Hot Chicks

[SoCalDem]

Hot Chicks
Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/05/13/ST2009051301310.html?hpid=smartliving
By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 14, 2009

Shenandoah is a red-feathered hen nestled under the right arm of Anna Mae Conrad, who is 10 and lives in Takoma Park. "When you hold her for a long time," Anna Mae says, "you can feel her relax; you can feel her putting pressure on you." Anna Mae strokes the stole of plumage around Shenandoah's neck, and the bird closes her eyes in a moment of chicken bliss. "This is actually my chicken."

The announcement is to distinguish Shenandoah from the four other hens clucking softly in the back yard of the home where Anna Mae lives with mom Mary Cush, dad Kevin Conrad and sister Zhania. The family got its first bird six years ago, and the hens live in a converted greenhouse in a corner of the shaded lot, which is in an established suburban neighborhood inside the Capital Beltway.

The Conrads are at the vanguard of a resurgent interest in backyard chicken keeping, especially in distinctly nonrural settings. In cities across the United States, raising backyard poultry has suddenly become as chic as growing your own vegetables. It's all part of the back-to-the-land movement whose proponents want to save on grocery bills, take control of their food supply and reduce the carbon footprint of industrial agriculture.

The urban homesteading movement got a huge symbolic boost this spring when the first family installed a 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden at the White House. Poultry is the natural next step in the sustainable back yard; chickens produce eggs, devour kitchen scraps and add manure to the compost pile.

"Chickens are America's cool new pet," said Dave Belanger, publisher of the magazine Backyard Poultry. When he launched it three years ago, "we were thinking 15 to 20 thousand" subscriptions, he said. The print run for the bimonthly is now 100,000.

snip

[flvegan]

1. If one is going to insist on eating eggs, this isn't a bad idea

so long as it's legal where he/she lives.

Sadly, however, with almost all things human, there will be people that will just make backyard battery pens. Hope I'm wrong about that.

[Submariner]

2. I'm sorry....I was thinking of something else

:hide:

[proteus_lives]

5. Ditto.

I'll admit I was thinking along similar lines when I clicked.

[lunatica]

3. cool story

I have a condo and live upstairs so all I have is a patio, but I could put that to good use. Grow tomatoes and potatoes. Maybe I'll grow some chile peppers too. All as soon as I can afford all the things I would need to buy. Pots, soil, seeds, garden tools...

[Mojambo]

4. This development displeases me a great deal.

Alektorophobia sufferer since 1973.

[Champion Jack]

6. uh oh

[Warren DeMontague]

7. THAT MAN HAS A HUGE COCK!

Well, he does.