When I tell people I keep chickens in my backyard in Brooklyn, NY most people think it’s cool or interesting. There are some who are visibly horrified. No doubt they think I have a smelly poop-filled yard. Visions of Dorothea Lange photos during the Great Depression fill their heads. Since they usually aren’t interested in visiting, I get to show my more open-minded friends and acquaintances.
- I’ve always been interested in composting and gardening. Chicken manure is one of the best sources of nitrogen for the garden.
- I started to think about buying locally grown produce. Last summer I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In a nutshell, she and her family decide to try and grow most of their food for one year. What they couldn’t grow or raise themselves, they wanted to know the farmers who did. It’s a fascinating story that involves the whole family. The youngest daughter decides to keep chickens and sell their eggs to pay for their feed. I found that part very endearing. There’s also a hilarious part about raising heirloom turkeys and trying to unravel the mysteries of turkey sex. The reason it’s a mystery is because almost nobody breeds turkeys anymore. They artificially inseminate the birds and then hatch the eggs in an incubator. Their mothering instincts are bred out of them. I found this disturbing, which led me to read the next book.
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. This book is about the industrialization of the food supply in America. There is a wonderful description of Polyface farm and Joel Salatin who runs it. The way he raises animals to work in harmony with each other. For instance, he puts chickens in the field 3 days after his cows have moved out of it. Why does he do this? Well, flies have laid eggs in the cow flops and have hatched into maggots. The maggots are nice and fat (but not ready to fly yet) after a few days, which is just the way chickens like them. They wolf them down, which effectively keeps the fly population in check. If you’ve ever spent time around cows, you’ll know that there area always zillions of flies. The description of how fabulous his truly free-range eggs taste got my curiosity. Free-range is a term that has been stretched by the government to mean almost nothing. Having “access to the outdoors” qualifies your chickens as free-range. Never-mind that the outdoors is a paved lot.
- I read that chickens like to eat mosquitoes, which a a huge nuisance here in Brooklyn.
- I fell in love with the blue/green eggs of the Aracauna/Ameraucana hens, and the crazy pom pom hairdoos of the Polish hens.
Araucana hen
Buff-colored Polish hen
- I seem to like to find interests that make my husband shake his head and sigh. Ask him about the fruit flies in our worm compost bin (that was in the kitchen!)
- I found out that I could have 3 day-old chicks shipped through the mail to my door. Who could resist this?
Day-old chicks in their shipping box
