Linda Nellet brought a few of her birds to a backyard-chicken seminar in Chicago. She and other seasoned urban chicken keepers hope to keep chicken-raising legal and neighborly in their tight, urban landscape. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:
Transcript
Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:
No one’s sure how many chickens are in Chicago’s backyards. But honestly, few people
thought about it until last year.
That’s when one woman showed up at a city hearing.
“Hi. My name is Edie Cavanaugh, and I’ve lived in Chicago, since 1968.”
Cavanaugh told aldermen she’d caught messy, noisy chickens clucking around her
neighborhood.
She was stunned the city wouldn’t round them up.
“I was told chickens are permitted as pets in Chicago, and I said that’s impossible,
this is a city.”
Cavanaugh’s story ruffled plenty of feathers.
You see, even some aldermen didn’t know that keeping chickens as pets or for eggs in
Chicago is okay.
“I was riding down the street, and I seen a rooster. I was like, ‘What is this?’”
For a month, it seemed Chicago’s city council would ban chicken-keeping.
People who already had chickens worried their birds were destined for the stew pot.
But Chicago aldermen kept chicken-raising legal.
Chicago’s pro-chicken contingent saw the fight as a wake-up call. Some figured, if they
wanted to keep birds, they’d better police themselves.
“So, welcome everybody for coming to the first-ever Chicago backyard Chicken
workshop.”
Martha Boyd is starting seminars about urban chickens.
She’s part of the Angelic Organics Learning Center, a group that promotes urban
agriculture.
Boyd is confident city-people can raise more of their own food if they’re neighborly
about it.
“So the idea of the backyard chicken workshop is so we can have this thing grow
without creating more problems and potentially, then, having the backlash to the
backyard chickens.”
For this first seminar, Boyd invited chicken-raising veterans to a church basement.
One is Tom Rosenfeld.
His advice to urban chicken lovers? Talk to your neighbors. And, hey, if they cringe, get
creative.
“It also helps to bribe them, because if they think they’re going to get some eggs out
of the deal or they think they’re kids come over and pet them or whatever, then of
course they’ll be a little more understanding when one day you leave the door open
and there’re chickens running around the yard or other issues.”
Rosenfeld says those ‘other issues’ arise pretty quickly. In fact, just a few hours after
chickens eat.
“A lot about chicken keeping is about poop because they do it a lot. They do it in
surprisingly large quantities at a time.”
Rosenfeld says you can literally get ankle deep in the stuff if you’re not vigilant.
But bribery helps here, too. Rosenfeld says chicken poop makes excellent garden
compost.
“Our neighbors love it. They’ll come by with a bucket and that’s their way of
participating.”
Rosenfeld says the last issue that ticks off neighbors is noise.
There’s no such thing as a chicken muzzle, but there’s still a solution – and there’s no
bribe necessary.
You see, male chickens are the noisy bunch, so if you just want eggs…
“You don’t need a rooster. It’s a sad reality as a male chicken keeper to realize that
roosters aren’t necessary. They’re only necessary if you want chicks.”
Rosenfeld says urban chicken-raising could catch on where it’s legal – if people keep a lid
on noise and smells.
As for places where it’s not legal?
You might want to change the law at city hall – just don’t try to bribe your alderman with
fresh eggs.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.