If you live in a suburban area, you may still be ...Read More. Typical backyard hens can live from eight to ten years, so raising chickens is not a short-term job. Increasingly, people are finding the benefits of raising their own chickens worth the small hassle and expenses involved. It’s a stress-lowering chemical in your body that’s unleashed when you hug someone you love, or even pet your dog or cat. Chickens create excellent fertilizer. Even without a rooster crowing early in the morning, chickens still can make noise that might bother someone else. Benefits & Challenges of Raising Chickens in Urban Areas, Copyright © 2018 Chicken Whisperer Magazine | All Rights Reserved |, Website Design and Development by Blue Frog Marketing. That is often not the case today. Just make sure to teach kids to always wash their hands after handling or caring for chickens to minimize the risk of Salmonella infection. Heritage-breed city chickens as an extinction-prevention task force. And they make enough of it that you will probably never have to bring offsite compost home again, depending on … We’ve entertained the idea of putting up a pen for chickens, making a chicken coup in our yard, but can’t seem to get past one minor little detail – he says NO to raising them, and I say YES. Did you know that just 3 backyard hens can supply a family of 4 with all the antibiotic and pesticide free eggs they need? Chicken keepers are usually happy to give a tour of their set up and talk about their chickens (trust me, chicken keepers LOVE to talk about their chickens). As an agrarian, hard working, family-oriented community it only makes sense that Commerce City should embrace the practice of urban backyard chickens! Believe it or not, Foreman says, there are actually hens employed as therapy chickens! It’s a GIVEAWAY! In generations past, families often had a connection to the family farm. By Barbara Kilarski – Can be picked up for under $10.00, Living with Chickens: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Backyard Flock You don't have to take them out for daily walks and buy them toys and teach them tricks. Check out these 2 books which can be purchased for amazingly cheap prices. With neighbors issues, predators, and the law to deal with, we will walk you through getting started taking care of chickens in the city! Your email address will not be published. Guide to Raising Chickens- Benefits of Raising Chickens. Organic Eggs versus Store Bought – what a difference an egg makes. You will most likely end up taking your birds to a local butcher shop and letting them do the dirty work—and hefting those costs, as well. Instead of letting those scraps go to waste, you can feed them to your chickens. Because factory-farm operations prefer pretty much the same type of high-volume laying breeds (or in the case of meat, heavy, fast-growing meat birds), the preservation of rare, heritage breeds is threatened. Luckily, chicken poo can be composted, aged, and eventually added to the garden. While there are several benefits to having your own chickens, raising chickens inside city limits can be challenging, too. ii This brief addresses these issues in order for individuals and municipalities to benefit from the allowance of backyard chickens. If you decide to raise your own flock, you will gain access to all the amazing benefits that raising chickens provides – even if you live in the heart of a metropolitan area. Chicken manure can be composted and added to the soil of your garden, flowers, trees, shrubs, and lawns. If you order baby chicks to raise, you can request no male birds, but sometimes one will accidentally slip through the cracks. Whether it’s overflow from your fruit or vegetable garden or leftover table scraps … However, be sure to also feed your flock a proper chicken feed so they still get the nutrition they need, and treats and table scraps should not exceed 10 percent of their daily ration, so they shouldn’t amount to more than one to two teaspoons per bird per day. Let them loose and they will scratch and dig your garden beds. Manure from chickens and other poultry is an excellent source of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphate. Their natural scratching and digging tendencies serve them well and can help you create top-notch garden beds. City dwelling chickens are all the rage! I’m dedicated to making changes in my life for a healthier lifestyle and am hoping to inspire you to do the same. They also love to eat many weeds, and serve as post-harvest garden bed gleaners, potentially making your work as a gardener very, very easy. With next-door neighbor concerns, predators, and the law to handle, we will discuss with you through starting raising chickens in the city!Download How To Raise Backyard Chickens for Self Sufficiency and Extra Income There was a time when chickens were just seen pecking and scratching in the […] There are plenty of reasons to consider raising chickens in urban locations. Ever hear of oxytocin, the love hormone? Dual-purpose chickens are both good producers of meat and eggs. Here are some of them: Chickens are low-maintenance pets. Although many city ordinances today allow residents to raise chickens, many of them stipulate that roosters are forbidden. Poultry pest patrols can be applied to flower and vegetable gardens. - Lush Lawn Chicken poop is … Kids can easily learn safety and careful handling. I hope you enjoy the read – cheers to your health . Their eggs are fresh, delicious and nutritious ; They provide chemical-free bug and weed control in your garden It’s important to supervise small kids when they are handling baby chicks especially, so the chicks don’t get dropped or injured, and teaching kids to handle the chickens gently, not to chase them, how to pick up an adult hen, and so on, teaches empathy and compassion. But these backyard hens not only provide high-quality eggs, but also serve as master gardeners, organic pest exterminators, and unpaid city workers. Raising chickens in the city is very possible with the right preparation and care. For more information on raising chickens, subscribe to Chicken Whisperer Magazine. Another Benefit of Our Feathered Friends. Predation. If you eat, sometimes you will end up having leftover kitchen scraps. However, if your kids are very young, make sure that they are gentle with the birds, like with any animal. (OK, they’re not completely noise-free, but hens sure do make cute noises, adding entertainment value for the whole family!). The idea is that you feed your chickens kitchen scraps, they poop out a nitrogen-rich fertilizer, and you compost it with leaves and other untreated yard waste. The average consumer is at least three generations removed from the farm, so the majority of people do not have an understanding of where their food comes from. Well, chickens actually eat bugs. You also learn about the cycle of life and death. Just a heads up my friends. Chickens require three to four square feet of space apiece in a coop and at least the same amount of space in a run. Chickens make your compost. The soil in a garden is always loosing nutrients as plants fruits and veggies … Every couple weeks my generous neighbor delights us with 2 cartons of eggs straight from his coup, and when I open the cartons and see the assortment of colors, it always reminds me of Easter. The health of our food is tied directly to the health of our soil. Just make sure you compost the chicken manure before putting it directly on plants. City officials expect to recover a significant portion of the $600,000 a year the city spends on dealing with this type of household “trash.” According to Foreman, a single chicken can biorecycle about seven pounds of food residuals in a month. Even though chickens present a great opportunity to teach people about food sources, you may also have neighbors who just aren’t fond of chickens. That may mean paying for a permit, meeting housing and/or fencing requirements, undergoing inspections, etc. And chickens perform multiple functions that can turn parts of our boring old yards into fertile garden patches. By simply fencing your backyard or providing a fenced-in run area for chickens, you can offer your birds a free-range lifestyle. If your set on having your own chickens, but need some information on small flocks and housing them, there are two books out that can answer your questions. Chickens love to eat protein-packed insects, which works out well because they can serve as the organic pest-cleanup crew in your garden and devour ticks on your property. If that is the case, as soon as you realize you have a rooster, you’ll need to either find him a new home or butcher him for meat. And while there are many reasons why you should, I’m going to focus on the 5 Benefits Of Raising  Chickens | Especially In The City. As the Gidneys have learned, keeping a small flock of chickens in your backyard has many benefits, from supplying you with fresh, healthy eggs from well-cared-for animals, to giving you great fertilizer for gardening, to providing lively pets—as well as being part of the drive to local, sustainable food systems. Happy, healthy hens produce nutrient-dense, healthy eggs. Keep Chickens! Urbanites seeking a simpler way of life can bring a little bit of the country to the city by starting their own flock of chickens. Where “Power to the Poultry” is much more then a catchy tag line, Chicken Whisperer Magazine is a publication and multimedia asset dedicated to the passionate culture of chicken lovers everywhere. But I can tell you about the benefits of organic verses store bought. What a great guy my neighbor is. You're not alone. The Chickens Enjoy an Enclosed Free-Range Space. Commerce City restricts residents from raising chickens in their backyards. Just do what you can to make chickens seem like a mutually beneficial endeavor. Bring some eggs to your neighbors or allow their kids to feed the chickens. Keeping backyard birds is easier than you might think. Because they get exercise, they’re not as fat. These animals offer many benefits for your home that include reducing food and yard waste, providing organic eggs or honey, minimizing backyard insects and pests, and producing fertilizer for your garden. Developing a flock of this type is especially beneficial for urban preppers who may be limited on the number of poultry birds that can be kept for either legal or space reasons, or both. Raising chickens in the city can be challenging. If just 2,000 households raise three hens, it could divert 252 tons of waste from landfills annually. Raising backyard chickens is becoming an increasingly popular hobby in the United States—and for good reason! Like any animal, chickens require some space, so take that into consideration if your yard space is already limited. Backyard hens are especially vulnerable to predation. So why not raise your own chickens? That equates to you eating good nutritious eggs as well. Here are some of the most common reasons to raise chickens: Chickens are easy and inexpensive to maintain (when compared to most other pets—see what our members say in this poll: Chicken Keeping—easier, same or harder than dogs/cats?) #2. Thank you, Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces, KALE IS KING: 5 Things You Should Know About Kale. But if you live in the city and are not sure about raising chickens because of your yard space, think again. We evolved eating animals which feed on wild fare, and eating them is probably healthier for us than eating factory farm prisoners raised on grain, garbage, arsenic, and antibiotics. Trees and other plants love it, too. Urban chickens as soil savers. Chicken manure contains a good deal of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – the primary ingredients in lawn and garden fertilizers. Benefits of Raising Chickens Organic Fertilizer. Foreman concludes that the most economic and politically compelling reason to keep hens is to recycle food and yard waste, therefore keeping it out of landfills as it composts into an invaluable organic soil builder for your garden. With that being said, here are the 5 REASONS TO RAISE CHICKENS IN THE CITY, compliments of Patrician Foreman, author of City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-reyclers, and Local Food Producers and Organic Gardening. If your chickens are seen as the source of these pests, neighbors may complain. Improved Nutrition Animals evolved eating a wide variety of plants and/or animals. We all have different reasons for doing things, however when it comes to raising your own chickens, its almost always related to being self sufficient. You have to gather the eggs every day, make sure they have plenty of food and water, and clean the coop on a regular basis. Thanks for stopping by my site. Raising chickens is a commitment. And anyone who has raised backyard chickens can probably contend the same effect holds true for hens.

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