Anyone have Urban chickens as pets?

Some folks up the street from us had some. Perhaps 6 or so. We never knew they were there until the people had an open house before they moved.

Some friends of ours down in Austin, TX have kept a few chickens for a while now and I think it works pretty well for them.

 

I would hate to fall afowl (play on words, there) of any local regulations.
My Pet Chicken: Purchase a Chicken Coop, Baby Chicks, Raise Chickens in Your Backyard, Learn About Chicken Breeds!

 

The nice lady that rescued & fostered my dog has urban chickens, including Mr. Joy, the therapy rooster. Mr. Joy's web site has some good info/links and is pretty amusing to boot.

Coolest Chicken on the web!

Look at the middle of the Nuggets section for urban chicken info & the bottom of the Photo Album for shots of her setup.

She was trying to find a home for a chicken earlier this year and I considered it, but my neighborhood HOA would pitch a fit.

 

I've had a small flock of chickens for years in a rural setting. They are wonderful critters, fun to watch, easy to care for. They will eat your flowers and grass.....right down to nothing. They will eat table and veggie prep scraps.

 

Key West Florida Roosters ..... Need I say more? Oh don't forget the 6 toed Hemingway cats as well! Both are protected animals in Key West.

 

Roosters protected? Every now and then, Key West hires somebody to thin the herd.

 

As you said, no roosters. They can cause a lot of trouble. In a nearby village, a developer built a new condominium complex adjacent to an existing farm. The farmer's teenage son had a few chickens and a rooster. I'm sure he would have happily sold the lot to the developer, but no one asked him. As you could have guessed, the rooster made a lot of early morning noise, and the city folks who purchased the condominiums didn't care for that much country atmosphere, so they complained. The developer, in turn, filed suite to get rid of the rooster. As I said before, I'm sure he could have offered the kid $500 to get rid of the rooster and the problem would have been solved, but no, the developer went directly to court. The entire village, other than the condo owners, rallied to save the rooster. Bumper stickers were printed, people wrote letters to the paper, and generally created a public relations nightmare. The farm was an existing farm and operating well within the law, so the developer lost his case. To get rid of the rooster, the developer eventually bought the farm. Roosters can be vary expensive.

Tom

 

My Dad had a pet chicken. It went everywhere with him, even in to town on the handlebars of his bike. I've seriously thought about an urban farm, and apparently local regulations permit me to keep a certain number of animals according to the size of the yard. I could turn the garage into a little barn for chickens and rabbits and maybe a goat. Let's say the negotiations are continuing.

 

I had two pet chicken in Sri Lanka when I was 6-7 yrs old. They were only a few days old when my dad and I bought them from a farm. They roamed around the house (and the little open air garden we have in the middle of the house). They screamed for 30-60 min everyday after we put them in their sleepbox at night. Both of them got outside without our knowledge and probably got eaten by animals, months apart. The one who stayed the longest responded to the name "Wilhelm" and came screaming towards us when we call it.

 

Its really just an effort to make the U.S. more like Mexico.. There are some parts of L.A. where you think you're in a mountain village in Oaxaca thee are so many farm animals. I'm not talking the family pet "chicken", I mean several or more roosters and hens and burros for crying out loud in the heart of L.A., and not in a zoo or park, on Olivera St.

There's no reason for Urban dwellers to have multiple chickens or (especially) roosters as pets.

 

Think of it as a way to reduce your impact. Fresh, local, organic food that reduces your yard scraps and gives back fertiliser.

 

And......their fertilizer is the best! It is hot and you should compost it for a year, but it contains the best ingredients for your garden.

 

Sounds like a motorcycle gang - ride with the Urban Chickens

 

My mom kept chickens when we were growing up. And rabbits. And a goat and lamb now and then. We hatched chickens in a nursery coop and had baby bunnies every now and then. It was a wonderful way to experience life as a young person. We also had a stocked freezer. I don't know how she did it, but I would not have been able to 'take care' of that detail, but looking back, I know she did it out of necessity.

Several years ago, my neighbor to the back of me had some chickens in the yard. I would hear them out there cluck-clucking in the morning... really liked having them there. Occasionally, you'd get the excited bu-GAAAAA bu-GAAAAAAAA when one of them was laying an egg. Always made me chuckle as I remembered our own chickens doing the same 'announcement' for all to hear.

 

One alone is fine, they will be better pets because YOU are their flock.

Please be careful no neighbor dogs nor cats can get them.

They are wonderful critters. You will enjoy them. I suggest you get hens only. Hen fruit (eggs) are wonderful!

You can put the compost in a black plastic bag or plastic garbage can. If you do, add some water to speed up composting. When it looks like garden soil, it is ready. If you put it in the corner of your yard earth worms will help.