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Old 10-29-2009, 08:18 AM
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Default Inland residents increasingly raising chickens for eggs and as pets

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Inland residents increasingly raising chickens for eggs and as pets

October 25, 2009

By SARAH BURGE
The Press-Enterprise

Chick, chick, chick, chick-ENS!

Lately, that call has made its way off the farm and into the backyard as more and more suburban -- and even urban -- dwellers in the Inland area and across the country have taken up chicken keeping.

Although it's illegal in many Inland residential areas, raising hens for eggs is becoming a mainstream hobby. Some chicken keepers are looking to save money, others to eat organic, locally produced food.

Evelyn Hartley, of Menifee in southwest Riverside County, said the bad economy motivated her to get chickens last year.

"I got tired of the cost of eggs at the grocery store. As well as the taste," she said. She described her eggs as having a richer flavor than factory-farmed eggs.

Hartley lives in a neighborhood of larger properties where chickens are allowed. Her nine hens lay about eight eggs a day. Sometimes she sells her extra eggs at a friend's hair salon. Not only are the eggs fresh, but they also come from chickens she knows are healthy and free to roam.
Story continues below
Frank Bellino / Special to The Press-Enterprise
Craig Martin, 58, who lives near Murrieta, allows his chickens to live on his front lawn. He says they run up to his truck as if they were dogs.

But Hartley's hens are not just egg producers -- they're pets, too.

When her hens stop laying, Hartley said, they will live out their days "running amok" in her yard.

"I don't eat my friends," she said.

Local business owners who sell hens say the backyard chicken trend really took off this year.

"I've seen a dramatic change," said Celeste Tittle, of Ham and Eggs Ranch in Norco. "The demand for hens has skyrocketed."

GROWING DEMAND

When Tittle started her business 18 years ago, it was based on selling show poultry for people involved in 4-H and Future Farmers of America. Suddenly, her customers are "not as farm-y." They want hens that are almost full grown and ready to lay.

"The people I'm selling to now want fresh eggs. ... They're worried about the economy," she said.

Even so, henkeeping is no way to save money, Tittle said. A backyard coop can't compete with industrial egg producers that buy feed by the truckload. And when people treat poultry as pets, look out. Tittle said she knows a woman who spent $475 on veterinary care for her sick chicken.

Linda Engle, who lives near Murrieta, said she and her husband have grown vegetables to sell at the farmers market in nearby Temecula for 10 years and have kept chickens as a hobby even longer.

She started selling eggs from her 11 hens recently when she saw there was a big demand for them at the Saturday market. She sells out within a half-hour.

Engle believes the chicken-farm horror stories aired on television last year to promote Prop. 2, whose passage required farmers to give animals more room, soured a lot of people on store-bought eggs.
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Martin considers his chickens more as pets than as a food source. He names them after Fleetwood Mac members. His favorite was Stevie.

"It freaked everybody out," she said.

Engle can tell her customers not only that her eggs are fresh and local, but also that the chickens who laid them have names. One customer has a standing order: "He wants Shirley's eggs."

Gidget Thompson helped her son Kyle start a business raising chickens as an educational project at their home near Murrieta years ago. Recently they have seen the demand for hens almost double.

Kyle, now 17, said, "It's become this whole 'green' way of life. People like the idea of being self-sufficient."

The Thompsons order their chicks by mail, and the post office calls when they arrive. "They'll say, 'You have a box here. And it's peeping.' "

CHICKENS AND THE LAW

In addition to a brisk online mail-order chicken business, several Web sites devoted to chicken hobbyists have cropped up.

Rob Ludlow, owner of BackYardChickens.com, said his Web site has more than 42,000 members. His new how-to book, "Raising Chickens for Dummies," dispels some of the misconceptions about chickens. Namely, that they are noisy, smelly and attract pests.

"They are not any worse than any other pet," he said. "In our opinion, if somebody has a lot big enough for a dog ... it's big enough for a few hens."

Many local governments disagree.

The specifics vary from place to place. In Riverside and Redlands, for example, requirements for keeping hens include having a lot specifically zoned to allow farm-type animals; the typical residential lot probably would not meet the requirements.

In Temecula, residents are required to have a half-acre to keep even a single hen.

In the unincorporated areas of Riverside County, residents need at least a 7,200-square-foot lot, zoning that allows fowl and enough space to keep the hens at least 50 feet from any residence, Code Enforcement Officer Jose Cruz said. Similar rules apply in unincorporated San Bernardino County.

Not that restrictive chicken-keeping laws have stopped people, said Officer Monique Middleton, of Animal Friends of the Valleys, which provides animal control services around southwestern Riverside County. Middleton said they see coops in small yards all the time. Once they even caught a Lake Elsinore resident keeping a hen on an apartment patio.

Usually, Animal Control does not get involved unless a hen escapes, which they often do. People don't realize chickens can easily flutter over a fence if their wings aren't clipped.

"They'll end up in the neighbor's yard. They'll end up in the street," Middleton said.

"I don't think chickens in the city are a very good idea," she said. "They're not very clean pets."

Tittle, of Ham and Eggs Ranch, said hens will cluck and squawk, but a well-kept coop does not smell or attract bugs.

"If your neighbor turns you in for a clucking hen," she said, "they need to get a life."

MY PET CHICKEN

For Craig Martin, who lives on a large property in La Cresta, near Murrieta, chickens are pets first and foremost. Most of his pampered hens have names derived from the band Fleetwood Mac, one of his favorites.

Martin first acquired chickens by chance a couple of years ago and was quickly hooked. But hen-keeping has not been without its tribulations. One was grabbed by a coyote, another simply dropped dead and yet another was "murdered" by an ill-tempered horse, Martin said.

"That was Stevie. That was my favorite chicken," he said wistfully. "She would jump right up in my lap."

Martin is in the process of a major coop upgrade. The new one is tall enough for a person to stand in, and by the time he's finished, may have both an automatic watering system and electricity to keep its three feathered occupants warm in the winter.

Martin's chickens actually live on the front lawn, strutting around the rose bushes and wicker furniture on the porch. Sometimes they wander right into his home office and raise a ruckus while he's on a conference call.

"They're not dumb animals," he said. "They follow my truck. They'll come running up the driveway. They're like dogs."

Raising chickens 101

Where to get them: Feed stores often sell day-old chicks, especially during the spring, but you could end up with roosters instead of hens -- it is difficult to tell the difference at that age. Some local farms and feed stores sell older hens. Several hatcheries sell mail-order hens or chicks online.

Care required: Chicks require lots of special care and equipment such as warming lamps. A small flock of hens requires about 10 minutes of care each day, and bedding in the coops needs changing at least monthly. With waterers and feeders, chickens can be left on their own for a few days at a time.

Food: Basic chicken feed starts around $12 per 50-pound bag. People also feed their hens treats such as table scraps, vegetables and cracked corn.

Shelter: Hens need 2 to 3 square feet each in a henhouse and 4 to 5 square feet in an outside run. Pre-fabricated henhouses are available in a range of sizes and prices, or you can build your own. Predators such as hawks, raccoons, opossums, coyotes and dogs pose a threat to hens.

Sources: www.Backyardchickens.com, www.mypetchicken.com, local feed stores
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