Category — Livestock

Plus: How to cook it, and how to raise your own.

By Adam Starr
GOOD Blog
March 2, 2010

Excerpt:

By now we all know that eating a lot of meat—especially factory-farmed meat—isn’t very good for the planet. Fortunately for meat eaters, some meats are more sustainable than others. And as it turns out, rabbit is one of the healthiest, leanest, and most environmentally friendly meats you can eat.

There are many reasons for this. Mark Pasternak of the famed Devil’s Gulch Ranch explains, “The biggest reason that rabbits are a sustainable meat choice is that they eat forage, which is not useful for humans. This means that rabbits don’t compete with us for food calories.” Rabbits are also, as Meatpaper editor and co-founder Sasha Wizansky points out, an ideal choice for urban farmers.

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Ordinance changes bother keepers of bees, chickens

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 08, 2010

Proposed changes to the city ordinance dealing with the keeping of agricultural animals on city properties has agitated bee and chicken keepers.

Burgh Bees, a 375-member nonprofit, has put out a “call to action” via e-mail for attendance at a public hearing before the city planning commission at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 “to show how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are” in the city. The hearing is at 200 Ross St., Downtown.

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Jennie Grant gets a kiss from her goat Snowflake after milking time at her home in Seattle on Tuesday. Snowflake produces about a half-gallon of milk a day, Grant says. (Mike Urban/P-I)

Pet Parade: Goats the new chickens

Jan. 29, 2010
By MARTY ENGLERT
United International Press

MADISON, Wis., Jan. 29 (UPI) — As urban farming gains strength, small goats are proving popular as entertaining and intelligent pets in backyards throughout the United States.

While many communities still ban goats, other cities such as Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Oakland, Calif., are changing zoning laws to accommodate small goats.

In Portland, the newspaper Willamette Week predicted goats will replace chickens as must-have backyard companions this year.

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Photo by LunaModule

Just 10 minutes from Canary Wharf (London’s second financial district and home of the UK’s three tallest buildings) on the Isle of Dogs, is a wonderful city farm – Mudchute Farm. On 32 acres of fertile land (nutrient-rich as it is just next to the Thames) live 200 animals, mostly rare breeds. Mudchute Farm is also home to 70 community allotments, a farm kitchen and restaurant, horse stables, and smokehouse. Wood from the farm is used in the smokehouse where butter, geese, and cheese are often smoked.

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Written and produced by Jennifer Olney.
KGO-TV/DT
December 24, 2009

OAKLAND, CA (KGO) — Mix the troubled economy with the desire to eat healthy food – and what do you get? A backyard turned into a barnyard. Here’s a look at the growing world of urban farming.

The farm is a small backyard behind a pink house.
It’s across the street from an abandoned building, just a few blocks from Downtown Oakland.

There are rabbits living on the front deck, chickens patrolling the side yard and a big vegetable garden growing in the empty lot next door.

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Keeping Micro-flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers

By Patricia Foreman
Good Earth Publications, Inc.
October 2009

Green city managers wanting to save money on solid waste management expenditures need only to encourage residents to keep laying hens. Why? Because one chicken eats about 7 pounds of food “waste” a month. A few hundred households keeping micro-flocks of laying hens can divert tons of yard and food biomass “waste” from trash collection saving municipalities thousands, even millions of tax payer dollars.

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My Ordinary Extraordinary Yard

By Greg Peterson

You can create your own urban farm. Creating your own urban farm is as simple as planting you flowerbeds with edibles. The payoffs can include home grown food and a deeper connection to the earth. In this unique mini-book, Greg Peterson shares how his yard went from grass and hedges to his very own Urban Farm, full of vegetables and fruit trees with plenty to share. His motto ‘food grows abundantly – lets grow it and give it away.’ This insightful book about how Greg’s Urban Farm came to be will inspire you to create your own urban farm.

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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.

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Joan Miró. The Vegetable Garden with Donkey. (Huerto con Asno) 1918
This picture depicts the rural landcape of Montroig.
Larger image here.

“Approximately in 1918 Joan Miro enters the so-called ‘detailistic phase’ (the term was introduced by Rofols, a fellow member of the Courbet group). Jacques Dupin, Miros biographer, called this period ‘poetic realism’. Landscapes, painted in Montroig, where the artist spent the summer at his parents’ farm, have deep perspectives which are full of methodically painted details.”

See larger image here.
Lydia Williams feeding chickens in the garden of her cottage at Carlyle Street, Napier, [ca 1889]

Photographer William Williams.
Glass negative
Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

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This rap music video is the trailer for the upcoming feature length documentary. It is a satire meant to show the absurdity of some of the arguments against hen-keeping in the city.

The Chicken Revolution

From Barbara Palermo, Producer and Director

“In Salem, Oregon we have been working for nearly a year to legalize a few backyard hens, but our city has been a little reluctant to join the urban chicken movement.  Our efforts even made the front page of the Wall Street Journal recently. 

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A film by Mark Lewis (2000)

“Through interviews and reenactments, The Natural History of the Chicken investigates the role of the chicken in American life and tells several remarkable stories. A Maine farmer says she found a chicken frozen stiff, but was able to resuscitate it. Colorado natives tell a story of the chicken who lost its head– and went on living.

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Pauline, pet cow of President Taft on lawn, in front of the State, War and Navy Building, Washington, D.C. between 1910 and 1913

White House Cow Arrives
Pauline Wayne, 3d, Comes Safely from Wisconsin – A Calf Expected

Washington, Nov 3, 1910
New York Times

Pauline Wayne, 3d, the much-talked of new White House cow, has at last reached Washington and taken up her domestic duties as provider of milk and butter for President Taft’s household. Pauline is a Holstein-Frisian cow of registered stock, her number in the bovine blue book being 115,580.

She came from the stock farm of Senator Issac Stephenson of Wisconsin, and was on the road from Kenosha just two days. Pauline arrived in a big crate, none the worse for her long journey in an express car.

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City Farmer goat grazing on the green roof of our cob tool shed.

Animal rights group, union pans new plan

Mark Hasiuk, Vancouver Courier
April 01, 2009
April Fools Day Story (Spoiler Alert. The Mayor did not unveil a GoatingGreen program.)

Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson unveiled yesterday a controversial new program aimed at conserving energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions at city hall.

The GoatingGreen program, which originated in the Netherlands, is the first of its kind in North America.

At a backyard press conference at city hall, Robertson, who made environmentalism a key component of his successful 2008 civic election campaign, introduced Tony, a striking four-year-old African pygmy goat and program centerpiece.

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Dutch firm (MVRDV) proposes Pig City

From MVRDV document:

Can we combine organic farming with a further concentration of the production-activites so that there will be enough space for other activities? Is it possible to compact all the pig production within concentrated farms, therefore avoiding unnecessary transportation and distribution, and thereby reducing the spread of diseases? Can we through concentrated farming, create economical mass and a central food core, so as to solve the various problems found in the pig-industry?

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Backyard Chickens in Densely Populated Communities

Prepared for the Shorewood Village Board
3/12/09

“I was a little surprised at the lack of smell. With only a little effort, there’s little to no smell in the coop area, and certainly nothing that would carry over to my neighbors. The birds are quiet most of the time. [They] can squawk loudly after laying an egg, but still it’s not as obnoxious as a barking dog.”
-Carl Wacker, Madison chicken owner

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Dane Chauvel kept chickens in his Kitsilano backyard for about a decade before he was caught infringing on city bylaws. But a bylaw change Thursday means he can keep the chickens legally. Photo: Jenelle Schneider/Vancouver Sun

From Barn Yard to Backyard
ByLaws: Urban hens have a patch of of grass to call home again after Vancouver City Council votes to allow animals in yards

By Catherine Rolfsen
Vancouver Sun
March 6 2009

It’s no yolk as city welcomes chickens home.

Two of three feathered friends sent off to a Langley farm will come back to roost in Kitsilano backyard

Now living in exile in Langley, the two birds will soon be legally allowed back in their coop in Chauvel’s Kitsilano backyard after Vancouver city council voted unanimously Thursday to change city bylaws to legalize the keeping of urban hens.

“I think they’re probably dying to come home,” Chauvel said.

He explained that his family had three birds in their Kitsilano backyard for about a decade, despite bylaws forbidding the keeping of chickens in the city.

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Rose Belasoff feeding chickens in her back yard, 346 Union Street, Vancouver; [1912] Source: Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia; L.8782. See larger image here.

Chickens were allowed in the city then, but not now. The photo above shows Rose Belasoff feeding chickens in her back yard in Vancouver in 1912. Rose’s home is just a block from Chinatown in an old neighbourhood named Strathcona, just a stone’s throw from downtown. Some of the people who started City Farmer in 1978 lived only a block away from this house.

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Chickens as pets: city living with a farm feel

By Deborah Netburn
LA Times – December 6, 2008

In Mount Washington, furniture designer and artist Dakota Witzenburg built a chicken coop for his wife, Audrey Diehl, for Christmas last year as part of their ongoing effort to live green. When designing his coop, his priorities were keeping it easy to clean and making sure his chickens were safe by sinking corrugated metal at least 6 inches below ground so that burrowing predators couldn’t get in. But he also considered aesthetics.

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The New Coop de Ville
By Jessica Bennett, NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 17, 2008

As it turns out, Mackin is hardly an anomaly, in New York or any other urban center. Over the past few years, urban dwellers driven by the local-food movement, in cities from Seattle to Albuquerque, have flocked to the idea of small-scale backyard chicken farming—mostly for eggs, not meat—as a way of taking part in home-grown agriculture. This past year alone, grass-roots organizations in Missoula, Mont.; South Portland, Maine; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Ft. Collins, Colo., have successfully lobbied to overturn city ordinances outlawing backyard poultry farming, defined in these cities as egg farming, not slaughter. Ann Arbor now allows residents to own up to four chickens (with neighbors’ consent), while the other three cities have six-chicken limits, subject to various spacing and nuisance regulations.

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