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Pet Parade: Backyard Chickens Fun and Healthy
UPI.com ^ | March 7, 2010 | Marty Englert

Posted on 03/08/2010 7:27:44 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin

MADISON, Wis., March 7 (UPI) -- Keeping chickens as backyard pets was fairly uneventful until the day a hen inadvertently rode to the mall in my car.

My very sociable hens are in a coop at night but roam the backyard by day. One morning, while cleaning my car, I had all the doors open and a hen we call The Mensa Chicken found her way into the garage and into the back seat of my car.

I drove off without seeing her, and without knowing she had hopped up on the arm rest behind me and was looking out the window. I was puzzled why people in cars around me were smiling and pointing until she softly and contentedly chirped behind me and I realized The Mensa Chicken was on board.

Not all chickens are that clever. They are in fact very dumb, which is why you need to learn how to protect them and keep them healthy if backyard chickens are in your future.

Many towns and cities now allow backyard hens and for good reasons -- chicken eggs are rich in protein and far tastier than store-bought eggs, chicken poop is high in nitrogen and a great source of organic fertilizer and chickens are pest-control naturals at gobbling up aphids, grubs and mosquito larvae, which reduces the need to use chemicals in the yard.

They're also great company and follow me around the garden on summer mornings waiting for me to turn over rocks so they can scoop up baby slugs. At sundown, they voluntarily seek the shelter of their coop and sleepily chirp a goodnight to me when I close them up to keep them safe from predators, such as raccoons and hawks. A sturdy coop is a must since raccoons are strong enough to tear off wire, pull boards and burrow under the sides of a coop.

Chickens eat an amazing variety of food, including mice who inadvertently wander a little too close to a quick chicken's beak. I pamper my backyard hens with warm cornbread, oatmeal with raisins and crickets from the local pet store.

My friend Naimhe Jeanne Raia, who has a 10-acre homestead in Freeport, Ill., thrills her 38 Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds and Bard Rocks with the entrails of deer and cattle.

"We think of it as recycling," Raia said. "Chickens will choose (entrails) over grain anytime."

Online, you can learn a lot about backyard chickens and meet other chicken owners at UrbanChickens.org, which even has state-by-state lists detailing ordinances about keeping chickens. Many communities these days allow a homeowner to keep three to six hens, but no roosters because they are obstreperously noisy -- especially at dawn.

For print sources, my chicken bibles are Gail Damerow's "Raising Chickens" and "The Chicken Health Handbook," both from Storey Publishing. There's far more in those books than you need to know if you're raising just a few hens, but they are well worth owning if you're serious about keeping healthy, happy birds.

If you decide chickens have a place in your future, take a look at McMurrayHatchery.com, based in Webster City, Iowa. McMurrary, and a number of other hatcheries, start shipping chicks this month and have a dazzling variety of breeds.

I'm fond of Buff Orpingtons because they tend to be sociable, friendly birds able to weather the frigid winters where I live in the Upper Midwest. (On the coldest of nights, I still put a safe ceramic heater in the coop and rub Vaseline on the hens' combs, which can be prone to frostbite.)

When I started keeping backyard chickens years ago, I was in the minority. In recent years, however, the ranks of backyard chicken owners have swelled, forcing zoning boards and city councils to reconsider their rules.

I knew things were turning in favor of backyard chicken owners when I saw this bumper sticker on a mini-van at our very suburban mall:

"Wherever chickens are outlawed, only outlaws will have chickens."


TOPICS: Conspiracy; Food; Gardening; Pets/Animals
KEYWORDS: napl
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The 'Mensa' chickens owned by the author, LOL!

1 posted on 03/08/2010 7:27:45 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

Actually I’ve been thinking about rabbits behind the garage.


2 posted on 03/08/2010 7:31:13 AM PST by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin!)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

bttt


3 posted on 03/08/2010 7:33:25 AM PST by stainlessbanner
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
I had a chicken as a pet when growing up. Great pet (smart and lots of personality--if a little domineering)...and she really got along well with the horses, dogs, cats, and squirrel.
4 posted on 03/08/2010 7:35:23 AM PST by SonOfDarkSkies (I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself... - D.H. Lawrence)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
Chicken make lousy housepet!!!!


5 posted on 03/08/2010 7:35:41 AM PST by Lazamataz (Seriously. The only way Obama can possibly pull this out is to declare Martial Law before November.)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

Last years picture I betcha. Isn’t it rather white there right now.


6 posted on 03/08/2010 7:38:22 AM PST by wita
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

As long as they are NOT,NOT,NOT, roosters! Roosters are the most EVIL sleep depriving, sanity robbing,poop piling critters in the world!!!!


7 posted on 03/08/2010 7:45:02 AM PST by pawnshop dave
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To: kalee

for later reading


8 posted on 03/08/2010 7:48:16 AM PST by kalee (The offences we give, we write in the dust; Those we take, we engrave in marble. J Huett 1658)
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To: pawnshop dave

Madison’s “chicken ordinance” specifies only hens, and no more than 4 per residence. And each coop requires a building permit. When the ordinance was first passed, it kept the city planning’s building inspectors busy reviewing blueprints and issuing permits. :-)


9 posted on 03/08/2010 7:48:36 AM PST by knittnmom ("...only dead fish 'go with the flow'". - Sarah Palin 7/09)
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To: pawnshop dave

LOL I had a girlfriend who lived in a trailer on a farm. Nothing more fun than roosters under your floor at 5 AM.


10 posted on 03/08/2010 7:50:44 AM PST by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin!)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
Buff Orpingtons are a wonderful breed, but I'm partial to Cochins (feathers down to their feet) or Polish (plummed head, tiny barbed wire shaped comb less susceptible to frostbite) or, better yet, a cross between the two.

Our idiotic township still has an ordinance against them which we're eventually going to get repealed. I'd much rather be awakend to a rooster's crow in the morning (hello, it's daylight, you are supposed to get up anyway and wild birds aren't exactly quiet either) than a yapping dog in the middle of the night.

11 posted on 03/08/2010 7:52:40 AM PST by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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To: Lazamataz

Chicken lady visits the old homestead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ_IXZ0Bksg


12 posted on 03/08/2010 7:52:50 AM PST by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin!)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
chicken poop is high in nitrogen and a great source of organic fertilizer

Yup but NOT to be used on roses. It will burn them.

13 posted on 03/08/2010 7:53:56 AM PST by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
Building the Chicken McMansion...

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=283812



Four Rhode Island Reds, Two Golden sex-links, and one Pug...




14 posted on 03/08/2010 7:57:28 AM PST by Bean Counter (I keeps mah ffigureseathers numbered, for just such an emergency...)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

For later.


15 posted on 03/08/2010 7:57:46 AM PST by Lurker (The avalanche has begun. The pebbles no longer have a vote.)
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To: Lazamataz
>"Chicken make lousy housepet!!!!"

Yeah, but they're great for a quick snack!


16 posted on 03/08/2010 7:59:13 AM PST by scoobysnak71 (I'm light skinned with no negro dialect. Could you milk me?)
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To: pawnshop dave
As long as they are NOT,NOT,NOT, roosters! Roosters are the most EVIL sleep depriving, sanity robbing,poop piling critters in the world!!!!

We've lived in our suburban home for almost 30 years. Folks around here have always had chickens. I love the sounds of roosters crowing.

Peafowl are another thing though.

17 posted on 03/08/2010 8:00:06 AM PST by steveo (2010 never again)
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To: scoobysnak71

Chickens are good for quick snacks.

Ducks are good for sick quacks.


18 posted on 03/08/2010 8:00:44 AM PST by Lazamataz (Seriously. The only way Obama can possibly pull this out is to declare Martial Law before November.)
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To: pawnshop dave

When my daughter went to college, someone there let a rooster looseon the campus.....

Every morning, at 4:45am, the rooster would start screeching directly under her dorm window...

The first day she thought it was quaint....

By the end of the first week her phone calls turned very dark......

She tried chasing it away...LOL...of course that didn’t work.....

One borrowed paintball gun from a friend and frezzing the paintball overnight, a puff of feathers, problem solved.....

After that week I kinda pictured her like Bill Murray in Caddyshack....mumbling to herself and totally obsessed on killing that rooster....


19 posted on 03/08/2010 8:01:59 AM PST by nevergore ("It could be that the purpose of my life is simply to serve as a warning to others.")
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To: cripplecreek
Actually I’ve been thinking about rabbits behind the garage.

Chickens lay better quality eggs than rabbits do.

20 posted on 03/08/2010 8:02:07 AM PST by Wissa ("So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."-Padme Amidala)
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