New York Times – When the Problems Come Home to Roost

Sharon Lane with one of her three chickens in the coop atop her garage in Berkeley, Calif. “I’m discouraged but I’m determined to figure this out,” she said of her flock’s mystery ailments. Photo by Dean C.K. Cox

By Kim Severson
October 22, 2009
The New York Times

THE Bay Area is unmatched in its embrace of the urban backyard chicken trend. But raising chickens, which promises delicious, untainted eggs and instant membership in the local food movement, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Chickens, it turns out, have issues.

They get diseases with odd names, like pasty butt and the fowl plague. Rats and raccoons appear out of nowhere. Hens suddenly stop laying eggs or never produce them at all. Crowing roosters disturb neighbors.

The problems get worse. Unwanted urban chickens are showing up at local animal shelters. Even in the best of circumstances, chickens die at alarming rates.

“At first I named them but now I’ve stopped because it’s just too hard,” said Sharon Lane, who started with eight chickens in a coop fashioned from plywood and chicken wire in the front yard of her north Berkeley home. She’s down to three.

Ms. Lane, who is close friends with the restaurateur Alice Waters, wanted exceptional eggs, plain and simple. But her little flock has been plagued with mysterious diseases.

She has not taken them to the vet because of the high cost, but she goes to workshops and searches out cures on the Internet. She has even put garlic down their throats in hopes that the antibacterial qualities of the cloves might help.

“I’m discouraged but I’m determined to figure this out,” Ms. Lane said. “I still get more than I give.”

Most Bay Area communities allow at least a few hens, and sometimes even permit roosters. Some elementary schools and restaurants keep flocks. The Web site backyardchickens.com, which calls itself the largest community of chicken enthusiasts in the world, started here. Seminars on the proper and humane way to kill chickens are becoming popular.

But with increased chicken popularity comes a downside: abandonment. In one week earlier this month, eight were available for adoption at the Oakland shelter and five were awaiting homes at the San Francisco shelter. In Berkeley, someone dropped four chickens in the animal control night box with a note from their apologetic owner, said Kate O’Connor, the manager.

For some animal rights workers, the backyard chicken trend is as bad as the pot-bellied pig craze in the 1980s or puppy fever set off by the movie “101 Dalmatians.” In both cases, the pets proved more difficult to care for than many owners suspected.

“It’s a fad,” said Susie Coston, national shelter director for Farm Sanctuary, which rescues animals and sends them to live on farms in New York and California. “People are going to want it for a while and then not be so interested.”

She said that farm animal rescue groups field about 150 calls a month for birds, most of them involving chickens — especially roosters.

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