I spent a good portion of yesterday researching chickens. I’m fascinated by the idea of keeping chickens in the backyard for eggs! I don’t know if it’s right for us, but I had a lot of fun looking at chicken coops and imagining having one out back.
Design*Sponge recently wrote about keeping chickens, and Apartment Therapy wrote about the subject a couple of years ago. As people are becoming more aware of their food sources and sustainable living (both things I’m working on), it seems chicken keeping is making a big comeback. I haven’t met anyone keeping them in an urban (or suburban) setting, though it seems they’re out there! Do you or any of your neighbors have chickens?
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I have wanted chickens since reading the book “Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces” by Barbara Kilarski. GREAT READ – see if your library has it. My brother keeps chickens in his large suburban yard (where he is growing organic hops and the chickens keep the grasshoppers under control!) Check out his (expired) eBay listing, which describes the breed he has and why he chose them (he’s in Minnesota, so it’s cold like Chicago, and his grandson is 2). Since you have Eleanor it might be a good breed to explore. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310208650661 Friends in St. Louis keep a couple of hens in their back yard and love them. Let us know what you do! I love the coops!!
OMG! I want chickens so bad, and now seeing those coops, I really, really want them!!
Thanks doll,
The Glamorous Housewife
there needs to be a distinction made between “i grew up on a farm” and keeping a handful of chickens in your backyard. chickens are gross, for sure. they are messy and a lot of work. but two or three? easy peasy! and such a small flock allows the attention to ensure they’re more pet-like than cafo terrors.
my dad and husband both grew up on farms with huge henhouses (100+ hens) and HATE chickens, as a rule. our half dozen? they both love them and draw no parallels between them and their previous poultry experiences.
A friend of mine keeps chickens in her urban backyard and has a cute blog about it:
http://talesofamotherclucker.blogspot.com/
Enjoy!
Great name for a blog. :)
A friend of mine in Portland, OR built an amazing coop he refers to as the “Chicken Sedan”. One of the ingenious features is that is is portable, and meant to be rotated over several planting beds to fertilize the soil.
http://www.chickensedan.com/
Have you seen this adorable custom built chicken coop? It pretty much made me think I needed 4 pet chickens named Mabel, Daisy Mae, Mary and Annabelle for a good 72 hours. So cure.
http://heatherbullard.typepad.com/heather_bullard_collectio/2010/03/our-chicken-coop.html
We had chickens out in the country (and loved the fresh eggs and natural bug/weed killer) but we moved into town 4.5 yrs ago. We are currently looking into getting 4-5 hens (prob East Egg hens because their eggs were always so pretty). I would bet money you can make a better coop/run yourself! Would LOVE to see that!
I have 4 chickens and am a bonified city girl. Manicure, high heels, the works. I love my girlies and the eggs are glorious. Feel free to contact me anytime and I can tell you more! Love your blog! buk buk!
I live in a semi-urban area and my dear neighbors keep chickens. It’s fantastic to have fresh eggs. Also, the chickens are like amped-up composting machines. My neighbor gives them all kinds of table scraps and the chickens in turn make the most wonderful soil for the garden.
What an excellent idea! I saw some beautiful chicks at the Farm & Fleet a few weeks ago and pondered this idea myself! And I live in the city!
Honey, I thought was a great idea, too, when we bought our first home. Our baby chicks produced 3 hens and 1 rooster. 1 of the hens got grabbed by a hawk. The rooster grew up to be gorgeous but aggressive. He also was a bit too amorous with the smaller girl, so we had to arrange separate areas for the girls and the boy. They laid eggs for about a year and a half (and yes they were yummy, but too few overall.) The habitat options you show are laughable. We believe in giving our animals a reasonable habitat. The coop my husband built was dubbed “the Poulet Palais”–cut redwood casa tucked beneath a tree for summer shade; a trio of nesting boxes with their own lockable doors; a front entry way and ramp; clerestory windows to let in the light; a tiled floor for easy cleaning; a shingled roof to match the main house decor. 5 years later, we are down to one hen and of course our rooster. We’re constantly vigilant against neighborhood racoons and the hawks. The rooster is still a sight to behold, but we need to approach him with caution. The hen hasn’t laid an egg in 3 years and wants nothing to do with either us or her amorous mate. Overall, the project fell way short of our expectations.
so much for my farm fantasy but good luck to you!
Be sure and check your local ordinances. It may be illegal, particularly since you live in a very urban environment.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it would be a lot more work than it seems.
Keep us posted on your decision!
I live in Southern California and have not seen any neighbors with chicken coups, but my husband and I lived in Portland, Oregon for 3 years and most of our friends kept chickens in their backyard. We are moving up there in a year and I’m already planning my chicken coup :) Good luck with yours.
we have six chickens in our backyards in a suburban area. the coup isn’t anything fancy though and one chicken has learned how to escape. our neighbors don’t mind, but they’ve said they love watching my sister & brother in law run around the yard chasing them back in the coup.
before it started getting warmer and the chickens weren’t producing a lot, we’d supplement with store bought eggs. it was so strange to see scrabbled eggs from the store next to scrabbled eggs from our chickens on the same plate. our eggs are tastier (in my opinion) and brighter yellow.
One of my co-workers owns chickens … however, I work at a school that is in a farming community on the outskirts of the city … lol, so I guess its not really the same thing!
I’m not sure how many chickens she has, because if anyone ever wants any they just post it on the staff room board and she’ll let us know when they’re ready … but I’d say she has a nice few because its fairly quick (and if I understand correctly, a chicken will only lay one egg a day?)
We’re doing this right now. We have our chickens (see my blog for pics) and we’re working on building our chicken coop right now. It’s going to be well worth it for all the eggs we’ll get. :)
We have four chickens (but we do live on a farm and have horses for riding, cows for milking, lambs for eating etc) and I love them, they’re such funny little creatures. You could def have them in backyard, my brother in law lives in a tiny terrace in Melbourne with no yard and has bantams in his back alley!
Chickens are great! BUT they actually need LOTS LOTS LOTS of space to be happy and semi-self reliant. Also, the yard space that you keep them in will get ruined.
They need shelter, water, food (usually dry pellets and lots of leafy greens) plus bugs/worms etc, nesting boxes, wings clipped, protection from cats, rats and other nasties, and usually you’ll need bantam hens if you want to raise chicks.
I’m sure you know this – but don’t get a rooster. I don’t even think you’re allowed them in most urban areas.
Chickens also take a while to stay laying eggs, and won’t do this all year round.
They are fantastic – we have them in the backyard (in a big city in NZ) but!!! they honestly do need a lot more space than the likes of the coops you’ve shown here.
Good luck!!
Holy crap your timing is eery. I just mailed a deposit check to a local builder for our first coop today(custombuiltshelters.com)!
We live in Carmichael, CA. Our neighbors have a few layers. Can’t wait!!!
PS search your local craigslist – that’s where I found our builder
My mom had chickens for a few years before she retired to Mexico last year, I really loved the fresh eggs from them.
I want to raise chickens but my husband keeps trying to veto the idea. I know others around here (a bit outside Seattle city limits) have chickens because they have wandered over into our backyard a couple times…
Reading the comments about them needing more space then the ones you show is going to send me off to do more research, I really like some of those options and some of them look secure enough to protect against the giant raccoon population we have here.
Our neighbors (in Seattle proper) have 3 chickens that roam the neighborhood during the day and return to their protected coop at night.
There have been 3 of them for a couple years and no mis-haps so far – the kids get a kick out of seeing them scratching around in the school yard.
When I stayed with my mom in a suburban-ish setting, she kept chickens. One chicken in particular, George, kept getting attacked by the other two chickens who were more aggressive and all of them would get attacked by raccoons and/or possums at night time. They figured out how to open up the coop (despite our many attempts to secure it) and we would wake up in the morning and find them to be pretty badly beat up. Poor chickens…
I lived on a farm for a few years in Michigan but I don’t think chickens are appropriate for urban settings. They require a lot of work and the homes are too close together for the noise and smell. The neighbors would not appreciate the sound of the clucking at 4 in the morning.
I would be curious if Oak Park allows chickens though. I would love to get a llama personally. They make great watch pets.
Bah! I want chickens so bad it hurts but my husband won’t let me do it! My neighbor had 5..one was a rooster until she got rid of it, then another one became the new rooster! Apparently there are “roosters in hiding” that will only start to crow when the alpha rooster is dethroned…or kicked out. I absolutely loved hearing him crow when I was in the backyard weeding. I live in the very throws of suburbia with nothing but city and standard cookie cutter life all around me so to hear a rooster crow throughout the day really made me feel like I was somewhere far out in the country…but not too far out that I can’t get to a Walmart in 5 minutes. I have no shame.
The WORST PART is that my neighbor is moving. She gave her chickens to her brother because in her words, she knew if she offered them to me it would have caused a fight between me and my husband. She’s right. I would have kicked him out to make room for the new Rooster.
I live in Rogers Park (North part of Chicago) and we have neighbors across the street with chickens. I have never once heard them, and despite being in the city it isn’t noisy all the time.
I say go for it… give it a shot!
i have had urban chickens a couple of times (sadly not currently) and they are a lot of fun, a lot of work and the most delicious eggs you will ever eat. Go for it.
Hi Nicole,
You should check this out, I just found it while cruising around in blog world:
http://heatherbullard.typepad.com/heather_bullard_collectio/2010/03/our-chicken-coop.html
I’ve got a few friends who have chickens, they love them – they eat all the kitchen scraps (well most of them) and in return they get an abundance of beautiful eggs. I guess they come with the downsides of most pets, but also have benefits!
This is so inspiring and makes me want to keep my own chickens!
There’s a whole “chicken support group” of folks raising chickens here in Oak Park, organized through Unity Temple. I can put you in touch with the group if you like.
Hi
I’m a long time reader of your blog and felt I really had to come out of the woodwork to answer this question. First of all, I’m Australian. I live in a town of about 25000 people. Though our block is quite large for suburban standards (1800 sq m), it is still a suburban block.
We keep chickens and after some research decided the deep litter system would work for us. My husband, being a carpenter was able to build our chicken coop. The chickens stay inside all the time and are very happy to do so. The litter that is used on the ground is then used as mulch on our vegie garden. It needs to be changed over every four to six months. There is plenty of information out there on deep litter systems if you want to research it further.
I know that our council regulations stipulate how many hens can be kept and where the chicken coop can be built. It has to be a certain distance from the main residence, neighboring houses and fence lines.
I hope that was of some use to you. Finally I want to add that there is no better feeling than knowing you are eating something so fresh or something you have produced in your on backyard.
We have chickens in a densely-populated area within the city limits of Columbus, OH, and love it. You may want to check out my FAQ here: http://kusine.com/blog/2010/04/22/faq-raising-chickens-in-columbus-oh/.
we live in the country in a stone farmhouse built in 1845. It was a farm of course, so it came with it’s own blacksmith shop and a couple of chiken coops , plus all of the barns. The smaller coop is probably from the 1940′s and is the sweetes thing. The feeders were all built in, and the paned windows all have bubble glass. I knew when we moved here I would ultimately keep chickens. Finally when our daughter was old enough, we loaded up. It is amazingly fun and I have become totally obsessed.
There was an Earth Day Fest in Oak Park last weekend that had an urban chicken consultant from Home to Roost. The consultant lives in Oak Park, so you might want to check them out. Oak Park does allow you to keep two hens (but no roosters.) The Animal Care League on Garfield in OP does chicken checkups, too. We’ve been looking into getting chickens, too, but we have a chain link fence and our next door neighbors have a german shepherd, so we aren’t sure how that would fare (constant barking and/or chicken heart attacks?. It is fun to look at chicken coops, though, and fresh eggs would be great!
My neighbor just got two new dogs, and they’re sort of aggressive (barking and going mad trying to get us through the fence), so I worry about that too.
The ACL is where we got Murray though! Nice to know that we can bring our (potential) chickens there too.
Our neighbors keep about 5 chickens in a little coop in their yard. We live in a busy suburban neighborhood in Texas.
I think their coop being so close to both our house violates city code but they asked us first and we don’t have a problem with it. Once my veggie garden is up and producing this summer I’m looking forward to bartering for eggs.
I like listening to their little chicken sounds through the fence in the evening.
Makes me want to keep a chicken just to have one of those lovely coops to look at in my yard!
we are looking into getting chickies + coop for my daughter who wants to do 4-h this year. and honestly, for me too because i like to do a lot of baking and i’ve been buying organic eggs (and they are expensive). our neighbors had chickens and i loved hearing them cluck during the day :) we live on the outskirts of town and have to design the coop to fend off predators (coyotes and weasels and the like) AND chickens are messy (my husband volunteered to clean it thank goodness) but we are excited. and love the chicken coops that you posted, especially no. 3.
I really like #4 and #6. I guess it would depend on how many you have. My father had chickens and he says it was a real benefit!
We just finished helping our friends build a chicken coop for their backyard in Bridgeport! They’re now mom and dad to three chickens, which they got at only one day old. The coop is contained under their back deck, which is convenient. We’re actually in your neck of the woods, so we’re unsure how our neighbors would feel about chickens, but we hope to reap the benefits of our good friends’ new hens.
We had turkeys growing up and they were a PIA – the foxes always ate at least half of them before “harvesting” time. I’d love an Omlet(?) coop for chickens, but we travel too much so I think we’d end up regretting the decision. A girlfriend of mine in Maine has a coop with a ton of chickens and they eat fresh eggs daily. They really are the best eggs ever! The only problem is that when you order your chicks you can’t tell if you’ve got a rooster, so you kinda have to be ready to well, um, ya know, the whole neck thing….
I am surprised that rising chicken is a hit n US. In Asia / Hong Kong where I live, we have chicken as pet / source of eggs / even meat for many years. Recently there is a ban of having chicken at home due to bird flu.
I think US weather is colder and dryer which is less favorable for the gems to grow. Just remember to wash hands and the eggs before consume.
2-3 hens are VERY easy. Don’t listen to the naysayers since you won’t be getting a rooster. I grew up with chickens and most of the negatives are caused by the boys (oh, big surprise, right?). They crow, they attack people, they fight, they make the girls squawk when they decide its mating/attack time, which is about every 15 minutes. I also live in the South where heaters for grown hens and water heaters are unnecessary. Chickens DO fly (about 20 ft. intervals), and they love to perch on fences, but they don’t go away because they know their food source!
Hens alone will only squawk when laying an egg (maybe once a day), and they mildly cluck walking around… nothing an urban setting couldn’t handle.
My neighbors have 2 or 3 chickens and they have a TON of eggs. More than they can eat. We live in a very urban neighborhood with houses (actually the most diverse zip code in the US: 98118) and they do fine in a small backyard. They aren’t that loud either!
I live in a suburban neighborhood and someone definitely had a rooster for awhile. It was annoying as heck, particularly when it wakes you up at 5 am on the weekends. I haven’t heard it in awhile, so maybe someone else found it and took care of it! Unless you live in the country, I just think it’s rude to have a rooster waking your neighbors, so as long as you don’t get one then sure.
Just be careful with the baby around them. Chickens aren’t friendly little pets, they’ll scratch the bejesus out of you. Personally, I don’t like brown eggs. My aunt has a farm and they use their own chickens’ eggs and I don’t enjoy the flavor.
I totally agree with Lauren up there…We live in Florida and have raised two hens in our backyard. I get two eggs a day (more than I ever need) and they are practically nothing to take care of. I think our neighbors found it odd at first, but now they are always talking to us about it. I fully promote it! Personally our chicken are fairly friendly. They allow us to hold them often and rarely peck or scratch us. We also have a dog that doesn’t bother them as well. Hope this helps!
Jenn
My downstairs neighbors had two chickens until very recently. We’re in a position that is a cross between urban and suburban. There is a garden, but it is small. The chickens were in a small enclosure with a wooden nesting house inside. They were allowed to roam in the garden each day. They’d deliver two eggs a day for their breakfast. A neighbor (apartments all around) complained about their noise (Which was minimal unless they got scared) and the council rejected their complaint.
They became very tame. Would hop up on peoples laps. They’d also scratch into the garden and damage plants etc, unless they were protected appropriately.
unfortunately they were both killed recently, beheaded, overnight, and when in their coop, by what we think was a suburban fox — or an incredibly strong and aggressive cat.
I was living in Chicago last year, in the Portage Park neighborhood, and our neighbor was keeping chickens. It surprised the heck out of me the first time I saw them, but I love the idea. Once we own a house, a garden and some chickens will definitely be on my backyard list.
I rent in San Francisco and have 2 hens. They both lay an egg a day and are an excellent addition to my garden. I build furniture and chicken coops at a shop in Oakland, CA. If you are in the Bay Area come check me out at Maker Faire in San Mateo May 22&23–Just Fine Design Build. Thanks and keep it chicky.
The only thing I have to add being a former country girl who grew up with chickens is to take into consideration predators, which I will confess I have no idea about in the city/suburbs. ;) Where we live is just city enough not to have to worry about larger predators (coyotes, etc) but country enough that without the larger predators, the “smaller” ones (opossum, raccoons, etc) get much bigger than their more rural counterparts (probably because of a steady diet of pet food).
Also, aside from the predators, the feed and eggs might also attract more “critters” such as rodents and snakes.
Oh and roosters are evil. Just had to get that off my chest. ;)
We’re semi rural so we don’t count (we live on an acre, plenty of room for chickens and many of our neighbors have them).
But, I know Heather kept chickens in suburbia: http://www.ohmystinkinheck.com/sscf-secret-suburban-chicken-farming/
So did Stephanie: http://blueyonderranch.com/ though I can’t find the posts on her new blog.
http://www.foodforeveryone.org has free chicken coop plans.