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1: Why Keep Backyard Chickens?

Since you’re holding this book in your hands, you’re likely already aware of the chicken revolution taking place in backyards across the country. Homeowners, renters, families, couples, college graduates, nine-to-fivers, aspiring farmers, artisans, and countless others are cramming nest boxes onto balconies and turning idle potting sheds into chicken coops. Each year, more and more cities are overturning ordinances and allowing chickens to come home to roost within their limits. There’s no doubt about it: There’s a bona fide chicken craze underway.

Who Is the Backyard Chicken?

The Why of keeping chickens is probably better answered by asking the Who question. Who is the chicken? This humble ground fowl, the most iconic of American farm symbols, wears many hats, whether she lives on 50 sprawling acres (20 ha) in the country or in a 50 sq. ft. (4.6 sq. m) backyard in the suburbs. She was actually once rather common in American homes. Most families kept a few laying hens until the convenience of supermarket eggs simplified the householder’s duties, and small flocks were replaced by Big Agriculture. The chicken is, in fact, the cornerstone of any good permaculture system, and she is becoming the very foundation of awakening our flawed food system. By learning a bit about who she is, you may come to understand why so many are becoming smitten with her endearing ways.

A Prehistoric Being

Gallus gallus domesticus is first and foremost a bird. More specifically, she is part of a class of ground fowl that includes other domesticated poultry such as turkeys. Likely descended from the Asiatic red jungle fowl, recent evidence suggests that she is the infamous tyrannosaur’s most closely living relative alive today.

This would be reason enough for me to keep chickens (tiny T Rex roaming in my backyard? Sign me up!), but it’s probably not convincing enough for most. Let’s see what else she can do.

Get Hooked on Breakfast

Homegrown eggs are not just any eggs—they are the healthiest, freshest, tastiest ones you will ever have, hands down. The vast majority of chicken keepers start a flock for these incredible eggs, and it’s no wonder. The eggs laid from backyard flocks that forage for part of their diet are higher in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins A and E, and beta-carotene than store-bought eggs. They’re also higher in folate (the naturally derived version of folic acid) and vitamin B₁₂. Pastured eggs are lower in saturated fats than their supermarket counterpart and have nearly half the cholesterol. They are humanely sourced, since you are raising the chickens yourself, and they are as local as it can possibly get.

All female chickens lay eggs, but through generations of selective breeding, breeders have homed in on birds that lay exceptionally well, creating the great laying breeds we have today. Some breeds are veritable egg-laying machines, cranking out an egg or so a day for the first year or two, with the frequency dwindling as the hen gets older. Among this class of workhorses are docile birds that have great personalities and make wonderful family pets. Despite some hens being better layers than others, all hens lay eggs with varying frequency—and contrary to some misconceptions, hens do not need a rooster to lay eggs (but you will need a rooster if you want the eggs to be fertilized for hatching). Under the proper conditions and with dark, dry, soft, and cozy nest boxes, your chickens will continue to lay eggs well into their twilight years.

This is where you’ll get hooked. Warm eggs, freshly laid and sourced straight from your backyard, back deck, or patio cannot be beat by any measure of the imagination. Watching your hens lay their first eggs is nothing short of witnessing the miracle of life. But tasting them? Well, that can be downright heavenly.

Keeping chickens will give you fresh eggs that are more nutritious and have less cholesterol and saturated fat than store-bought.

Better Eggs, Fewer Bugs (the Natural Way)

Some large-scale egg producers like to tout that their hens are “fed a vegetarian diet only” on their cartons’ packaging, but in reality, chickens are anything but vegetarians. They are, in fact, ruthless hunters, with worms, grubs, and other insects high on their list of menu choices. Chickens will even chase and kill small rodents and snakes if given the opportunity. They really are like tiny dinosaurs. More common, though, is their ability to forage on grass, in gardens, and in pastures for their choice of seeds, greens, and bugs. This variety in diet is what contributes to saffron-colored yolks and those ultra-nutritious eggs mentioned earlier. Simply put, variety in your birds’ diet converts to nutritional variety in your eggs. The healthier your birds are, the healthier your eggs will be.

Nutritious eggs aren’t the only reason to let your birds range freely, though. When left to their own devices, chickens will scratch and peck at the earth until they have foraged for every last kind of bug—especially garden pests, such as slugs, Japanese beetles, cabbage worms, and those that carry diseases, like the common deer tick. Even mosquitoes make the list. Just your chickens’ presence around your home will keep pests such as mice, rats, and snakes at bay. And they do all of this without the use of harsh chemicals, pesticides, or toxins. Chickens are, without debate, the most efficient, natural insect and pest control there is.

The Great Recycler

We know that chickens will eat just about anything, and as such keeping chickens means you have a reliable team of enthusiastic garbage disposals at the ready. Your flock will contentedly gobble up everything from cooking scraps and kitchen leftovers to grass clippings and spent garden plants. While turning over your compost piles, they’ll eat any vegetation, fruits, or vegetables that aren’t too far past their prime. Chickens aren’t very picky, but, because no creature is infallible, there are, of course, some toxic foods and poisonous plants that can be harmful to chickens. We’ll cover those, and more on food and nutrition, in chapter 7.

The Fertilizer and Garden Helper

The chicken is an excellent producer of chemical-free, organic fertilizer. Long past her reproductive prime, a chicken will continue to produce manure in copious amounts (for better or worse), even when she has slowed down laying eggs. High in phosphorus and potassium, but especially in nitrogen—the critical elements for healthy, fertile garden soil—chicken waste is one of the most perfect manures of the animal kingdom. It is easy to harvest from the coop for use in composting, and your flock will naturally spread it on the land as they range freely or forage in movable coops.

Chickens will also happily aerate your compost pile through their pecking and scratching. Just make sure they have access to it and that there are no dangerous chemicals or garden waste that have been treated with pesticides, fungicides, or synthetic fertilizers in it. Not only are these dangerous for your birds, but these toxins could also pass through their bodies, into their eggs, and into your breakfast.

Chickens make quick work of clearing weeds and grasses if you need bare soil for a garden space or other project. Just fence your birds in that spot for a week or more, and they’ll happily demolish any greens, leaving behind aerated, fertilized, and gently tilled topsoil ready for planting.

Your Insurance Policy

Keeping your own flock of laying hens means you have your very own sustainable and reliable source of food, no matter what may be happening in the larger food or transportation industries. Our food travels far and wide to get to us; any disruption to the trucking industry can mean no food on marketplace shelves. Droughts, cold winters, or heat waves can mean food shortages or skyrocketing prices, too. Despite product recalls or salmonella outbreaks, for example, you know you can rely on a safe source of food for your family, direct from your own backyard. With a substantial flock of laying hens, you may even have a source of income from selling eggs to friends and neighbors.

The Low-Maintenance Pal

We all have one. Someone we’re so comfortable being around that we can really be ourselves—no pretenses, no judgments. The chicken is that kind of friend.

Sure, she may be flighty and unpredictable at times, but mostly she’s funny, chatty, quirky, and endlessly entertaining. One of my favorite ways to spend a lazy summer evening is in the backyard, cool drink in hand, watching my flock peck around the yard, perch on my lawn chair arms, investigate my flip-flopped toes, or coo when they find something tasty in the grass. Each bird has a distinct character, and it shows. Each has a distinct personality, status in the group’s pecking order, food preferences, roosting space, favorite dust-bathing spot or nesting box, and so much more.

If you don’t care for long walks, litter boxes, or dog parks, you’ve found the perfect pet. An entire flock of hens is easier to care for than a single housecat, and they’re far less temperamental. With certain methods and styles of housing, coop maintenance can be a breeze. Daily watering and feeding are quick and easy, and when left to forage most of the day, a flock can easily find much of its food on its own. Once you make the initial investment, a flock’s upkeep is inexpensive and doesn’t take much time at all. By taking preventive measures and paying attention to cleanliness, chickens will rarely fall ill and can remain spunky, healthy, animal friends for up to ten years or more.

This Black Australorp forages in a compost pile. When properly composted, chicken droppings make a great addition to your garden.

The Educator

The chicken reminds us that our food is a living thing. The animal that produced that egg, meat, or dairy product was a living creature. The plant that grew the produce on your plate lived in soil and swelled under the sun (unless it was grown hydroponically or in a greenhouse). These food products came from living things that were grown, raised, harvested, and cared for by other living things—people, farmers.

This may seem obvious, but too many of us have lost touch with the origins of our food. In our busy day-to-day lives, it is easy to disconnect from these basics. The chicken can remind those of us who have forgotten and teach those of us who are just learning.

The chicken is the mascot for the back-to-the-land movement for good reason. She teaches us that food is precious and should not be mass-produced. Mass-produced food and food products lack nutrients, integrity, and heart and soul. Recent recalls of factory-farmed eggs have shed light on an industry stealthily growing ominously right under our collective noses. The evidence is contained in the white foam cartons stacked beneath fluorescent lights on the grocery store shelves. The hens that laid those eggs were crammed six or seven to a cage the size of a standard sheet of paper, their beaks trimmed to keep them from cannibalizing their compatriots in the cramped quarters where they pass their lives. Once “spent,” they are trucked off to become broth or soup for another industry that considers this living being a “product.”

Chicken Chatter

Sayings from folklore have been passed from one generation to the next for thousands of years. Many have a certain rhythm and are most often rooted in explanations of things happening in the natural world. Despite centuries of change, many of these, like the familiar chicken sayings below, remain in the modern lexicon.

As scarce as hen’s teeth: to be difficult or impossible to find; a rarity.

Mother hen: a matronly mother figure.

Nest egg: to save a bit of money over time.

Chicken scratch: a small amount of money.

Henpecked: to be picked on or nagged.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: a warning against investing all prospects or resources into one venture at the risk of losing everything.

To be chicken: to be afraid or cowardly.

Walking on eggshells: the need to be careful or tread lightly around the feelings of another.

Something to crow about: to have exciting news to share.

Have egg on your face: to be caught in a lie; to be guilty of a shameful act.

Fly the coop: to have left home; to be gone.

Like a chicken with its head cut off: to have no direction; to flail, literally or figuratively.

Made from scratch: handmade; to create something using raw materials.

Empty nest syndrome: a feeling of sadness, loneliness, or melancholy after grown children leave home.

To brood over: to worry or fret over a problem or situation.

No spring chicken: an old, tired person.

Shake a tail feather: to get a move on; hurry up.

To ruffle a few feathers: to annoy some people when making changes or improvements.

Birds of a feather flock together: those with similar personalities or attributes befriend and spend time with one another.

Not all it’s cracked up to be: when a person, thing, or event does not live up to expectations, reputation, or popular hype; a disappointment.

As if that weren’t reason enough to bring your dollar closer to home, those eggs are not what they could be. Without variation in their diet, eggs from factory-farmed hens plummet in heart-healthy omega fatty acids and soar in “bad” cholesterol. And because these eggs have to travel far and wide to get to thousands of supermarkets across the country, they are often several weeks to a month old by the time they reach your shopping cart.

Keeping backyard chickens offers a valuable opportunity for education—not just your own but also for your children, partner, friends, family, neighbors, and greater community—about the realities of factory farming and the industry we’ve been inadvertently supporting with our dollars. Keeping backyard chickens ensures that your birds are cared for in a humane and respectful way and that they live dignified lives, free from unnecessary suffering. In turn, you’ll be rewarded with the healthiest eggs available. Erect a beautiful coop that you’re proud of and invite the neighborhood over for a coop-warming party. Or, take your kid’s pet chicken to his class’s show-and-tell day and empower him to educate his peers. Surprisingly, there are many who just don’t know that a chicken lays an egg and that an egg is not just a manufactured food product that turns up on grocery store shelves. Or, that it’s not a dairy product. See? As a culture, we have collectively forgotten some of these very basic tenets of living.

Through your chicken keeping, you can educate a community about where their food comes from. You and your family can show friends and neighbors that chickens can be respectfully cared for, live happy lives, and still provide you with more eggs than you can eat.

Who Is the Chicken Keeper?

So, that’s the chicken. But who is the chicken keeper?

The answer is simple: anyone.

The chicken keeper is someone who values sustainable living, likes good food, wants to take control of his or her food sources and personal health, and enjoys the company and entertainment of chickens. The chicken keeper is someone who has a bit of outdoor space to spare for a flock (they’re social animals, so they need companions—a bare minimum of three chickens is best). The chicken keeper is someone who has time for quick daily feeding and watering, basic monthly maintenance, and a yearly coop clean. The chicken keeper doesn’t mind occasionally getting his or her hands dirty and doesn’t mind sharing garden space with a few quirky birds.

Raising chickens can be fun and very rewarding, too. They are easy to look after, don’t take up much room, and provide a steady supply of fresh, nutritious eggs.