February 2009

So you know what I’d like to do? Not today, not this year, but maybe once the boys get a little older and I have a bit of free time on my hands again?

Raise a couple of chickens in the back yard.

(waits patiently for gales of laughter to subside)

No, really! Back at the end of December, I read an article in the Citizen about the urban chicken movement, and I was intrigued. According to what I’ve read, the chickens are reasonably low maintenance, actually good for your back yard, and two hens will produce eight to ten fresh eggs a week. How cool is that? Educationally amazing for the boys, healthy for us, good for the environment, minimal effort on my part — I love the idea.

I know my mother is rolling around on the floor laughing as she’s reading about this, and Beloved – who to his credit has gone along with just about all of my schemes and capers with nary a whimper of complaint – has flat out refused to even talk about this. He hates chickens, except when they’re on the barbecue with a good coating of tandoori marinade. I admit, I’m a little creeped out by them myself. But if they were our chickens, that would be different, right?

This blog about urban chickens gives an idea of the amount of work involved:

• Everyday: fill the food bowl, change the water, check for eggs, add wood chips to the nesting box if needed. (takes 5 minutes)
• Twice weekly: empty the droppings out of the Eglu, very easy to do by design, thanks Omlet! (takes two minutes)
• Weekly: clean the Eglu by rinsing and scrubbing the interior parts (20 minutes)
• Semi-monthly: purchase 50-lb bag of layena crumbles at the feed store (cost is $12 and is worked in with other errands)

That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? (An Eglu is a chicken coop specifically designed for urban chickens. A lot more aesthetically pleasing than your standard chicken-wire and wood coop, no?)

My only concern would be the Ottawa winters. Not chicken-friendly. Not only is it bloody cold for a bloody long time, the last time I checked there was about a foot of snow in the back yard (not to mention, erm, about three months worth of dog poop.) And even if by some stretch of the imagination I was able to convince Beloved to let me keep a couple of chickens in the back yard, there is no way on gods’ green earth that he’d let me overwinter them in the house or even the garage.

(Not to mention the tiny but insistent voice in my head that keeps yammering on about the poor, hapless house plants I bring home from the grocery store in a fit of enthusiasm every five or six months, only to neglect into withered brown stumps within a couple of weeks.)

What do you think? Excellent idea or pure folly? Would you do it?

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