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Coming Soon to a Neighborhood to You
The most interesting do-it-yourself-trend in recent years may be that of keeping
chickens as pets—not in an agricultural or rural setting, but rather in a typical suburban
neighborhood, in the backyard. It’s not as hard as you may think, and start-up costs are
surprisingly low.
The first thing you need to become a suburban chicken farmer is a coop, a solid
enclosed structure where the hens can sleep safely away from predators, and where
they can lay their eggs during daytime hours. A simple chicken coop can be made
cheaply using cast-off plywood or old wooden pallets, for which there are an abundance
of free blueprints available online.
The next challenge is finding a feed store—where most of the supplies you’ll need can
be found. Feed stores generally offer a cheap bedding material such as pine shavings
as well as prepared food to supplement the plants and bugs that chickens can find in a
reasonably healthy backyard. Then there are the chickens themselves, which range in
price from a couple bucks for a chick to ten or fifteen dollars for a mature, feathered-out
bird. (Most seasoned backyard farmers recommend starting with mature hens.) Of
course, it you want to raise your hens from chicks, you’ll need a warming light as well as
some other equipment.
Chickens are surprisingly entertaining family pets. They’re friendly and amusing to
watch, and not especially noisy unless you have a rooster, which aren’t usually allowed
in urban or suburban zoned areas. Unless you live in a really cold climate, your
chickens will thrive outdoors even during the winter, and there are breeds that are
particularly cold hardy. Some hens will complain loudly when the temperatures dip near
freezing for the first time. If you started putting them in their coop at sunset, though,
they’ll weather the winter just fine.
When spring arrives, you will be the happy recipient of a daily bounty of eggs. But there
are many more advantages to backyard chicken farming. Chickens can be a real asset
to an organic vegetable garden—both because they eat bugs and because they provide
free fertilizer. They’re also willing consumers of food that’s just past its prime, like
apples that are shriveled and mealy, bread kept in the pantry past its freshness date, or
berries that are just a little too ripe.
Finally, urban chicken farming can do a great deal to bring neighbors together. Sharing
information about coops, chicken varieties, and tips for raising a happy and healthy flock
can help you build a supportive network of like-minded friends in your community. Even
if you don’t have neighbors with coops of their own, they’re likely to appreciate an
occasional gift of what your hens produce, especially since some breeds are known for
laying eggs in soft shades of blue and green.
In the last paragraph, what mistake in reasoning does the author make when she includes the claim that chicken farming "can do a great deal to bring neighbors together"? Is that claim supported by the rest of the article?
