I’m talking about chickens, Internet, keeping ‘em, caring for ‘em, making ‘em part of our lives. Regard, if you will, this sad tale from Jill Richardson of La Vida Locavore (a top-notch blog about folks living the locavore lifestyle all over this great land, with loads of great stories and information useful to any locavore). The condensed version of the story is that Jill woke up one morning to an email about two chickens free to a good home, and of course she thought “Yippee! What on earth could be better than two chickens of my very own!” (I’m paraphrasing). The chickens had been found in the street by someone who was not up to caring for them, but wanted to see them taken care of, and Jill was just the woman for the job. Unfortunately, the plot thickens: chickens are illegal in Jill’s town, and her boyfriend, who is running for city council, does not want his ambitions to serve his community dashed by a potential chicken scandal (though he would love to keep chickens once they are legal).
Internet, I’m sure you’re as confused here as I am: what the heck is so wrong with keeping chickens in your backyard? I mean, I can understand a regulating how many chickens you can keep, and I would actually support laws regulating how much space you need per chicken, but a chicken ban? Exiling chickens? What gives? Well, something must give because it turns out that chickens are pretty highly regulated in these United States. And that totally sucks! Keeping chickens in your backyard is pretty easy and very excellent. Plus, they eat weeds, bugs, and maggots in your yard. Could it get any better? It does. Chickens that eat weeds and bugs lay healthier eggs, eggs that you can give to your neighbors for a healthier, happier neighborhood (stronger communities are a real, wonderful benefit of local food in any form, but neighborhood eggs are just about the best thing ever). And really, why not keep chickens in your backyard? True, roosters can be aggressive (confession: I was attacked by a rooster at a young age and I still don’t trust them) but really, you run the same risk having kids or a dog.
There’s more, Internet. Witness this blog post from Slow Food USA (warning: the video on the post is very sad, and not really kid-friendly). The post is a dispatch from the Department of Justice/USDA hearings in Normal, AL about competition in the poultry industry. The gist of the hearings is that big poultry companies, which run huge monopolies, in which individual farmers are basically serfs, are accused of threatening and intimidating farmers, and finally sending them into financial ruin. Those familiar with stories of depression-era tenant farmers and sharecroppers will find a similar story: chicken farmers are given non-negotiable contracts by companies that are the only game in town (contracts which are often replaced a few years on by new ones with worse terms) and end up forced to spend huge sums of money on farm “improvements” (some of which are real improvements, some are debatable). To spend that kind of money, many have to take out loans, put their houses up as collateral, and few ever make the money back. This cycle of ever-increasing input costs and diminishing returns could actually be disrupted, at least a little bit, with a few backyard chickens. The reason that chicken farmers are forced to work for these companies is that we are used to getting our food from huge, global production structures. There simply aren’t ways for farmers to sell chickens close to home without huge companies as middlemen (or, at least, there aren’t enough ways). But what if the model for chicken farming was a little more “backyard”? Farmers closer to their customers, raising fewer chickens, spending less on raising them, cutting out the terrifying corporate middle-man. It’s not so far-fetched, Internet. Hopefully, Jill’s husband isn’t the only city council candidate who wants to raise chickens, because we could use more of them in our backyards.
That’s all it takes, a simple chicken coop. It doesn’t even have to be painted to look like a barn either, though that’s pretty cute. And the whole thing looks like it’s 8-feet long, max. Doesn’t even need a big yard.
This picture isn’t real. It is totally possible for humans and chickens to live together in harmony in urban areas.
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