Chicken-keeping controversy

The anti-hen backlash

By Culinate staff

July 8, 2010

So urban chickens have been trendy for a few years now — long enough for a backlash to develop. Bob Young, in the Seattle Times Sunday magazine, recently explored what he calls "the chicken-resistance movement," tagging urban chicken-nesters as “locavores gone wild.” And when Leslie Cole interviewed New York Times food writer Kim Severson in April, Severson declared that chicken-keeping wasn't such a great idea:

There’s kind of a dark side to the backyard-chicken phenomenon, which is a lot of chickens end up in shelters. They’re not cared for very well, they get sick, they die. It’s not easy to keep chickens.

True, that. But their eggs sure are tasty. And if you really aren’t into chickens, you can always follow Young’s suggestion (via Novella Carpenter) for the next urban-livestock trend: rabbits.