Keep Chickens!: Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces (19 page)

Purple clouds streak across the eastern sky as the sun rises behind Mount Hood. Below the dozing volcano, a city erupts from sleep to wakefulness in a startled fit. Automatic coffee brewers click into action; electric razors slide across thousands of chins; school bus brakes squeal in protest at every single stop. It is morning, and the city of Portland is waking up.

The Girls and I are still asleep. We won’t awaken for another hour (lucky us). Finally, my automatic coffee pot ticks on. When I hear the last garble of steam, I arise. The Girls don’t plunk down from their perch until they hear me clank around the kitchen, trying to pour coffee in my cup and not on my toes.

I take the cup and go into the laundry room. I can see the backyard and into the chicken coop from the side window. Sipping hot coffee, I absently watch the Girls. For chickens, they are late risers and slow starters. They’re standing in the coop now, lazily preening, getting ready for the day. Whoopee hears me set my cup on the windowsill and stops preening. A beady eye turns up and locks with my eyes. A dim recognition goes off in her bird brain, and she realizes it is me. She steps over to the coop door and pushes against it with her chicken breast. The door is locked. It always is. She always tries.

Whoopee starts to pace by the coop door. The other two Girls have discontinued their morning ablutions and joined her. I look down at my flock and smile. They look up at me and hope I’ll feed them. They seem not to notice the giant bin full of chicken feed hanging behind them. They keep looking up, six purportedly starving eyes. I leave the window and head into the kitchen to make my breakfast. If the Girls knew, they would be furious.

As I’m working at my desk, a disgruntled clucking cracks the mid-morning quiet. I turn on Chick TV to see what is going on. Camera 1: Whoopee still by the coop door, scratching in the dirt and kicking straw into the watering tray. Camera 2: No subjects. Camera 3: The source of all that clucking.

Lucy, the early layer, is trying to sit quietly in a nest box. Zsa Zsa harasses Lucy by standing on the lip of the adjacent nest box, hovering in Lucy’s personal space. Despite having access to three cozy nest boxes, the Girls all favor the box nearest to the henhouse door. Zsa Zsa is trying to horn in on Lucy’s space, and Lucy is clucking mad. As Zsa Zsa blithely harangues her, Lucy is making a horrid noise that is closer to a banshee screeching than a chicken clucking. Being a solitary type myself, I feel bad for Lucy, so I go to the back room again and tap on the window. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, Zsa Zsa hears the tap and runs full speed out the henhouse door and to the coop door. Four beady eyes look up with as much hope as a chicken can summon. Sorry Girls, no snacks just yet.

A little while later, Lucy is clucking again. This time, the self-satisfied cluck of an egg well laid. I toggle to Chick TV and see that Zsa Zsa is now sitting in the favorite nest box. I’ll tune in later for the results.

While making lunch and watching the last few minutes of the noon news, I hear excited clucking coming from you-know-where. I peer out the back window, careful to keep a low profile. Whoopee is still standing by the coop door, clucking and cawing. This is obviously a ploy to make me feel sorry for her and let her out. It works. I go out back and into the coop and open the back door to the hen compound. Behind the henhouse is the rest of my once-tawdry side yard, now home to these three urban chickens. The Girls tumble out behind me and immediately start to dig in the dirt and peck up bugs. Low, satisfied coo-clucks rise from the Girls’ happy beaks. For now, they’re happy. They are almost always happy.

Perhaps too happy. I had almost finished my work later that day when the unmistakably flustered high-speed clucking of an extremely disturbed chicken pierced the dull, late afternoon air. Chicken alarm. Something’s going on behind the coop in the run. I quickly dashed to the window overlooking the run, expecting to see a cat, a raccoon, something spooking the hens. Survey up; survey down. No cat, no ’coon, but something’s not right. Something moves in the neighbor’s yard. I look up, then blink twice to make sure my eyes are working correctly. Zsa Zsa is in the neighbor’s backyard, strolling around the lawn, eating clover. How on earth did she traverse a 6-foot fence? She can’t fly more than 3 feet in the air, and that’s with a running start. Did she levitate? Did the other Girls give her a couple of legs up?

After retrieving my nomadic chicken and locking her and the others in the coop, I inspected the back run. Aha! Zsa Zsa didn’t levitate, but Zsa Zsa did put her little bird brain to work. She realized — through contemplation or by sheer accident — that if she flew up onto the trash can (where I store her food), she just might be able to clear the fence from there. And so she did. I chuckled. The grass was, in that particular area, greener on the other side. And I moved the trash can.

I walk back into the henhouse. The Girls can’t understand their nonnegotiable incarceration. They quickly forget about whatever their last thought was and crowd around me like groupies as I refill the food cylinder and replenish their water. Whoopee sneaks around my legs and steals a bite from the food tray. The other Girls follow behind her. I take my miniature bamboo rake and scoop together a small pile of droppings. The Girls eat on, nonplussed. I scoop the poop into the old dustbin I keep nearby and drop the droppings into the compost bin. Cycle of life and compost, right before my eyes.

After I toss around a little fresh straw, I check the nest boxes. What a surprise . . . all the Girls laid in the middle nest box today, even Whoopee! Wonder why they ignored their favorite box? Maybe Lucy didn’t think the vibe was right after being heckled by Zsa Zsa. Perhaps the novelty of the newly claimed middle nest box stirred some desire in Whoopee to abandon her lackadaisical laying habits. No matter, I’m happy. Coincidentally, so are the chickens.

The late sun is making the coop hotter than it has been all day. I switch on the fan hanging in the corner and aim it at the Girls. At first, they scatter away, disturbed by the sudden breeze in their coop. By the time I leave the coop, eggs in hand, all three are lying in front of the fan, which gently blows about their feathers. For a moment, they look like three proper ladies on the deck of a fast-moving cruise ship, salt wind lifting up their scarves. The moment passes. Lucy stands up to scratch. Zsa Zsa gets a drink of water. And Whoopee jumps up after me, hoping to make a break for it as I exit the coop. No such luck. No matter. In a minute, the Girls will be happy all over again.

When I mention to other people that I have chickens, eyes and ears perk up, and I often find out about other flocks of city chickens nearby. Urban chicken keepers become noticeably excited during such impromptu “flock talks,” and the people without chickens express first disbelief, then curiosity. Those without are amazed to hear of chickens living in populated cities and suburbs, and those with boast exuberantly to anyone who will listen about their chickens’ eggs, antics, and easy care. If you’re at the home of a chicken keeper, you’ll all troop out to the coop so he or she can show off the birds and the beautful/funky/outrageous coop they live in. There are smiles, lots of smiles. City chicken keepers grin a lot, as if enjoying some private celebration.

I can’t speak for others, but I know why I smile. Of course chickens are fun and provide fresh eggs. But there’s something else. Since I’ve had chickens, a slow but important realization has seeped from the henhouse into my thick head. I realized that the world functions, and always has functioned, in pretty much the same way since time immemorial. The sun has always risen in the east. Rivers have always flowed down mountains. And chickens, with or without the “help” of human caretakers, have always laid eggs. I’ve realized that life is not as complex as we make it out to be. Rather, it’s basically simple. My life — my interaction with the world — can be as simple as I want it to be.

Perhaps that’s why other city chicken keepers are also smiling. With the help of their chickens, they’ve figured this out. Keeping a small flock of chickens, even two chickens, is an enjoyable and rewarding pastime that, incidentally, makes us a little more self-sufficient and brings us closer to the slow, measured beat of nature. Cluck. Cluck.

Chapter 6
suggests some good breeds for a backyard chicken flock. As is the case with other pets, picking chickens is a subjective experience. I based my selection of best backyard chickens on the breeds that lay lots of eggs but aren’t broody, that have relatively calm demeanors, and that come in vivid colors. The chickens in the following photographs aren’t the fanciest breeds but just a few of what I believe are the best breeds to keep in most small spaces as pets and for eggs.

Of course, you can’t have chickens without a coop to keep them in. City chickens, like their country cousins, require basic shelter that is safe, warm, and dry. Many small flock owners build coops that are safe, warm, and dry, then toss in creative and whimsical architectural accessories that make their coops anything
but
basic. For the purposes of inspiration, you’ll find here some photographs of a few of the coolest coops in the country. If you’re like me, they’ll both amuse and surprise, and they’ll trigger new ideas for your own coop construction plans.

Breed
Araucana

Feather Colors:
Wide variety

Eggshell Color:
Blue to army green

Hen Body Weight:
5 lb (2.3 kg)

Comments:
Good layer. Eggs smaller than other breeds listed. Cautious and calm.

Breed
Australorp

Feather Colors:
Black, with a greenish tint

Eggshell Color:
Dark brown

Hen Body Weight:
7 lb (3.2 kg)

Comments:
Good layer. Cautious. Extra hardy in cold weather.