Is the backyard chicken keeping trend bogus?
When
times get tough, people get chickens. You've probably heard the
same reports I have about new zoning regulations allowing chickens in
cities and about the numbers of backyard chicken keepers
skyrocketing. If our economic system crashes, at least we
chicken-keepers can subsist on eggs and an occasional roast fowl.
On the other hand, Slate
suggests that the surge in urban chicken-keeping is a bogus trend,
invented by
journalists who needed to fill some space in their newspapers.
The article made a good point that all of the evidence for the trend
appears
to be anecdotal rather than based on hard data.
Whether the trend is
real or not, we like chickens and think you will
to. So this lunchtime series is a rundown of a few
chicken-related topics near and dear to our hearts. We won't try
to reinvent the wheel and tell you all of the chicken-keeping basics,
but we will mention some of the fields we're most interested in at the
moment.
| This post is part of our Chicken Trivia lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries: |
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
Same as comment 1. altho we live in the county semi rural. Raising chickens has gained popularity in the past 1.5 years here in Rowan county N.C. We recieved 7 sexlink chicks 2 months ago and there growing fast. They already look like teenage hens.I let em free range on our 3.25 acres mostly just in the yard tho. Many people have started to raise chickens this year. Ive learned already to watch out for the coons and possoms,foxes,and coyotes that weve been hearing at night but havent seen yet. Have the 8x10 foot shed turned into the chicken house and the old dog lot into a fenced yard. made the 4 foot chicken run from scrap laying around.Now i have to figure out how to make a sliding door on a rope and a timer,just to make things easier. Thru trial and error i learned that heat in a metal shed will be at least 30 degrees hotter than thee 90 degree heat outside.So i had to cut a vent near the peak, it was then that the fan i already had put in there actually started doing its job. Not bad for not knowing what im doing huh:)
Here in Ballard, WA chickens are everywhere! We just got our own flock of 5 in June and we are abolustely loving it. Our neighbor across the street has 8 hens too. I have some photos on my blog. I keep mine in a pen, but I also have a very minimalist chicken tractor that I put them in for a few hours per night.
http://ballardfresh.wordpress.com/
I live in central fl, I'm a small local chicken breeder, have been for a few years... There's the large Hispanic population, so there's never been a time when the larger birds haven't been in demand for fresh meat.. Chicks though have been somewhat harder to move. There was just nobody wanting to raise them, minus the few in their trailers on 5 acres... But just this last year, late '10 on, I cant hatch them fast enough!! The sheer number of people stopping by in their nice new looking cars, as opposed to the big pickups is something that points to.................... A fad, Maybe, its just people wanting to be a bit more secure in something. A squawk, then, breakfast, is secure, right?