Preserve an Endangered Species with Heritage Chickens

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Once they get used to foraging (they have to relearn each spring), the mixed Reds I keep now expect to be let out of the henhouse at daybreak and will raise a squawking ruckus till the hatch is opened. I don't give them access to the feeder till evening or they'd stuff themselves on bought feed and range for fun, not breakfast. Hungry, they will range up to 100 yards from the pen but—like most chickens—forage only over open ground where they find grass and other small seeds. They'll take a nip out of each red tomato and pepper and scratch up young plants, so I rig poultry netting or an electrified fence of three strands of conductor-embedded plastic wire arranged at 2, 4, and 6 feet above ground level on nonconductive fiberglass rods around the garden.

Don't plan to keep wide-ranging poultry breeds in town (they'll fly over or dig under fences to satisfy their natural ranging urge). A bird of a more domestic strain may get out, but she won't range out of soft-clucking distance of the flock. Don't let any breed run loose if you have neighbors within a quarter mile. Chicken droppings don't compare to dogs' but are half-dollar-sized blobs that stick to shoes and aren't welcome if tracked into a neighbor's kitchen.

If you want to keep chickens in an urban area, first get a zoning variance, including approval of all abutters. Don't plan to keep roosters; their harsh and piercing crow is a turf claim and harem call designed to travel for a mile; it will be heard even if you coop them till noon. Don't keep old hens in town either, unless they're a super-gentle breed such as the Jersey Giants. Hens' "BLEAK, Blerk, Blerk" irritation call is as loud as and much more frequent than a rooster's crow, and they get noisier as they age. And keep doors latched and fences tight (including wire mesh over the top of any outside run, to keep pigeons from flying in and mooching feed and introducing disease and parasites).

Most country towns passed antilivestock ordinances in the teens and twenties after autos replaced horses and buggies and they could pave over the manure/mud muck that made the main streets of preindustrial towns smell as ripe as any barnyard. But they tend to be lenient if you maintain peace with the neighbors and keep a dean, quiet operation.

The secret of fly and odor control is screens over henhouse windows and a deep, loose litter in the house and outdoor run. Before the birds arrive, arrange for delivery of plenty of loose, dry organic material of the kind that you'd use for a garden mulch or horse bedding. Straw, lumber sawdust and wood chips, peanut hulls, or ground corncobs are all good. Keep a 6-inch-deep layer in the henhouse, stirring and loosening it on the floor each day if the birds don't, and changing and disposing of it before it gets too redolent of ammonia. Scattering wood ashes will prolong bedding life. When we kept chickens in a country town during the seventies, we used wood chip horse bedding I had collected and spread on the garden during a hard rain so the ammonia would carry down into the soil.

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