When I bought my first chickens, they were pale yellow puffs that cost
me $1.50 each at a farm and feed store. I put the six peepers in a
cardboard box, and poked holes in the top with a pen. Over the next few
months of pecking, scratching, and shooing away city predators, I
watched my ladies develop from story-book infants into beautifully
plumaged Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, and Red Wyandottes. I was
living in New Orleans at the time, and when Hurricane Katrina hit, my
chickens made 
the cross-country journey with me to Colorado in the back
of an old pick-up truck.
If you're thinking not everyone or everywhere is fit for chicken-rearing, you might not know how versatile these birds can be. But mine had a problem. For months, my laying hens wouldn't lay. I thought it was stress. I sang to my birds and put grit in their food so they would digest better. Eventually, I found a wonderfully informed woman at another feed store who said, “Oh–your hens need calcium.” I bought it, and lo and behold, it worked!
The sight of the first egg, still and perfect in a bed of crushed hay, was a moment of total elation spiced with an unexpected, parental sort of pride. The egg was perfect, smallish, with a skin of speckled tan, and I digested it with the kind of appreciation you'd usually save for rare delicacies like caviar or a fine wine.
Having chickens, even if it's on a cramped porch, is an experience of uncovering mysteries and nurturing something that insists on doing what it will. A chicken is all-at-once a wild thing and a domesticated one, a disappearing act and a shoulder-percher. And raising chickens, which might sound ridiculous to the urban dweller, isn't half as antiquated (or out-of-the-question) as it seems.
Chickens are a major part of American cuisine, but one with which we have become unfortunately out of touch. Chickens were domesticated by the Chinese in 1400 BC, and came to America with the pilgrims. Years later, you called your brother a chicken and put your arms in your pits and squawked around when he wouldn't jump in the pool. You probably ate eggs Benedict, fried chicken, or chicken enchiladas in the recent weeks. But if chickens have been in our collective sub-conscious for so long and almost everyone likes to eat their eggs or meat, why do so few people consider bringing them home to roost?
Maybe what you don't know is that chickens are easy to keep because no one really enforces zoning laws, and you can call them “pets” if you find yourself in a city-farm dispute. Chickens are happy animals, who often act pleased with themselves for small discoveries. Mine escaped from the backyard nerve-wracking morning, wandered around the neighborhood, and showed up hours later at the front door, pecking insistently for their breakfast.
The beauty of these birds is they're easy to raise and usually easy to get a-laying. All you need is some scratch, some sun (16 hours a day for laying hens), some straw, and a willingness to have a connection with what you eat. The benefits: eggs (on average, six a week from one bird), natural pest control, and quality meat. If you're an omnivore like me, who has foregone the grocery store for food I've seen and held, raising chickens means taking part in the longer, less-heard, history of life. And eating some delicious enchiladas.
If you're thinking not everyone or everywhere is fit for chicken-rearing, you might not know how versatile these birds can be. But mine had a problem. For months, my laying hens wouldn't lay. I thought it was stress. I sang to my birds and put grit in their food so they would digest better. Eventually, I found a wonderfully informed woman at another feed store who said, “Oh–your hens need calcium.” I bought it, and lo and behold, it worked!
The sight of the first egg, still and perfect in a bed of crushed hay, was a moment of total elation spiced with an unexpected, parental sort of pride. The egg was perfect, smallish, with a skin of speckled tan, and I digested it with the kind of appreciation you'd usually save for rare delicacies like caviar or a fine wine.
Having chickens, even if it's on a cramped porch, is an experience of uncovering mysteries and nurturing something that insists on doing what it will. A chicken is all-at-once a wild thing and a domesticated one, a disappearing act and a shoulder-percher. And raising chickens, which might sound ridiculous to the urban dweller, isn't half as antiquated (or out-of-the-question) as it seems.
Chickens are a major part of American cuisine, but one with which we have become unfortunately out of touch. Chickens were domesticated by the Chinese in 1400 BC, and came to America with the pilgrims. Years later, you called your brother a chicken and put your arms in your pits and squawked around when he wouldn't jump in the pool. You probably ate eggs Benedict, fried chicken, or chicken enchiladas in the recent weeks. But if chickens have been in our collective sub-conscious for so long and almost everyone likes to eat their eggs or meat, why do so few people consider bringing them home to roost?
Maybe what you don't know is that chickens are easy to keep because no one really enforces zoning laws, and you can call them “pets” if you find yourself in a city-farm dispute. Chickens are happy animals, who often act pleased with themselves for small discoveries. Mine escaped from the backyard nerve-wracking morning, wandered around the neighborhood, and showed up hours later at the front door, pecking insistently for their breakfast.
The beauty of these birds is they're easy to raise and usually easy to get a-laying. All you need is some scratch, some sun (16 hours a day for laying hens), some straw, and a willingness to have a connection with what you eat. The benefits: eggs (on average, six a week from one bird), natural pest control, and quality meat. If you're an omnivore like me, who has foregone the grocery store for food I've seen and held, raising chickens means taking part in the longer, less-heard, history of life. And eating some delicious enchiladas.
—Lana Gibbons