Keep Chickens!: Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces (2 page)

Now I live in Portland, the biggest city in Oregon. Here, “chicken” means
chicken,
the feathered bird of barnyard lore. My neighborhood is the dense, busy southeast quadrant known to locals as “the Southeast.” Despite appearances — the houses tend to have broad front porches and long driveways — homes here are “cozy” (that is, small and very close to neighbors’ windows). The yards are also cozy, having as many as five adjacent backyards. Gardeners need creativity and verdant screens to make these cramped spaces seem private and bountiful.

A stroll down most streets in Portland provides plenty of evidence that gardening is seriously embraced as a community-wide pastime. Front yards of the Southeast bungalows are lush, loved, and crammed full of broadleaf rhododendrons, bamboo, and flowering bulbs like daffodils, tulips, lilies, and dahlias. Folks make the most of their tiny city yards.

Poultry Tribune,
circa 1940.

I was bit by the gardening bug when I bought my house. The 1908 Craftsman bungalow is big on old-fashioned charm and detail and
small
on yard space. Original features include an entry hall with leaded glass windows, doors and ceilings framed in wide, ornate moldings, and doorknobs made of glass, brass, and porcelain. The curb outside features half-dollar-sized iron rings to which inhabitants and visitors to this house tied their horses nearly a hundred years ago. In exchange for all the historic structural detailing, I had to give up yard space: My home has a very small lot, not wide enough for a driveway. Nonetheless, it was and is
my
land. There is nothing so grounding, so “American Dreamish,” as buying a home and doing what you want with it. I felt a greater connection to the land and the structure than I’d ever felt as a lifetime renter, and more home-oriented hobbies than I had imagined could exist began to interest me.

Poultry Tribune,
circa 1940.

Shortly after settling in to my modest bungalow with the postage-stamp–size yard, I got to work. Like my neighbors, I’ve had to landscape efficiently. I’ve managed to cram in raised flower beds, a fern bog, a grass hill, a berry patch, and various trees, shrubs, bamboo, and bulbs. I installed two concrete patios (one covered), two winding stone paths, a birdbath, and a bucket pond with koi and water plants. Once I got started in the garden, there was no stopping. The more I planted, the more I had to tend to, and the more I enjoyed my garden. I had thought that once you plant a garden, you watch it grow from afar (boy, was
I
green!). I found out that gardening is an interactive experience, with the grower right there in the front trenches, the raised beds, and alongside the irrigation hoses.

When I started to garden, I grew only shrubs and flowers. A couple years passed. While lamenting some leaf mold on a rosebush, I had this crazy idea. Perhaps in addition to my plants and flowers, I could grow vegetables. The thought of pressing a dry-looking seed into the ground, watching it sprout, grow, and mature, and eating whatever had grown was exciting to a City Chick. Mom had grown tomatoes, potatoes, and grapes in the garden I grew up in. Now, I thought, it was my turn.

Because the yard is small, I had to make room for a veggie patch. My spouse rented a jackhammer and chiseled away one-third of the uncovered patio. We recycled the concrete pieces into garden stepping stones, put up wood framing to create a raised bed, and hauled in what seemed like a hundred wheelbarrows’ worth of premium soil for the bed. After a couple seasons, I had a small vegetable garden crammed full of fresh herbs, cabbage, eggplant, onions, garlic, tomatoes, squash, green beans, and several varieties of lettuce.

There I was, a City Chick growing and eating my own vegetables right there in the middle of a metropolis. And the best part was that growing fresh veggies, while not particularly difficult, was very rewarding. The more herbs and vegetables I grew, the more empowered I felt to grow others. The jackhammer came home again, and I soon had another patch of dirt in which to grow fresh food. I planted with the passionate fervor of Scarlet O’Hara. Harvests abounded. Tomatoes tumbled from tomato cages; lettuce lined up thick as a lawn; jalapeños jumped off the plants.

As I ate more and more fresh food from my garden, I noticed that I became more and more picky about how food tasted. After all, if I was taking the time to chew it, it had better taste good. I stumbled upon an important concept:
Fresh and organic = good.
Since the prices of certified organic vegetables are higher than the current worth of my retirement stock account, and probably will be for some time, growing my own vegetables is a valuable endeavor.

Without realizing it, I started hearing voices. Voices talking about chickens. My spouse had often told me childhood stories about keeping chickens while growing up in Oakland, California, always speaking fondly of those city hens and their antics. Also, my mother and father never stopped talking about the chickens of their youth. Though I was unaware of it, for years a very strong “chicken vibe” reverberated along my lifeline. In fact, my family was always talking about chickens. Chickens, chickens, chicken talk all the time. The only person not talking chicken was me.

Chickens can become part of your family like any other loved and loving pet.

The Main Rule for keeping urban chickens: No roosters allowed

I never gave this much thought, until One Day.

One Day, while walking in my neighborhood, I was surprised to come upon some chickens. There they were, strutting and digging around in a narrow picket-fenced side yard. It was a serene setting, with irises and azaleas growing in the coop and the colorful chickens in the foreground. Walking on, I saw that their owner had built them a quaint henhouse inside an enclosed run. Metal sculptures were hung near and above the coop, giving it an artsy feel. Something about the sight of those chickens on a city street corner was really cool. And the birds (about four of them) were rather cute, walking about nonchalantly, then bending over with force and precision, beak picking up whatever beady chicken eyes saw crawling through the dirt.

That evening, I was baking and thinking about those chickens. On account of my ravenous sweet tooth and my disappointment with most commercial cakes and sweets, I bake just about every day. As I finished cracking eight eggs into a bowl for a flourless chocolate cake, I had a rich thought: This cake would taste so better with fresh eggs! A neighbor had a small flock down the street. My spouse had had chickens in a dense bedroom community in California. And thanks to Mom and Dad’s nostalgic reminiscences, I had been unknowingly indoctrinated in chicken-speak and knew quite a bit about those birds. Given all this, why couldn’t I have my very own chickens here in Portland?

My next not-so-rhetorical question was “Is it legal to keep chickens in the city?” As I worked at that time as a paralegal, I knew the answer would be found in my city’s municipal code. A municipal code or city code is a city’s codified or statutory governing law. Depending on where you live — a city, town, or township, for example, the codes may also be known as
ordinances, codes of ordinances, regulations, revised municipal codes,
or
general provisions.
Many cities have their city codes posted on the Internet. Portland was no exception. After a few clicks online, I found my city codes and ordinances pertaining to chickens, which told me that within the city limits of Portland, residents can keep up to three hens without a permit. Additional hens could be kept, though a $25 annual permit was required. Also, the city codes had certain restrictions on keeping the coop area away from neighbors’ kitchen windows. The final rule: No roosters allowed. That was okay with me, because I wanted hens for eggs, not for baby chicks.

When I told my spouse I wanted chickens, I expected the usual response to one of my wacky ideas: a slight, wary smile accompanied by that “Oh . . .
right
” look and a sad shaking of the head from side to side. Instead, my spouse grinned broadly, pumped a fist in the air, and shouted, “All right! Chickens!” (Actually, the reaction was somewhat more muted, but positive nonetheless.) After seventeen years, I guess we can still surprise each other.

I surveyed the backyard. This took about a minute. On a 3,300-square-foot lot, there’s not a lot to survey. In nine years, most of the front and back yards were landscaped. The only thing left undone was a narrow, unused side yard that looked rather tawdry in contrast to the rest of the garden. It was choked with weeds, scrap wood, chipped bricks, and bad dirt. (I did say tawdry, right?) It was so messy and needed so much work that I had no choice but to ignore its existence.

Even if that unpromising patch of earth was cleaned up to make room for gardening, sunlight was restricted on that particular side of the house. There wasn’t hope for me to grow much in this area. Before I had started “thinking chicken,” the only appealing option was to completely cement over this side yard and build a shed to store the lawn mower and garden tools. Exciting, huh? Luckily, I had a healthy streak of procrastination running through me. I had done nothing with the side yard for almost ten years. After all, it was a nearly unworkable area. Little did I know that this meant it would be perfect for a coop and a small flock of city chickens.

Keeping in mind the setback requirements of our city code, we planned a relatively spacious, sturdy, covered coop and henhouse. With my spouse’s mental blueprints and amateur knowledge of basic carpentry, the structure slowly rose out of the debris that was once a messy side yard. We worked in our spare time in the evenings and on weekends, and the project took about three weeks. We sunk the main support posts, put up the framing and roof, cut and fit four doors for the coop and henhouse, attached the requisite chicken wire, and painted the entire structure. It took a couple more days to clear out the debris behind the coop and to set up a dry place to store straw and chicken feed.

I had been studying my Murray McMurray Hatchery catalog for months. I could almost see the chicken illustrations in my sleep, and I had about a dozen favorites and alternates already in mind. After the coop and henhouse were up, I called a few local feed stores to see who had baby chicks. Chicks are seasonal in availability; thankfully, it was spring, when they’re most available. We found a store with the breeds we wanted. We got the chicks. Over the summer, we watched them grow up into chickens. Ever since then, we have had fresh eggs almost every day. And my cakes and cookies have never tasted better!

At the time of this writing, I have three big lovely hens: Lucy (a Rhode Island Red), Zsa Zsa (a Barred Plymouth Rock), and Whoopee (an Australorp). I refer to the constituents of my own urban flock collectively as “the Girls.” The Girls joined my family as chicks, I raised them through pullethood (pullets are adolescent hens) into their adult existence, and I will have them until they retire. (“Retirement” for chickens is not necessarily a euphemism for chicken dinner. See
chapter 2
for details.)