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<\/p>\nIf you like eating organic, enjoy growing your own vegetables\u00a0and are conscientious about things like sourcing your food and cooking from scratch, chances are you\u2019ve considered keeping chickens. Wouldn\u2019t it be fun to go out to the coop in the morning, say good morning to the hens, and gather fresh warm eggs for the ultimate locally sourced breakfast? And it is fun! However, before you welcome the ladies to your urban farmstead (aka your backyard), be sure you\u2019ve taken the time to consider some of the pros and cons of city chicken keeping.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, know the local laws regarding chicken keeping, which is still a controversial subject in some cities. Being a chicken-rearing rebel may be the ultimate in cool, but it\u2019s impossible to keep a coop full of chickens hidden for long, and you may face fines or sanctions if you violate city ordinances. Worse, you might find yourself with 24 hours to dismantle your coop and rehome your chickens. Learn your local laws, and abide by them.<\/p>\n
Once you\u2019ve got the legal all clear, spend some time considering the realities of chicken keeping \u2013 both pro and con!<\/p>\n
PROS:<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s the Eggs, Silly!<\/strong> Backyard Chicken Television is the Best<\/strong> CONS:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A chicken is not a seed packet. It\u2019s an animal and a responsibility. And unfortunately, that means taking the bad with the good and facing the difficult along with the fun.<\/p>\n Chickens are Dirty and Smelly<\/strong> Something Bad May Happen<\/strong> You May Get A Rooster<\/strong> The Eggs Don\u2019t Keep Coming Forever<\/strong> Before you embark on your chicken-keeping project, you MUST decide how you will handle this fact of life\u00a0because it WILL become an issue. You may choose to keep your well-loved hens as pets for as long as you can and count the money and time spent with them as a natural cost of pet ownership. \u00a0Or you may decide to take a more pragmatic approach and face the reality of culling your flock regularly to make room for replacements. Cull your birds or care for them all the way through their chicken Social Security years; it\u2019s a difficult decision, but it must be made.<\/p>\n And there you have it. Keeping chickens in the city may be tough at times, but there are many rewards that go along with it! Take some time to consider all the implications of beginning your own backyard chicken adventure \u2013 and maybe you\u2019ll come to the conclusion that it\u2019s time to dive in!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you like eating organic, enjoy growing your own vegetables\u00a0and are conscientious about things like sourcing your food and cooking from scratch, chances are you\u2019ve considered keeping chickens. Wouldn\u2019t it be fun to go out to the coop in the morning, say good morning to the hens, and gather fresh warm eggs for the ultimate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThis is the number one reason most people get backyard chickens. The eggs are supremely good. The yolks are bright yellow and they stand up nicely. A basket of fresh eggs on the counter is a beautiful sight. The colors of the shells are lovely and picking them up, warm from the brooder, is the most positive sign of freshness one can imagine. Eating fresh eggs is a sublime culinary adventure. For this reason alone, you should get your own chickens.<\/p>\n
\nYou will not have chickens for long before you realize how wonderfully entertaining they are. Chickens are full of personality and are often very funny. They push each other around, fly up and down, scratch and peck, roll in the dirt, etc. And the clucking! They have a wide range of vocalizations and listening to them \u201ctalk\u201d to each other is endlessly interesting. Something about watching chickens makes people happy. It\u2019s relaxing, it\u2019s fun, and it reminds people of simpler times. A flock of chickens makes a yard a home.<\/p>\n
\nChickens are cute, fun, and full of personality. Chickens also poop everywhere, and they poop A LOT. And the poop accumulates and smells. You can put down straw, or diatomaceous earth, but these are bandaids. Prepare to do a lot of particularly gross cleaning to keep the coop and yard in an acceptable state.<\/p>\n
\nA raccoon, an owl, the neighbor\u2019s dog, an unexpected illness \u2013 eventually, something bad is almost sure to happen to at least one of your chickens. For all the fun times and idyllic evenings spent watching your chickens at play, there will be sad, difficult and potentially ugly moments as well.<\/p>\n
\nChicken sexing is quite reliable, but nothing is 100%. You may think you\u2019ve bought all hens, but the day may come when you realize that \u201cPenelope\u201d has started to try out a little beginner crow. This is a problem. Roosters are beautiful, noisy, often aggressive, and probably illegal in your municipality. And there are the neighbors to consider \u2013 people who may be happy to live next to a flock of burbling hens won\u2019t be quite as happy to be awakened at 5 am every morning by the full-throated crow of a rooster, no matter how gorgeous. You will need an emergency plan in the event that one of your hens is actually a rooster.<\/p>\n
\nA continuous supply of fresh eggs requires a continuous supply of hens of laying age. A typical hen starts laying at around 6 months of age and tapers off by age 3. By age 4 most hens are no longer laying. However, a well-kept city chicken in a safe location can easily live to age 8 or 10, leaving you buying chicken feed, doing chores twice daily, and cleaning just as much poop as ever for years while purchasing farm-fresh eggs from the co-op or farmers\u2019 market the whole time. \u00a0Bear in mind, too, that there is likely a legal limit to the number of hens you can own at one time, so non-laying hens will be taking up the \u201cspots\u201d you could otherwise fill with new young egg producers.<\/p>\n