Recession, green movement, make backyard chickens a natural

This morning while I was outside putting a set of sheets on the clothesline, three men from a tree-trimming service on behalf of Public Service let themselves in the backyard. They were on assignment to cut down a few trees that were getting in the way of the power line leading to my house.

They all spoke Spanish primarily and were immediately captivated by the four chickens running around my backyard. One of the men asked if I wanted to sell one of the birds foraging near the house. “No,” I said. “Me gusto los juevos para comer.” (I like the eggs to eat). The men smiled and nodded.

Given the current economic conditions and the emphasis on sustainability, it’s no wonder backyard chickens are gaining popularity. You start vegetable gardening, and pretty soon you’re thinking about how you can stimulate growth without chemical fertilizers, and before you know it, you’re researching chickens, manure composting and chicken-coop building plans.

I’ve read that during the Great Depression, ownership of chickens among the general populace increased tenfold. During his 1928 presidential campaign, Herbert Hoover is reputed to have promised “a chicken in every pot,” though I did some research on that and learned that the origin of that phrase can be traced not directly to Hoover but to an advertisement by the Republican National Committee, which inserted the ad into newspapers during the 1928 campaign.

According to archives from the Hoover Library & Museum (http://hoover.archives.gov) the ad described how the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge had “reduced hours and increased earning capacity, silenced discontent, put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot.’ And a car in every backyard, to boot.” The ad concluded that a vote for Hoover would be a vote for continued prosperity.

I’ve had my chickens almost a year now. Originally I got them for the eggs and for the natural, nitrogen-rich manure to apply to my vegetable garden, but the unexpected benefit is that the chickens are amusing, lovable pets as well – especially the one Rhode Island Red that I got when it was a day old and thus is as tame as any lap dog.

There have been some frightening encounters with predators and one interesting discovery. A few months ago my dog alerted me to a disturbance in the backyard an hour before dawn. I ran out to the coop with a flashlight and found that a fox had gotten into the coop. The flashlight obviously threw the fox off its intended mission of making a meal of my chickens. It now fought to get out of the coop. Later inspection would show the fox had gotten in by pushing through the chicken wire, which I had merely used a staple gun to secure. I opened the coop door and the fox fled, scrambling over the 6-foot-cedar fence with my dog in pursuit. Miraculously, all the chickens were unhurt.

And then about two months ago as the chickens neared maturity, I was awoken before dawn by what sounded like a high-pitched fog horn. One of my “hens” was a rooster. I understood immediately that while hens are allowed in Denver on a case-by-case basis, roosters are strictly outlawed. You could hear this rooster from five houses away, I bet.

That morning I put a notice on Craigslist for a free rooster, and three hours later I had a taker. Interestingly, as soon as the rooster was removed from the coop, egg production among my four hens skyrocketed. I had assumed that the cold weather was reason for the lack of eggs, but apparently a bigger cause was the rooster’s presence. Maybe he was stressing out the hens. I’ve been getting an average of three eggs a day ever since.

Channel 7 News, who we’re partnering with on the station’s “Road to Recovery” series, sent a cameraman out earlier this week to shoot some footage of my chickens and the urban coop that I’d built from scrap wood left over from the cedar I’d sided my house with years earlier. Click here to watch the story.