backyard chickens
Somehow or other, it is among the most make of twenty-first century metropolitan hipness to keep a couple of birds out back again. We're mostly talking hens. Exact statistics are unavailable, but the trend is becoming popular enough for a large number of major metropolitan areas to revise their animal ordinances, thereby opening the legal floodgates for the introduction of urban pet agriculture, an endeavor that a lot of American towns legislated out of lifestyle (mostly for health reasons) back the nineteenth hundred years.This renaissance of foodie devotion for the uber-local egg has also inspired its show of outlandish rhetoric. Says the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin: "Chickens are really bringing us collectively as a community." Says my Austin neighbor and co-owner of Boggy Creek Farm, Carol-Ann Sayle: "Everyone must have their own henhouse in their own yard."It's doubtful that the inbound mayor of New York City will trust either of these sentiments. But no matter. A large number of other urbanites nationwide--many of them so committed to keeping chickens that they are doing so surreptitiously--are all of the sudden giving a significant cluck about yard eggs.Lost in all the enthusiasm will be the drawbacks. Corresponding to Ian Elwood, of Creature Legal Defense Fund, "the alternatives backyard chicken farming seeks to create--food security, local foodsheds, healthy eating--are all better served by stimulating more plant structured farming." His bottom line regarding metropolitan agriculture is easy: "Let's leave animals from it."What follows are five reasons why, as it pertains to chickens, Elwood is onto something.1) Diminishing Creation. Hens start laying eggs after about five a few months. Production, however, wanes at the age of two. Hens can live for more than ten years. Many backyard hen owners are as unwilling to keep a non-productive hen because they are to carefully turn her into chicken breast soup. The upshot has been a sharp surge in abandoned parrots. In 2001, according to the Associated Press, Minneapolis' Fowl Run Save fielded six telephone calls from individuals seeking to find homes for forsaken chickens. By 2012, that amount reached almost 500.2) Commercial Hatcheries. Bringing up hens in the backyard seems as an obviously humane option to factory farming. In some ways, it is. However, on this point, two directly related facts should be considered. First, nearly all hens fortunate enough to flee the factory's battery cage hail from the same professional hatcheries that supply manufacturer farms with millions of parrots. This commonality not only undermines any pretense of convinced that backyard birds issue the industrialized status quo, but it contributes to another problem, namely the actual fact that the men chicks created in those industrial hatcheries were likely either tossed alive into a grinder or gassed. Men birds are worthless to a hatchery offering egg farms. Household hens might be glorified, but their pretty chicken brothers are cured like trash.3) Predation. Garden hens are specially vulnerable to predation. Try this experiment: when you learn that a good friend gets backyard hens, check in two months later and have how things 're going. It’s likely that good that the response will go something similar to, "great, but . . . ." Pet dogs, pet cats, snakes, coyotes, possum, hawks, raccoons, raccoons, raccoons. These predators are common and persistent as well as your poor hens, the ones you attended to love as pets, cannot indulge their natural defense mechanisms (such as finding a low tree limb hidden in thick foliage). They often times find themselves stuck in some Ritz-Carleton of the coop that turned out to be less secure than publicized and, in their plush safe havens, are wiped out in a way that makes the slaughterhouse appear like a day spa by comparison. "What wiped out my birds?" It's an all too common question. And there are 23,900 answers being offered on Google.4) Roosters. There's about a 5 percent chance that your hen will turn out to be a rooster. There are a couple of known reasons for this mistake. For just one, the sex of your fowl is hard to identify upon birth, even for experts. Many roosters are unintentionally recognized as hens and sent to give food to stores, the place where urban farmer/hipsters flock to buy their stock. Less innocently, many male birds are tossed into shipping and delivery containers as a form of packing material, deployed to prevent the hens from banging in to the area of the cage and having their retail value decreased. 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 yard hen owners are enchanted by the thought of free eggs. You shouldn't be fooled. Build the coop, choose the give food to, pay the veterinary, count the time spent preserving the coop and administering attention, compensate the neighbor's child for nourishing the hens when you go to the Hamptons for the weekend, and then pick up a calculator. The results? As you yard farmer from Merced, California advised an online rooster message board: "Don't tell my wife, but I think my eggs are priced at about $40 a dozen."![]()
Somehow or other, it is among the most make of twenty-first century metropolitan hipness to keep a couple of birds out back again. We're mostly talking hens. Exact statistics are unavailable, but the trend is becoming popular enough for a large number of major metropolitan areas to revise their animal ordinances, thereby opening the legal floodgates for the introduction of urban pet agriculture, an endeavor that a lot of American towns legislated out of lifestyle (mostly for health reasons) back the nineteenth hundred years.This renaissance of foodie devotion for the uber-local egg has also inspired its show of outlandish rhetoric. Says the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin: "Chickens are really bringing us collectively as a community." Says my Austin neighbor and co-owner of Boggy Creek Farm, Carol-Ann Sayle: "Everyone must have their own henhouse in their own yard."It's doubtful that the inbound mayor of New York City will trust either of these sentiments. But no matter. A large number of other urbanites nationwide--many of them so committed to keeping chickens that they are doing so surreptitiously--are all of the sudden giving a significant cluck about yard eggs.Lost in all the enthusiasm will be the drawbacks. Corresponding to Ian Elwood, of Creature Legal Defense Fund, "the alternatives backyard chicken farming seeks to create--food security, local foodsheds, healthy eating--are all better served by stimulating more plant structured farming." His bottom line regarding metropolitan agriculture is easy: "Let's leave animals from it."What follows are five reasons why, as it pertains to chickens, Elwood is onto something.1) Diminishing Creation. Hens start laying eggs after about five a few months. Production, however, wanes at the age of two. Hens can live for more than ten years. Many backyard hen owners are as unwilling to keep a non-productive hen because they are to carefully turn her into chicken breast soup. The upshot has been a sharp surge in abandoned parrots. In 2001, according to the Associated Press, Minneapolis' Fowl Run Save fielded six telephone calls from individuals seeking to find homes for forsaken chickens. By 2012, that amount reached almost 500.2) Commercial Hatcheries. Bringing up hens in the backyard seems as an obviously humane option to factory farming. In some ways, it is. However, on this point, two directly related facts should be considered. First, nearly all hens fortunate enough to flee the factory's battery cage hail from the same professional hatcheries that supply manufacturer farms with millions of parrots. This commonality not only undermines any pretense of convinced that backyard birds issue the industrialized status quo, but it contributes to another problem, namely the actual fact that the men chicks created in those industrial hatcheries were likely either tossed alive into a grinder or gassed. Men birds are worthless to a hatchery offering egg farms. Household hens might be glorified, but their pretty chicken brothers are cured like trash.3) Predation. Garden hens are specially vulnerable to predation. Try this experiment: when you learn that a good friend gets backyard hens, check in two months later and have how things 're going. It’s likely that good that the response will go something similar to, "great, but . . . ." Pet dogs, pet cats, snakes, coyotes, possum, hawks, raccoons, raccoons, raccoons. These predators are common and persistent as well as your poor hens, the ones you attended to love as pets, cannot indulge their natural defense mechanisms (such as finding a low tree limb hidden in thick foliage). They often times find themselves stuck in some Ritz-Carleton of the coop that turned out to be less secure than publicized and, in their plush safe havens, are wiped out in a way that makes the slaughterhouse appear like a day spa by comparison. "What wiped out my birds?" It's an all too common question. And there are 23,900 answers being offered on Google.4) Roosters. There's about a 5 percent chance that your hen will turn out to be a rooster. There are a couple of known reasons for this mistake. For just one, the sex of your fowl is hard to identify upon birth, even for experts. Many roosters are unintentionally recognized as hens and sent to give food to stores, the place where urban farmer/hipsters flock to buy their stock. Less innocently, many male birds are tossed into shipping and delivery containers as a form of packing material, deployed to prevent the hens from banging in to the area of the cage and having their retail value decreased. 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 yard hen owners are enchanted by the thought of free eggs. You shouldn't be fooled. Build the coop, choose the give food to, pay the veterinary, count the time spent preserving the coop and administering attention, compensate the neighbor's child for nourishing the hens when you go to the Hamptons for the weekend, and then pick up a calculator. The results? As you yard farmer from Merced, California advised an online rooster message board: "Don't tell my wife, but I think my eggs are priced at about $40 a dozen."Raising Chickens in New York City: Laws, Tips and
4 Benefits of a Mixed Flock of Backyard Chickens
The Benefits of Backyard Chickens
