From Boise State Public Radio
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Backyard Chickens
[HOST INTRO] A bird is helping blur the boundary between urban and rural America. A few years ago, a chicken would have been a reliable sign that you’d crossed into farm country. No more. As correspondent Guy Hand reports in this installment of Edible Idaho, chickens are invading many American cities — and helping urbanites connect not only to their food, but to a new kind of community.
(Chicken sounds) (Blackhurst) Yeah, come on . . . (Gate clicking) Most people come in here and they say “I don’t even know that I’m in the city.”
(Hand) That’s because Jay Blackhurst and his neighbors have turned a hundred foot long, dirt alley into a shared chicken run. They call it “The Collective Coop” and it’s populated with poultry.
(Blackhurst) In the 50’s I guess when they built this neighborhood, they had never really opened the alley up to cars or anything. And so when I moved here five ears ago, it was just weeds.
(Hand) Blackhurst decided to clean up this Boise alley, fence it off and put in a few chickens. He didn’t expect to start a movement.
(Blackhurst) And soon as I put my chickens back here, then Lisa and Keith wanted to put their chickens back here and then Molly said can I put chickens back here and I said lets put ‘em all back here. So then I had my coop, I got rid of that and we made this one collective coop. (Hand) So this is a community shared coop? (Jay) A community shared coop.
(Latimer) It’s amazing how the chickens have transformed the back alleyway so everyone can enjoy it.
(Hand) That’s neighbor and fellow chicken owner Lisa Latimer.
Jay Blackhurst and Lisa Latimer in their neighborhood chicken alley called the "Collective Coop."
(Latimer) We got to know Jay and his family, we know Molly and her family, we know quite a few other neighbors that we’ve met and all the children come back here and play. There’s hardly an evening that goes by that all of us aren’t out here visiting or enjoying each others company. So it’s a wonderful thing for our neighborhood. (Hand) So community sort of brought together by chickens? (Jay) Yea, yea, pretty much.
(Hand) So how do people keep their eggs separate? (Lisa) Oh, who ever needs eggs get eggs for the day. (Hand) So there’s no egg accounting or anything? (Jay) No nobody’s. . . (Lisa) We all think it’s wonderful that Jay has a little 2 year old, she has a basket, she gets the eggs and then she distributes them around the neighborhood. It’s just cute watching the kids out there.
(Latimer) This house on the end just sold, so (laughing) we have to get them involved pretty soon. (Hand) Do they have documents they have to sign or anything? (Laughing) (Hand) Chicken friendly . . . (Jay) Chicken friendly documents, for sure. . .
(Hand) Now, the community nature of this alleyway chicken scene isn’t typical, but it does illustrate an exploding national interest in raising urban poultry.
Sign on Boise chicken coop
(Ludlow) It’s actually been about 2 1/2 to 3 years where the trend really started to pick up.
(Hand) California-based Rob Ludlow is owner of Backyard Chickens.com and co-author of the book “Raising Chickens for Dummies.”
(Ludlow) What I’ve seen is that people see that chickens really are a multi-purpose pet. They’re relatively easy to care for, they eat bugs and weeds in your yard, they generate fantastic fertilizer, they’re fun to watch and interact with.
(Hand) And of course, they lay eggs. But Ludlow says there’s another, more fundamental reason for the popularity of urban chickens.
(Ludlow) And I think this is the biggest, especially over the last 2 years. Many urban, suburbanites really want to join in the movement towards self sufficiency, growing local, being green, etc. The problem is that most people don’t have the ability or the space to raise cows, pigs, have a huge garden. Having a handful of egg laying hens in a relatively small yard allows these people to participate in these movements without having to change their zip code or move to another city.
(Hand) A large number of urban areas have written ordinances that allow for chickens.
A white crested black polish backyard chicken
(Ludlow) Berkley, Seattle, Portland, those are some cities that are chicken friendly . . . San Jose, San Francisco, chicken friendly. On the east coast New York is chicken friendly . . .
(Hand) There are cities that worry about the possible noise, odor and sheer Beverly Hillbilly-esque nature of urban chickens. Salem, Oregon currently prohibits chickens. Spokane restricts the building of coops. But Boise allows three hens per small urban lot and, on larger lots, more.
(Medlin) Chickens! Come on, come on (laughing)
(Hand) Polls say the number one reason Americans keep chickens is for eggs — meat is a distant third.
(Medlin) . . . That’s Cheeky and that’s Parrot . . .
New backyard chicken enthusiast Shellan Rodriguez and friend
(Hand) . . . but a close second — and this might come as a surprise to some — is companionship. The birds themselves, and their interesting, sometimes complex behavior is what first attracted Boise’s Susan Medlin to a friend’s chickens.
(Medlin) The more I observed them, the more fascinating I found them to be. And they were clearly not the bird brains that they’re made out to be. That’s quite a misnomer actually.
(Hand) Medlin became a backyard chicken expert, raising her own brood and eventually teaching classes on the subject.
(Medlin) The long and short of it is that chickens were really my doorway to avian life. And I’m amazed and I can understand now why people are such dedicated birders and they’re just incredible. And so chickens, I have chickens to thank for that and they are a credible members of the whole bird family.
(Hand) Urban chicken owners in a recent survey said they felt that chickens were easier to raise than dogs and nearly as easy as cats.
Reuben Kosche in front of the family coop
(Medlin) I think if the chickens had their way, the chickens would be house chickens, they would be lap chickens, they would be under the covers chickens.
(Hand) This rather cozy relationship with a farm animal is a far cry from the factory-like realities of large poultry plants. The backyard chicken movement is, at least in part, a reaction to the harsh, some say inhumane treatment of poultry — as revealed in recent books and this scene from the documentary Food Inc.
(Woman) It is nasty in here. There’s dust flying everywhere. There’s feces everywhere. This isn’t farming. This is just mass production like an assembly line in a factory.
(Hlebechuk) I think if you educate yourself to the whole industrial farming at all by either reading a book or watching a documentary, you kind of get scared.
(Hand) That’s Deanna Hlebechuk. She and her family raise chickens in downtown Boise’s North End.
(Hlebechuk) It’s really a horrible way for these animals to be treated and I think by having our own chickens and a son, it helps him be educated as to making better choices during his life.
Fresh backyard eggs, the #1 reason people keep chickens
(Hand) Hlebechuk’s husband, Robert Kosche knows just how far an urban chicken farmer will go to save a bird — bird a commercial poultry plant would throw in the bin.
(Kosche) We were brooding a little hatchling that had what’s called splayed leg syndrome where the legs are kind of rubbery and kind of splay out to the sides. If that’s not fixed the bird will die within a week or two because he can’t get to food or water. So what we did, was we took duct tape in kind of a McGyver fashion we built a little leg brace for this chicken. And every day we would do a physical therapy with this little bird, we would pat him on the bottom to make him run, he would run a few feet and then tumble and then he’d run a few feet and he’d tumble. And after two weeks we took the braces off and the bird could walk on his own. The bird grew up to be one of the strongest we’ve ever seen.
(Hand) Physical therapy for chickens is not likely to be adopted by commercial agriculture. Yet this small act illustrates the ethical gap that’s grown between industrial food producers and many consumers. Raising backyard chickens may not change the poultry industry, but it will bring urbanites closer to their food — and make for better omelets.
(Hand) For Edible Idaho and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.
Here’s a story on cool backyard chicken coops.
And an unsettling new revelation: Arsenic in chicken feed
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture. |
[...] • First place for Radio Light Feature Report: “The Backyard Chicken Invasion“ [...]