The Very Local Egg –
Why Not Raise Some Backyard Hens

I would like to suggest that you consider keeping a few backyard hens. It’s actually a lot easier to keep a few hens in the city or suburbs than one might think. Chickens fit well with busy lifestyles and in small yards. They are interesting, beautiful, fun and will provide you with fresh healthy eggs and a very close connection between you and those eggs they produce for you to eat.

In order to help you, I thought I’d list a few of the benefits of keeping chickens. I’m sure there are other benefits that I haven’t thought of, but here are some to start you off.

Chickens lay eggs.   This is the most obvious benefit of course. Hens start to lay when they about 4 or 5 months old and can continue for years. They don’t need a rooster to enable or encourage them to lay eggs. This is good because your neighbors will probably think your hens are interesting, but may not want to live close to a rooster who might crow at any time of the day or night. The eggs that your hens lay will be fresher, taste better, and probably have a better omega ratio than almost any egg produced commercially.  

Hens lay more eggs when the daylight is longer. During spring and summer and into fall each hen can lay 6 eggs a week. For a small backyard urban flock, I would recommend two, three or four hens. Chickens are flock animals and one chicken alone may not be happy. This small number of hens will lay one to two dozen eggs a week without requiring a lot of land.

Chickens require little space.  Many commercial egg farms keep hens in cages continually with less than one square foot of space per hen. In my opinion that is cruel. It’s one of the reasons I keep hens, so I can do it differently. A general rule of thumb for a backyard flock is 4 square feet of space per hen in their house, usually called a coop, and 10 square feet of space in an outdoor run. I would probably give hens a little more space in a run for a flock as small as 2-4 hens. Many people also ‘pasture’ their hens, often letting them outside of their run or coop to forage in the backyard or garden. Chickens can also be kept in movable pens called chicken tractors.  The pens can be moved across the yard to different areas to eat insects and grass. This is good for insect control, and hens will enjoy ranging over wider areas than their pen.

Chickens are inexpensive to keep.  A baby chick costs a few dollars, and hens ready to lay can be purchased for less than $20 each in small quantities. Chicken feed for laying hens can be purchased for about $11 per 50 lb bag or somewhat more in smaller quantities in the greater Boston area. A fifty lb. bag can last a couple of  hens a few months, longer if you feed them other things and let them forage for insects and greens, Laying chickens also needs calcium in the form of ground oyster shell or other calcium source. A 50 lb bag will cost about $10 and last practically forever. Housing can be as simple as a coop built from scrap lumber, an old dog house or rabbit hutch, or a sectioned off area of your garden shed or garage. Some people get very creative and elaborate in building a chicken coops and create whimsical or beautiful garden focal points or even miniature replicas of their own home.

Chickens are easy care for.  Chickens need access to food and water and safe exercise space. It takes only a few short minutes to feed them and collect the eggs, and another few minutes to put their used bedding in the compost bin once a week.

Chickens are outdoor animals. As long as there are no drafts in their coop, the heavier breed chickens can live in unheated outdoor coops in New England all year long. Because chickens are fun and relaxing to watch, they will give family members a reason to be outside sitting in the yard instead in front of the television.

Chickens have simple feeding requirements. Chickens are omnivores. They can eat inexpensive chicken feed that’s been formulated for their nutritional needs.  They also really enjoy food leftovers, fruit and vegetable peels, stale bread, weeds, grass and bugs. There’s no need to feel guilty about throwing out the milk that your kids leave in their cereal bowls or most anything else left on their plates. Your chickens will be more than happy to eat it. They will even eat eggshells and recycle the calcium that they used in producing the shell initially into producing another egg.

Chickens can be left alone for long weekends (or even longer). Although chicken are enjoyable and fascinating to watch, they have no need for any emotional connection with humans. As long as their needs for food, water, space and safety are met, no chicken owner need have the least bit of guilt about leaving them all day or even days at a time. Although chicken do not need humans for company they do recognize different people, especially the ones that bring them their food.

Chickens produce manure. If you didn’t think this was a benefit, you’re probably not a gardener. Find a gardener and maybe you can get someone to clean out your coop for you in exchange for the used bedding for their compost bin

For those who might have some distant memory of what a chicken farm might have smelled like, be assured, a few chickens in a backyard coop with clean bedding will not smell bad. The manure contains nitrogen in the form of ammonia. The pine shavings provide carbon. When there is sufficient carbon in the form of clean wood shavings, there will be no bad smells.

Chickens produce very local food. There is no food more local than the eggs that you walk out to your backyard to collect. You will know where your eggs came from. Your children or neighborhood children will also learn where eggs come from. Being more knowledgeable about our food chain benefits both animals and humans. If national food supplies are ever disrupted, your chickens will go right on producing eggs for you each day.

Chickens can speed up composting. If you compost your food waste, then you will have compost much faster than in the past. This is because by feeding your food scraps to your chickens, you are in effect running them through the chickens before they go into your compost pile. It will be compost all the faster.

In the fall I rake the leaves that fall into my yard into a big pile in the chicken run. By spring the leaves are been mostly broken done by the chickens who constantly scratch among them looking for insects in the unfrozen grown below the leaf pile. When spring comes the leaves have decomposed a lot more that they would have otherwise.

Chickens connect you with part of your food supply.  Keeping laying hens means that you get to eat eggs that you raised yourself. This connects both children and adults to their food in a way that can be very satisfying and rewarding.

Final Note Many people wonder whether keeping hens is allowed where they live. Local ordinances vary considerably. You will need to investigate in your own city or town to determine local ordinances.

Even more important is that you talk with your neighbors and make sure they are OK with the idea. Many people love the idea, but others are not so sure because they feel it might create noise or smell. A little up front discussion and education may go a long way in insuring that things will go smoothly.

Where You Can Find More Information

Backyard Chicken Class
Codman Community Farm in Lincoln MA will be giving a class this spring starting April 7th called Backyard Chickens. For more info call 781-259-0456 or email codmanfarm@comcast.net. 
Note: Codman Farm is accessible by commuter rail.

Backyard Chicken Websites
www.backyardchickens.com
http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/favelinks.html

Questions for the Author
Email joanteebagy@yahoo.com

Joan Teebagy lives in Belmont, where she writes software, keeps hens and writes the blog Urban Agrarian.