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How to Keep Chickens in a City

Join the “urban chicken movement” and raise your own backyard flock. Chickens are both fun and useful to keep. Don’t expect to keep a breeding flock with noisy roosters, but your hens will earn their keep and provide enjoyment by laying eggs for you.

Chickens can provide you with healthy, home grown eggs and meat, quality nitrogen-rich fertilizer, pest control and companionship.

Perhaps surprisingly, a reasonable number of chickens can adapt very well to the constraints of an urban environment. It is even possible to keep chickens indoors through the use of diapers.

Check local laws and regulations. It may be illegal for you to own chickens in your city, so call the local animal control office or your local municipality and ask what the laws are in your area. More and more ordinances are available online as well, so it’s worth doing a search. Since roosters are perceived as noisy, they usually tend to fall under your city’s noise/nuisance ordinances. While hens are normally very quiet, they may still be subject to nuisance ordinances. Check the city code before you get your birds and become attached to them! Some cities limit the number of chickens you can have on a given amount of land. Especially in areas that were recently rural or have a strong farming culture, no law or license may be required to keep chickens. If chickens are illegal in your area all is not lost. Many people have managed to get pro-chicken ordinances passed, such as Madison, WI and Ann Arbor MI.

Research the breed and number of chickens you want to keep before you buy them! Be aware that many breeds also come in “bantam” size (like “toy” breeds for dog) that are roughly a quarter of the size of large breeds. The Buff Orpington makes a good choice for beginners and comes in both large and bantam sizes. Some friendly layers like Road Island Reds or Plymouth Barred Rocks are always a good choice. They are both meat and laying birds and they tend to be easy birds to keep, since they have a very mild temper. Another popular breed are Cochin bantams. These are good layers, are very sweet and make great pets. There is a ton of information available on the hundreds of breeds of chickens. Surf Google to look for chicken breeds, urban chicken, and city chicken just to start with. There are many online forums comprised of your fellow chicken owners, and they are a great resource for advice, chicks, adults birds and supplies. Some hatcheries also have online forums.

Visit other urban dwellers who keep chickens in their backyard and see what they’re doing. Ask them for advice and suggestions. If you’re the only person you know who is interested in doing this, visit the closest farmer who keeps chickens (especially if you’ve never had chickens before) and watch and learn. Pay a visit to your local farmers market, see who’s selling fresh eggs, and start up a conversation!

Build your chickens a good coop out of strong materials. The coop is a place where the chickens will spend the night, lay eggs, and get out of the bad weather. There are many different types of coops. If you’re handy, you can easily build one using a design you find on the Internet, or something you already have lying around. There are many different types of successful chicken coops that imaginative people have created, made from things as strange as an old pickup truck bed cap to a dog house. The key is to make your coop a safe place for the chickens to lay their eggs and sleep.

It should have good air flow and somewhere for the chickens to perch.
Prepare adequately for your chickens for the whole year. They will need shade in the summer and heat in the winter. If you live where there are cold winters you may need to set up a heat lamp in the coop and make sure you have chosen a cold-hardy breed of chicken.
Protect against burrowing vermin such as rats and mice by burying about 6 inches of the fencing wire below ground level and curling it outwards. Then when pests try to dig under the wire to get in your coop, they run into the wire instead. Predators are very patient and have all night to get themselves a good chicken dinner, and chickens sleep very soundly.
Check your finished coop carefully for dangers such as protruding wires and nails. Chickens are very curious and it’s cheaper to prevent accidents than it is to take them to the vet.