Raising Backyard Chickens Stacy Risenmay

Somehow or other, it is among the most tag of twenty-first century metropolitan hipness to keep a couple of birds out again. We're mostly discussing hens. Exact statistics are unavailable, but the trend is becoming popular enough for dozens of major cities to revise their dog ordinances, thereby beginning the legal floodgates for the introduction of urban pet animal agriculture, an undertaking that most American locations legislated out of lifetime (generally for health reasons) back in the nineteenth hundred years.This renaissance of foodie love for the uber-local egg has also inspired its share of outlandish rhetoric. Says the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin: "Chickens are really bringing us jointly as a community." Says my Austin neighbor and co-owner of Boggy Creek Farm, Carol-Ann Sayle: "Everyone should have their own henhouse in their own garden."It's doubtful that the incoming mayor of NEW YORK will trust either of the sentiments. But no subject. A large number of other urbanites nationwide--many of these so committed to keeping hens that they do so surreptitiously--are suddenly giving a major cluck about yard eggs.Lost in all the enthusiasm will be the drawbacks. Corresponding to Ian Elwood, of Pet Legal Defense Finance, "the alternatives backyard chicken farming seeks to create--food security, local foodsheds, healthful eating--are all better dished up by encouraging more plant established farming." His bottom line regarding metropolitan agriculture is simple: "Let's leave animals out of it."What follows are five explanations why, when it comes to hens, Elwood is onto something.1) Diminishing Creation. Hens start laying eggs after about five months. Creation, however, wanes at the age of two. Hens can live for well over ten years. Many backyard hen owners are as unwilling to keep a non-productive hen as they are to carefully turn her into rooster soup. The upshot is a sharp go up in abandoned birds. In 2001, according to the Associated Press, Minneapolis' Poultry Run Recovery fielded six cell phone calls from individuals seeking to find homes for forsaken chickens. By 2012, that number come to almost 500.2) Commercial Hatcheries. Raising hens in the backyard seems like an obviously humane alternative to factory farming. In some ways, it is. However, on this point, two strongly related facts is highly recommended. First, nearly all hens luckily enough to escape the factory's battery pack cage hail from the same professional hatcheries that supply stock farms with millions of wild birds. This commonality not only undermines any pretense of thinking that backyard birds issue the industrialized status quo, but it brings about another problem, namely the fact that the men chicks born in those commercial hatcheries were likely either tossed alive into a grinder or gassed. Guy parrots are worthless to a hatchery offering egg farms. Home hens might be glorified, but their adorable rooster brothers are cared for like trash.3) Predation. Yard hens are especially susceptible to predation. Try this experiment: when you learn a friend gets backyard hens, check in 8 weeks later and ask how things 're going. It’s likely that good that the answer will go something similar to, "great, but . . . ." Dogs, felines, snakes, coyotes, possum, hawks, raccoons, raccoons, raccoons. These predators are common and persistent and your poor hens, those people you attended to love as pets, cannot enjoy their natural defense mechanisms (such as finding a minimal tree limb hidden in thick foliage). They often times find themselves captured in a few Ritz-Carleton of any coop that ended up being less secure than advertised and, in their plush safe havens, are wiped out in a way that makes the slaughterhouse seem like a day spa by comparison. "What killed my birds?" It's an all too common question. And there are 23,900 answers on offer on Google.4) Roosters. There's in regards to a 5 percent chance that your hen will grow to be a rooster. There are a couple of known reasons for this mistake. For just one, the sex of a hen is hard to identify upon delivery, even for experts. Many roosters are inadvertently discovered as hens and sent to feed stores, where metropolitan farmer/hipsters flock to buy their stock. Less innocently, many male wild birds are tossed into shipping containers as a kind of packing material, deployed to prevent the hens from banging in to the side of the crate and having their retail value lowered. In any case, urban ordinances that do allow hens are markedly less accepting of roosters, who are generally considered chicken non-grata in urban settings.5) Cost. First-time backyard hen owners are enchanted by the idea of free eggs. Avoid being fooled. Build the coop, choose the supply, pay the veterinary, count the time spent maintaining the coop and administering care, make up the neighbor's youngster for nourishing the hens when you attend the Hamptons for the weekend, and then pick up a calculator. The results? As one yard farmer from Merced, California informed an online poultry community: "Don't inform my wife, but I think my eggs are priced at about $40 twelve."