Reasons to Raise Chickens in Your Backyard
Assholes
There’s this relatively new phenomenon happening right now called the Urban Farming Movement. (Check it out: even T.I. supports it!) My boyfriend, in particular, is really into it for two reasons: 1.) He fancies himself as a sort of misanthrope and really loves the idea of never having to unwillingly interact with the checkout guys at Trader Joe’s; and 2.) He’s really into preparing for an apocalypse. Subsequently, my boyfriend and I are the proud (owners? parents?) of three laying hens: Dax, Starbuck, and Blair Waldorf. At first, I fucking hated them on a personal level, but I eventually learned to love them after discovering that owning chickens is really economical:
Personal security Somebody who houses chickens in their backyard looks crazy. Just ask my neighbors. But I’m okay with it because it means that now no one will break into my house and steal my shit; any potential buglers assume that someone who houses chickens in their tiny backyard also marinates bodies in their bathtub. It’s called the Deliverance Effect — people don’t like to mess around with that country bumpkin bullshit. This scare tactic is way cheaper than renter’s insurance. (Seriously. I’ve looked into it.)
Free friends At first, my neighbors wanted to kill me. And I don’t blame them. I kind of wanted to kill myself. But once I started passing out our extra eggs, they came around. Transparent assholes.
Training validates your spot on the top of the food chain Chickens are borderline retarded, so they’re easy to manipulate. Their instincts tell them to wake up at sunrise, but if you make sure their coop is facing west, they won’t wake up until your hangover subsides. That – combined with the fact that you’re eating their unfertilized babies – makes you feel really powerful.
More free friends As mentioned above, chickens are borderline retarded and thus fascinated by noise. So when you talk to them, they’re really alert and they really make you feel like what you’re saying is important. I know that getting personal validation from a chicken may be viewed by some as sad, but therapy’s expensive so hey, whatever works.
It quells those maternal instincts Ladies, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I wake up and I really want a baby. It’s weird and irrational and the feeling’s not so strong that I’m gonna start poking holes in my condoms, but it’s there and I don’t like it. Raising chickens quickly helped me get over that bullshit. While putting the chickens to bed every night isn’t really a nuisance (unless I’m drunk and can’t manage to sidestep all the shit), it’s a lot easier than putting a crying baby to sleep. And chicken feed is a lot cheaper than an abortion anyway. (Trust me. I looked into this too.)
5 Comments
I really want chickens, but I don’t think we legally have the space. Don’t they need to be housed 20 feet from buildings? Plus we have a dog that would probably freak them out. Some day…
They eat table scraps and old food then turn it into ultra fresh eggs and garden fertilizer.
Garbage to gold.
Fucking Christ! What kind of a neighbor hood do you live in?- you’ve got buglers breaking in?! Why worry about chickens waking you up when there could be a bugler lurking about. 😉
I live in the Mission in San Francisco, and although no one’s ever broken into my house, I had a homeless person living in my car for a while, menstruating on my upholstery and whatnot. All I’m saying is that I’ve learned to not rule out the possibility of someone invading my space and fucking shit up.
And yeah, their coops need to be 20 feet away from windows and doors (at least here; I”m sure other cities have other standards). The beauty of the SF backyard is that a lot of houses are built on a higher level than their yard, so doors and windows are far away from the chicken shit. Ours is probably less than 20 feet from the foundation of the house, but it doesn’t matter.
I traded my flat in the city for a cabin with chickens in New Mexico for a few months and I grew to really love those birds. Chickens not only lay eggs and provide low-maintenance friendship, they are excellent spider killers. I’d let a few of them in the cabin every week or so to eat the unseen crawly things that lived under the furniture and in the corners. On Sundays I would make pancakes for them. Good times.