Chickens in the City

By beccajo

I'm trying to convince one of my friends to raise chickens in the heart of St. Paul. Apparently, you need to get the approval of 75% of your neighbors within a 100ft radius before you can get them, and Minneapolis has similar rules. The most recent issue of Make Magazine

featured an article on raising just hatched chicks, and their site contains some more articles from chicken-raisers, their challenges and successes.

created on: 03/19/08

(picture from of JustFood.org)

I even picked up brochures on chicken hatchers at a feed mill last weekend. My folks and I went to a couple of semiars on gardening, food plots for game, and yes, raising chickens. I was entranced by the little balls of fluff running around, scratching for food and huddling with their friends. So cute!

The guy from Brau's Hatchery in Brainerd, MN, said 8-12 chickens is the ideal number, any fewer than that really wouldn't be worth the trouble. Most hens, in egg production season, will give you an egg a day. That's a lot of eggs to eat for a single person!

My friend probably isn't going to do it because he doesn't like eggs (!) which is one of the main reasons people have chickens in the first place.

There's plenty of websites and stories out there about city chicken raisers, even in New York! Would you ever consider doing this? Anyone out there giving city chickens a try? Comment below!

All I know is, those baby chicks were cuter than ANY Easter card!

Tagged:
chickens city coops eggs food yum

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March 19, 2008

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beccajo

March 21, 2008

oh, and of course, i meant to say, HUMANE society. not human. doh!

anyway. there was a book of wacky chickens a few years back, i love those ones with the crazy beatles haircuts. always spend an afternoon at the MN state fair checkin out the chickens!

suzyrenovator

March 20, 2008

Love those chickens in the picture! They're called Silkies, I believe. So soft and fuzzy looking.

beccajo

March 20, 2008

chickens at the human society? never thought of that!

i know in some cities, like key west, they have wild chickens! i couldn't imagine the noise from all those wild ones roaming around.

my grandma had them at her farm out in elk river but she only kept one rooster alive at a time (the others became DINNER), otherwise they'd fight too much. and the chickens lay eggs without roosters........

DIY Maven

March 20, 2008

There's a family in my neighborhood that raises baby ducks. They get them in the springtime, their children take care of them over the summer, and then when the ducks have matured (probably in the fall?) they fly away. They do/did this every year as a learning experience for the kids. And now a chicken story....I've volunteered at AHS for about a decade now, and I remember one year my friend Kay and I were sorting books for the big book sale and all of a sudden we heard this tremendous crowing. I'm like 'what the....?' and Kay says, oh yeah, we have a rooster! It was being held down in one of the incoming animal areas. He was beautiful. I don't know what breed he was, but he was black with white spots and, of course, a beautiful red comb. He was loud though; he'd defiantly wake up the neighborhood!