Cooking with Dexter: Not in My Backyard

[elleng]

The backyard-chicken movement may be a great thing for poultry fanatics, but for parents it’s a nightmare. A few years ago, it was easy enough to say, “Oh, honey, we’d love to have a pet chicken, but unfortunately you aren’t allowed to keep hens in Hamden, Conn. .” No more. Egg-gathering activists in those communities successfully lobbied for legalization. Naturally you can try lying to your children, but if they are old enough and resourceful enough they will eventually navigate their way to the backyardchickens.com forum on local laws and ordinances, and the jig will be up.

I don’t even have that excuse to fall back on. In Brooklyn, hens are perfectly legal, and while it’s a stretch to say there’s a coop in every backyard, there is one on a front lawn not far from where we live. I used to walk my boys, Dexter and Elliot, to see it, in the days when this seemed like a harmless diversion. I’ve stopped doing that now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24food-t-000.html?_r=1&src=twrhp

[Denninmi]

1. Cute.

I have chickens, ducks, turkeys, quail, and six beehives in my suburban Detroit back yard.

Power to the Poultry!

[Warpy]

2. I understand both points of view

Little Dexter just doesn't realize that keeping chickens in the back yard requires a certain degree of work. Chickens have to be fed, kept reasonably warm, and have their quarters cleaned out periodically to keep them healthy---and chicken litter is not perfume.

Then again, it's really nice to get all those eggs and a chicken fricasee when Matilda gets too old to keep laying them. The sound of laying hens in the back yard can be soothing and they're fun to watch as they sort out their social system.

My grandmother kept chickens in the city. My neighbors in Boston and here keep chickens in their back yards. Urban chickens are a lot more common than you'd think.

Just be aware that there's some effort involved.