Tuesday, February 2, 2010

benefits checklist for urban chickens

It's one thing to own urban chickens and live day-to-day with the benefits of raising your own backyard hens. It's quite another to be able to clearly talk about these same benefits so others can understand just why you keep your chooks around.

Lucky for us, the fine folks running the Windsor Eats blog have shared a list of benefits that urban chickens bring to a community by way of documenting the efforts of Steve Green of Windsor Essex Community Supported Agriculture to legalize chickens in Windsor, Ontario (just across the bridge from Detroit, Michigan).
Some of the key benefits to our community:
  • Chickens can provide healthy, pesticide free eggs
  • Reduction of weekly food bills
  • Reduction of green house gases through reduction in food transport costs
  • Chickens consume kitchen waste, reducing municipal waste problems
  • Chickens produce great compost for the garden
  • Chickens are a great way to teach kids about food sources, hands-on
  • Chickens make great pets, for big kids and little kids alike
  • The path to global environmental sustainability begins with local initiatives and urban chickens are one of those initiatives
  • Chickens kept in back yards are generally living in much more humane conditions than their battery cage industrial chicken counterparts
This list is a great start... are there any others you'd add to the list?

Photo credit: Windsoreats.com

    5 comments:

    Granny Annie said...

    And free-range chickens and guinea fowl make spectacular moving pieces of lawn art.

    badgerpendous said...

    The last point -- the one about living in more humane conditions -- also means lower risk of disease/etc.

    Lovethiscottage.blogspot.com said...

    Chickens unlike nuisance dogs, do not bark incessantly or pose a biting danger to children. Chickens do not kill millions of songbirds like cats do, or mess in the neighbor's flowerbed or kid's sandbox. The waste of cats and dogs is offensive and unhealthy and must be disposed of, whereas chicken manure can be composted as a valuable addition to the garden.
    Free range chicken eggs are lower in cholesterol and higher in vit E and omega 3's.

    Urbancowgrrl said...

    Here's another one:

    "They make our whole family happy".

    Although, I also do see many benefits to having our cats and dogs too, so I have to say that all three are excellent pets.

    rootsofjoah said...

    I would also add that chickens work as "organic" insect removers. \

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