At a recent wedding, I ran into some family members from Chicago who were crowing about their latest hobby: keeping chickens.

The main advantage, the family members all agreed, is that the fresh eggs they gather are fantastic. No comparison at all to the store-bought version.

“You’ve never had an omelet until you’ve had one with fresh eggs,” my nephew told me.

My nephew’s wife, Carol, writes: “The yolks are a much darker yellow, almost orange. The eggs stand up much higher in the pan when you break them open and the white is much more viscous. As far as texture, when you eat them (whether in cooking or scrambled or fried) they are much smoother in the mouth and the flavor is more rich.”

The health benefits of fresh eggs are pretty dramatic. They contain, on average, 25 percent more vitamin E than supermarket eggs, 33 percent more vitamin A and 75 percent more beta carotene.

Urban chicken raising, I’ve since learned, has become downright trendy and fashionable, even in places you’d never expect, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Enthusiasts are actively promoting the idea to their city councils, and a lot of them are listening.



Backyard chicken operations usually consist of just a few hens, and no roosters, which can be noisy. But kept clean and healthy, keeping chickens in your backyard isn’t much different than having a couple of dogs or cats, advocates argue.

Some of the cities that allow backyard chickens include Fort Collins, Colo., South Portland, Maine, and Madison, Wis.

The issue has grabbed headlines in Sacramento, Calif., where an underground chicken-keeping movement has been brewing for years.

City Councilman Kevin McCarty would like backyard coops legalized, with a three-hen limit, according to Sunday’s Sacramento Bee.

“If you’re only talking about the ones that don’t make noise and if you have a limit – they’d have to be in your own yard, not wandering around and getting out – then I think the upsides are pretty great,” he told the paper.

Naturally, the urban chicken movement has carved out a place in cyberspace, with several blogs on the topic.

A photographer in Brooklyn, NY writes The New Green Blog with lots of info about urban gardening, as well as her three chickens.

Urban Chickens is a blog that maintains links to backyard chicken news stories, and has a pull-down menu with information about local ordinances in cities and towns across the country.

As for my family’s (slightly more elaborate) backyard chicken “ranch” outside Chicago: They have 13 hens and average about 10 eggs (brown) a day. Chicken feed in the summer runs them about $5 a month – it consists of corn and other grains.

Carol reports: “I feed them this in the morning while I clean the hen house, which takes about 15 minutes a day. I let them out of their pen (about 20 x 40 ft) for the day and they spend the rest of the day eating bugs and vegetation they find on our property.

“During the rest of the year (about seven months) they are penned up to keep them out of the road in their never-ending search for bugs and vegetation that is no longer there. I spend a little more on feed during this time – around $12 a month.

“Our hen house has electricity. a few hours of light inside keeps them laying all winter. (They need 12-14 hours of light a day to lay). When it is really cold out I turn on a heat lamp.”

OK. I’ve tried to spare you most of the puns. But I think it’s fair to say that this is a trend that’s definitely sunny-side up.

Photo 1: Example of an urban chicken coop via Flickr

Photo 2: Family chicken farming outside Chicago.





