cool video of an egg without a shell

Enjoy this awesome little video of a malformed egg from a newly laying chicken



(follow this link to the source if the embed doesn't work)

The video is courtesy Mark Frauenfelder, one of my favorite bloggers over on boingboing.net. He got a flock of six barred rocks chicks last Fall and he's also been blogging about his adventures in urban chickens.

Just last week got his first eggs from the flock. We all know the first eggs aren't always the well-formed specimens we're accustomed to buying buy the dozen down at the local food mart. Some are long and skinny, most are a fraction of the full size, but this is the first shell-less egg I've ever seen.

Thanks for sharing the video, Mark. May you be flooded in eggs!

update on Waterloo urban chicken efforts

Got a note this morning from Doug with promising news about urban chicken efforts in Waterloo, Ontario. The city staff have drafted a pro-chicken bylaw for council approval.

The highlights:

• No roosters
• Up to 10 hens per property
• Property must have a detached dwelling, and the lot must be at least 12m x 20m (Roughly 40' x 65')
• Chickens suspected of communicable diseases must be taken to the vet immediately.
  

Specifically, Schedule "D" for the By-Law on animal control has thirteen points to it, listed below. I'm most intrigued by the part of schedule related to communicable diseases (aka "bird flu" and the like), the final point in the list.

1. No owner shall allow or permit his or her chicken to running at large
2. No person shall keep a rooster except in an agricultural use within an agricultural zone as established by the Zoning By-law.
3. The maximum number of chickens permitted on a lot shall be 10.
4. All chicken coops shall be located only in the rear yard and must fully enclose the chickens and prevent them from escaping.
5. The chicken coop shall be designed and constructed to ensure proper ventilation and sufficient space for the chickens and maintained in accordance with good animal husbandry and shall keep all vermin out.
6. All dead chickens must be disposed of immediately and in any event, within 24 hours.
7. There must be hygienic storage of and prompt removal of chicken feces.
8. The chickens' food supply must be protected against vermin
9. All lots housing chickens must have detached dwellings on them; a frontage of at least 12 meters; and a depth of at least 20 meters.
10. The chicken coop shall be located at least 3 meters from the rear lot line of the lot on which the chicken coop is located.
11. The chicken coop shall be located at least 3 meters from any side lot line of the lot on which the chicken coop is located.
12. No person shall keep chickens unless registered with the Clerk or designate and upon paying the required fees and charges, as outlined in the City's Fee Guide.
13. In the event the owner of chickens suspects they are infected with a communicable disease, the owner shall immediately consult a veterinarian licensed to practice in Ontario to diagnose the condition. If the diagnosis confirms that the chickens are infected with a communicable disease, the owner shall immediately notify the Regional Medical Officer of Health and comply with any direction which may be issued by the Regional Medical Officer of Health in this regard.

You can look at the entire meeting materials via a huge PDF indeed (it's 10Mb) posted at http://tinyurl.com/da7unv. The relevant bits are on pp 172-173.

Thanks, Doug, for the heads up! Here's hoping the council approves it quickly.

starting out: a mixed breed urban chicken flock?

This week I got a nice email from Kate (she writes the great blog Gardening without Skills), and she's excitedly getting ready to bring a flock of urban chickens into her backyard this Spring. A friend of hers is building her a coop and she's raised ducks before, so she's got some familiarity with backyard fowl.

Her first question (among many) was whether or not she could mix chicks of several breeds in the same coop. Would they get along? Would she be better off getting three from the same breed?

I assured Kate it's very difficult to go wrong mixing and matching such a small quantity of chickens in your backyard. Chickens are very social animals and they'll get along fine. If you're getting your first flock, you'll want to get them all about the same age (ages should be within a week or so of each other). They'll figure things out themselves and establish a "pecking order" on their own.

While each individual chicken will have its own personality, there are breed characteristics that are for the most part dependable as you're picking out your birds. Keep in mind: humans have been breeding chickens for thousands of years to make them more domesticated and tranquil around each other. Consult the wonderful Henderson's Chicken Breed Chart for a comprehensive run-down of the various traits of any given breed.

And as far as getting smart about raising urban chickens in your backyard, it really is as easy as getting one of the many good beginner books and having at it. Chickens really are resilient animals and as long as you keep them in fresh food and water and clean the coop regularly, you're doing great!

Any other advice you'd offer Kate as she begins her adventure into urban chickens this spring?

Urban Chickens now legal in Vancouver, BC

The Vancouver city council has voted unanimously to change city bylaws to legalize the keeping of urban chickens. Let's hear it for our friends in the Great White North!

What surprises me in the story is that both the BCSPCA and the Vancouver Humane Society both spoke out against the motion.

“While we sympathize with the interests of local people who want to keep these hens for the sustainability interests, we have concern that not everyone who is interested in keeping these chickens has the necessary knowledge or expertise to raise them humanely,” BCSPCA animal welfare coordinator Geoff Urton told The Vancouver Sun earlier Thursday.

Urton said he’s worried urban chickens could be easy targets for coyotes or raccoons and attract rats. What’s more, he’s not convinced that Vancouverites will be able to find a vet able to care for their birds or even know where to buy the right kind of feed.

Seems to me like this would be a great opportunity for the SPCA and HS to step up and become more relevant to their constituents via education than to try and ward off a learning opportunity such as this. Hey, want some cheap education materials? point folks here to the Urban Chickens blog or over to the Backyard Chickens community or even the urbanchickens.org folks. :^)

And who else was against the measure? The BC Poultry Association cited concerns about food safety and avian flu as reasons not to pass the measure. (Let's see, who stands to lose out from folks farming their own eggs from humanely raised chickens? hmmm) And in terms of food security, it's the agribusinesses that are the most susceptible to avian flu in their flocks of genetically compromised birds, not the small flocks of robust chickens in backyards.

Dane Chauvel, the man who started this chain of events when his urban chickens got busted by the cops, sums things up nicely. “If you were a chicken you would be imploring the animals rights activists and the city council to approve this bylaw, because it’s the best thing that can happen in terms of chicken welfare,” he said. “Any resident that has two to four chickens, that means two to four chickens less in a battery cage environment.”

Let's welcome yet another big city to the urban chickens movement!

Mad City Chickens is coming to the screen!

I'm very pleased to share the news that Robert and Tashai over at Tarazod Films are finally releasing Mad City Chickens on DVD on March 24 (details coming to the web, soon). I, for one, can't wait to get my own copy of the DVD.

And for those of you living in Monona, Wisconsin, there's going to be a public screening of the film on March 10.

They will be holding a public screening of the Mad City Chickens documentary as part of their Green Tuesdays Film & Lecture Series on March 10th. The film starts at 6:30pm and will be held at the Monona Public Library, 1000 Nichols Rd., Monona, WI 53716. The series is free and open to the public.

Who knows, perhaps Alderman Speight and Monona Doug will be in attendance at the screening.

If you do happen to see them at the screening, please tell 'em both that Thomas over at urbanchickens.net says hello and thanks for the support!

Urban Chickens and the NAIS: just say no

There's a proposal afoot at the USDA, the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), that would require all animals be fitted with tracking IDs under the guise of disease control. This proposal, if passed, would mean each of our urban chickens would need to be tagged and registered with the USDA.

And not just our chickens, but any chickens, which means the cost of pastured eggs and organic locally-grown meats at our local farmer's markets would go up, too.

Just another case where our urban chickens getting categorized as "livestock" isn't helping us.

According to the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, here are the three implementation stages of NAIS that are mandatory if the proposal would be successful (italics are mine):

1. Premises registration: Every person who owns any livestock animal would have to register the premises where the livestock is held within the state. Livestock animals include cattle (beef and dairy), hogs, sheep and goats, chickens and other poultry, horses, bison, deer, elk, alpacas, llamas and others.

2. Animal identification: There will be two levels of animal identification: individual animal and group or lot identification. Most animals in the program would need to be individually identified with a unique 15-digit number. Animals would either be implanted with a microchip or tagged with a radio frequency device, or otherwise physically identified. The tag will have to bear the entire 15-digit number, with the number easily read. For at least some species, radio-frequency identification devices would be required.

Group or lot identification could only be used where groups of animals are managed together from birth to death and not commingled with other animals. In practice, only large confinement producers of poultry and swine would be able to avail themselves of this exception to the individual tagging rule. If animals do not meet the requirements for group identification, they will have to be individually identified.

3. Animal tracking: Every time a tag is applied, a tag is lost or an animal needs to be re-tagged, an animal is killed or dies, or an animal is missing, the event would have to be reported to the government within 24 hours. “Commingling events” will have to be reported, including both public and private sales, regional shows and exhibitions.

So, if the NAIS is passed, we'll have to get tags/RFID chips for each of our urban chickens and report to the government if we take our chickens anywhere but our own backyards.

Wow. While the intent of the NAIS is noble romantic (disease tracking and "protection against bio-terrorism"), the implementation seems a bit intrusive/awkward if you ask me. ("No Fly List" anyone? see parallel issues/concerns raised in the Identity Cards discussion)

If, like me, you want to do something about this, please visit the Organic Consumers Association action page and send your Congresscritter an email before March 16, 2009.

More information on the NAIS can be found here:

• Save My Chickens: Take Action Against NAIS
• Farm and Ranch Freedom backgrounder on NAIS (pdf)
• Ag Weekly's National Animal ID draws opposition
• Daily Yonder's Speak Your Piece: Tag EVERY Animal?

Tip of the hat to Bad Wolf for bringing this issue to my (our) attention.

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hysterical anti-chicken sentiment in Mankato

I laughed this morning as the following two letters to the editor of the Mankato Free Press appeared in my RSS feed. (see prior updates on Mankato, MN, urban chicken discussions). If you've been reading my series on combating urban chicken stereotypes (too much poop, enforcement costs and salmonella fears, so far) you'll know what's coming.

The first letter begins "As a lad growing up on a farm in the 1920s and 1930s, it was my responsibility to clean the hen house and yard on whichever Saturday Dad deemed the proper time. I have not cleaned a chicken house or yard in over 60 years, but the following facts are indelibly etched in my olfactory memories." The writer recalls the stink of said coop and how the heat and humidity of a summer day concentrate that smell of poop and the chickens' molted feathers. I don't mean to disparage this fair writer's memory (of events from at least 70 years ago), but chickens naturally molt in the Fall, so if the owner's got a coop that stinks of excreta and feathers in the summer, you've got an animal abuse issue on your hands, not a chicken issue.

The second letter is in the same vein, although the claims are a bit more outlandish:

Chickens are dirty, they smell and can carry disease and parasites. Chickens attract mice, rats and predators such as fox, skunks and feral cats.

There are some groups that will disregard the rules, either on purpose or through ignorance. They will have larger flocks, maybe improper cages and large slaughtering operations.

Mankato just received regional status; let’s not revert to Mayberry status.

I can just imagine our leaders meeting with officers of some large company considering a move to locate in Mankato. You can tell their top executive, “oh, by the way, you may be living next to a chicken coop and a chicken slaughtering operation.” That will sure impress them.

And then the writer concludes "Folks from St. Peter and other towns should butt out -- this is a Mankato issue."

If I were an officer of a large company considering a move to locate in Mankato, I'd be more concerned about how many other residents harbor the status quo loving NIMBYism as the writers of the above two letters than I would about an urban chicken law on the books (like they've got in New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles...)

Here's hoping saner heads prevail in Mankato.