatched sex-link pullets and cockerels are colored differently, so you can tell them apart. You’ll know the sure the sexes of your chicks, and sex-links are very good hens.
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Sex-Links as City (and Country) Chickens
There are two basic types of hybrid sex-link chickens, red and black,
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