Our friend Hope Sandrow has been keeping chickens for about three years now, ever since she ran into Shinnecock, a Paduan rooster, while looking for her cat in the woods near her home.  Hope now tends to Shinnecock and his descendants, all of whom have become part of Hope’s work as a visual artist.  Hope has set up webcams to watch her chickens, and her albumen prints (a photographic process which uses egg whites to bind the light-sensitive chemicals to the paper) of her chickens have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s P.S. 1 gallery, and recently Hope and her chickens were featured in a New York Times article.

Back yard chickens like Hope’s are becoming more and more common, even in big cities where there is simply no space for a farm.  Many of these backyard farmers have set up websites like Back Yard Chickens and Urban Chickens to help foster communities and share advice.

Kids and Chickens

One of Hope's Paduan chickens