June 17, 2006
Backyard Chickens
Gardeners are such smart people! Did you know that more and more urban gardeners are raising chickens in their backyards, not as pets necessarily, but as garden helpers? No kidding. Many communities across the land allow city folk to keep a few chickens, and people are using them for insect control (they eat bugs and dig up worms) and to fertilize lawns and gardens. Take Seattle. You can have one bird for every 1000 square feet, which means three chickens on the typical 50X100 foot city lot. The worries about sanitation, avian flu and undesirable odors disappear when you have such a small number of fowl together. And guess what, you get eggs too!
I could write pages about all the fun things people are doing, but one of my favorites is the "chicken tractor," a bottomless pen that encloses and protects the chickens and can be moved from area to area so the chickens can do their work and leave their droppings behind–chicken manure, the easy way. We can do this, friends. There are whole websites devoted to this hobby like backyardchickens.com and thecitychicken.com (see links below). The City Chicken site has a gallery of chicken tractor photos. Handy gardeners can build their own hen houses and tractors.
I first read about this in the May/June issue of "Natural Home and Garden," unfortunately not on the web, which tells about the city of Diest in Flanders, Belgium, that gave three chickens each to 2,000 homeowners, not for eggs, not for manure, not for pets, but for...garbage collection! According to the article, chickens are omnivores and can consume something like nine pounds of garbage in a month, so Diest is trying chickens to solve the expensive problem of what to do with biodegradable trash. If they eat leftovers, that tells me that feeding them isn't going to cost any money.
Chickens can make really good pets if you pick the right variety and, no, you don't have to have a rooster, unless you and all your neighbors thrill to the sound of crowing at 4:30 am every day. To have fertile eggs you need the male, but hens lay unfertile eggs all by themselves. If you have small children, you could start by hatching some chicks in the kitchen, and they could have the fun of seeing them grow up. Then you'll have some to share as you spread the word about backyard chickens.
The City Chicken
Chicken Info
Chickens in Seattle
A Chicken Tractor