“Most chicken diapers are machine washable...”

August 4, 2018 4:51 PM

The booming business of luxury chicken diapers [The Outline] “Then Baker started getting orders. Lots of them. Though at first she was mainly selling to her friends who attended poultry shows — to the true chicken die-hards who also like to enter their birds into pseudo-relay-races — in the last few years she’s noticed a shift in her customer base. Even people without deep connections to the poultry world want her diapers so they can take their chickens indoors (and post stylish photos on Instagram). Baker currently sells 500 to 1,000 diapers, which retail for $18 apiece, each month. “There's not a single state that I don't ship to,” Baker said.”

• The Silicon Valley elite’s latest status symbol: Chickens [The Washington Post]

“In America’s rural and working-class areas, keeping chickens has long been a thrifty way to provide fresh eggs. In recent years, the practice has emerged as an unlikely badge of urban modishness. But in the Bay Area — where the nation’s preeminent local food movement overlaps with the nation’s tech elite — egg-laying chickens are now a trendy, eco-conscious humblebrag on par with driving a Tesla. In true Silicon Valley fashion, chicken owners approach their birds as any savvy venture capitalist might: By throwing lots of money at a promising flock (spending as much as $20,000 for high-tech coops). By charting their productivity (number and color of eggs). And by finding new ways to optimize their birds’ happiness — as well as their own.”

• Watermelon-fed, $350 chickens in diapers bring the farmyard to the Bay Area [The Mercury News]

“These days, Bay Area chicken-wrangling hobbyists are spending as much as $350 for a bird, $20,000 for a high-tech coop and $225 an hour for a “chicken whisperer” consultant, according to the Post. “It’s not uncommon here to see chickens roaming in their owners’ homes or even roosting in bedrooms, often with diapers on,” chicken whisperer Leslie Citroen, 54, told the newspaper. A Contra Costa County employee said she and her software engineer husband are “obsessed” with chickens to the point of embarrassment. The couple have 10, and they’ve replaced the woman’s desire for more children, the Post reported. “We’re typical Bay Area people,” she said. “We’ll spend anything if it’s labeled ‘heirloom’ or ‘heritage.'” The couple throw “an insane amount of money” at their birds, she said.”

• The zen of hens: the rise and rise of chicken-keeping [The Guardian]

“For more than 8,000 years, chickens have lived close to mankind, their long proximity leaving its mark on our language. We fear things “coming home to roost”, worry about “putting all our eggs in one basket”. Through all those years, the rusty klaxon of the cock’s crow has jolted humanity awake. The cockerel’s miracle-like defeat of darkness has earned him a symbolic place in religions around the world. Heard less often today, a rasping “cock-a-doodle-doo” now conjures a simpler, more rural existence. This rousing barnyard cheer is making a comeback, for a growing number of Britons are discovering the joys of keeping chickens.”

• In More Backyards, the Chicken Comes First [The New York Times]

“The postman left the cardboard box marked “Warning! LIVE BIRDS” in the backyard. Fortunately, the warning was right. Inside were three Rhode Island Red pullets, six weeks old, peeping and blinking. They had survived an extra day in transit — the Postal Service’s one-day shipping guarantee turns out not to apply to animals — from a hatchery in Ohio, 400 miles from Brooklyn as the chicken would fly if it had the wings. The gawky, rust-colored birds were installed in a small brown plywood coop, and so, on the last day of March in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, another New York household joined the ever-growing ranks of the chickened.”

posted by Fizz (65 comments total)

Relevant: “And it's local?”
posted by Fizz at 4:52 PM on August 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

So I am one of these crunchy hipster urban chicken keepers and I think all of this expensive chicken accoutrements is 100% bonkers. Just, like, for the record. (Getting peeps in the mail is super common though. That's the normal, low rent way to do it.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:00 PM on August 4, 2018 [18 favorites]

What always strikes me is that a chicken--particularly a chicken from an egg-producing breed--will almost always stop producing eggs in the same quantities long, long before she will die of old age--by 3 years, her egg capacity is 65% of what it would have been at her peak production. But if predators don't get a chicken, she'll usually live for 6-8 years--which means you're taking care of a chicken for minimal food yield for years. The traditional remedy is to eat all or almost all the hens who are past the point of continuing to lay eggs reliably. But if you're keeping your chickens like pets, that's horrifying to contemplate.

Everyone I know who has had chickens for a few years now here in Austin currently keeps them as straight up pets, with no more real agricultural yield than I get out of my cat. Which is fine, if you like them as pets. I happen not to be particularly fond of chickens, but then I'm not a bird person generally. But I think the craze for home egg production and the tendency to frame it as a money-saving investment is pretty overblown, and I wish people were more honest and upfront about it so people went in with a plan for what happened when eggs stopped coming.
posted by sciatrix at 5:06 PM on August 4, 2018 [24 favorites]

My spouse grew up keeping chickens for pragmatic food/income-related reasons and has gone to lengths to make clear that chickens are crazy and actively evil. You're basically keeping frustrated velociraptors as pets.
posted by Scattercat at 5:11 PM on August 4, 2018 [46 favorites]

Somehow this reminds me of this history of Vermont communes and their decline that I was reading yesterday. I work in tech with several Vermonters, and I see similar sorts of threads running through their lives, the ways that customs from small-town granola hippie upbringing are now merging with things like digital nomadism, drone photography, extensive home gardening and livestock initiatives, etc. It also of course makes me think of Heather Champ and Derek Powazek, tech folks who now run Milk Barn Farm.

I also grew up chasing chickens, the daughter of somewhat radical iconoclast artists who gardened extensively (my mother still does), did guerrilla tree-planting on public and private property, etc. We had these heavy stuffed-fabric doorstop chickens from an art fair by the fireplace, and now that my father is gone, they're mine. So while I have no chickens myself, I do enjoy looking at them on Instagram!
posted by limeonaire at 5:16 PM on August 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

“We’re typical Bay Area people,” she said. “We’ll spend anything if it’s labeled ‘heirloom’ or ‘heritage.'”

Look, I have no problem with anyone keeping chickens, or becoming fond of their chickens, but every day these particular people aren't taken for all they're worth represents a real failure of human ingenuity and can-do spirit.
posted by praemunire at 5:33 PM on August 4, 2018 [65 favorites]

$20,000 for a coop is equal to 4,000 cartons of high-class organic brown eggs, or 48,000 eggs. At 6 eggs per day, that's 21 years worth of eggs. And that's just for the coop.

This isn't even Capitalism, this is Rich People Being Stupid.
posted by happyroach at 5:39 PM on August 4, 2018 [34 favorites]

What kind of chickens are the diapers made out of?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:39 PM on August 4, 2018 [18 favorites]

If I had to guess what “luxuries” would send a chicken into paroxysms of pampered joy, diapers would not make the list.
posted by eirias at 5:40 PM on August 4, 2018 [6 favorites]

In true Silicon Valley fashion, chicken owners approach their birds as any savvy venture capitalist might: By throwing lots of money at a promising flock (spending as much as $20,000 for high-tech coops). By charting their productivity (number and color of eggs). And by finding new ways to optimize their birds’ happiness — as well as their own.”

Yup this is exactly how capital should be allocated

Luxury chicken diapers and fully automated luxury chicken coops are clearly evidence of the wisdom of the invisible hand at work

We’re totally doing it right, no need to worry, everyone
posted by schadenfrau at 5:43 PM on August 4, 2018 [15 favorites]

I'd like to see some of that money thrown at overturning the "no rooster" codes. There's typically already noise ordinances for that. Soundproof the coop, problem solved.
posted by aniola at 5:43 PM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, I live in acreage, but a whole bunch of California tech folks moved here and made a fuss about roosters and donkeys being too noisy, and now the city banned chickens. We have to buy commercial eggs now, instead of getting them from next door. Of course, these were your regular low rent yard chickens, not your fancy flufferbottom diaper wearing chickens, so I reckon we were just doing it wrong out here in the country.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:44 PM on August 4, 2018 [14 favorites]

COuld 2018's writing team just hang it up already?
posted by ocschwar at 5:47 PM on August 4, 2018 [9 favorites]

Gotta love the workings of the Invisible Hand! I would never have guessed that $20,000 chicken coops are pareto optimal, but $20,000 trailers for the homeless are not.
posted by monotreme at 5:49 PM on August 4, 2018 [25 favorites]

But I think the craze for home egg production and the tendency to frame it as a money-saving investment is pretty overblown,

Oh, it's an outright lie. Watching small children interact with chickens is priceless though. The mammalian fear of velociraptors is lurking just below the surface.

a whole bunch of California tech folks moved here and made a fuss about roosters and donkeys being too noisy

That's pretty hypocritical of them considering there are entire smallholdings in most CA cities even today. People in CA keep fucking ostriches on suburban plots. We had neighbors with llamas and peacocks and my friend who had a small farm had a neighbor with an honest to God camel.
posted by fshgrl at 5:50 PM on August 4, 2018 [7 favorites]

Took me nearly half an hour to read that article, on account of stopping every second paragraph to let the hysterics pass and wipe the tears from my eyes.
posted by JohnFromGR at 5:51 PM on August 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have nothing to say, other than "Oh, for fuck's sake."
posted by Ickster at 6:02 PM on August 4, 2018 [13 favorites]

I call my chickens "the goldfish of the yard." I have about that same level of attachment to them. They're fun to watch living their little spoiled chicken lives, but when they stop producing, they are becoming soup. And they're all going to go as a unit because introducing new chickens to existing chickens is a pain in the fucking ass because chickens are horrible bullies. My mom, who eats chicken, is horrified by this notion. I, someone who does not typically eat chicken, am unfussed. They have lived luxurious (not $20k coop and diapers luxurious, but way better than a wild or large scale farmed animal) lives in return for services rendered but putting animals that we have named* into a stock pot doesn't really bother me.

But I think the craze for home egg production and the tendency to frame it as a money-saving investment is pretty overblown,

Anyone who tries to claim this is definitely lying. Unless you've got a good sized flock and feed them mostly kitchen scraps/shit you grow yourself in your own fields and produced a coop via magic, you are not saving money. Each one of my eggs probably costs about $50. And they don't even lay in the winter.

What they are good for is gardening, though. While my garden is actively producing I'm in a constant war with the chickens to keep them out of my beds, but at all other times of the year they do my weeding, composting, rototilling, pest-control and fertilizing for me. My garden is amazing, y'all.

*All our chickens are named for Doctor Who companions. Right now Polly is the queen bee and she's a horrible asshole, Dodo is my favorite even though she produces the least and is a secret egg-eater, and Vicky and Susan are indistinguishable from one another so we just call them The Easter Eggers as a unit.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:10 PM on August 4, 2018 [32 favorites]

We are the proud owners of four chickens obtained this year since we relocated to 13 acres (mostly wetlands) of land outside Boston. We got them as three-day-old chicks and we're hoping we get some eggs out of them before winter comes. Their coop cost about $150 and the spend most of the day keeping our yard in a Lyme-disease-heavy area free of ticks and dealing with our kitchen scraps, aka fruits and veggies our 9 month old drops on the floor. Our three-year-old is fascinated by them; they would prefer she didn't ever come within a 20 ft radius of them. I will be damned before they come in my house - they're no longer chicks in a brooder. They can live outside.

As a proud (not actually proud) member of the tech industry, I think I must be doing this wrong, somehow?

(Mine are named after midwives from Call the Midwife)
posted by olinerd at 6:19 PM on August 4, 2018 [6 favorites]

I have 8 new hens and let me tell you they stink :p I can't imagine letting one cecal poop in my house. Unfortunately I had to brood them in the laundry room this spring as it was too cold out in the coop for them, never gonna do that again, dust everywhere. Yeah, my ladies are definitely outdoor critters. They're not pets but the older ones (previous flock) who stopped laying are mysteriously still around (well a few are, they actually went downhill a lot faster then I've heard people say.) So...subsidizing in feed now. I didn't name them like people said and it still didn't help...
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 6:23 PM on August 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

The last time I was over at my friends place with chickens we were having a nice brunch in the yard, and I discovered I can imitate and mimic chicken noises so well that I was able to make my friends think there was a chicken out of the run behind them or even in the house.

Apparently this useless superpower only works when there are actual chickens near by for me to mimic.

Yes, there is absolutely no point to this comment, not unlike the ability to mimic chickens.
posted by loquacious at 6:32 PM on August 4, 2018 [13 favorites]

Look life in the bay area really sucks ass in many ways, let us have our fun please. Maybe we just have a heightened awareness of the fragility of the comforts of capitalism and are trying to do something to feel a little bit more secure. I admit that it's stupid to spend your money this way when there are ginourmous homeless camps under every overpass. But I can't blame people for trying their best to make themselves happy and comfortable.
posted by bleep at 6:43 PM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

my grandparents must be laughing their asses off at the absurdity of changing diapers on chickens

on my grandfather's farm a chicken laid eggs or became dinner
posted by pyramid termite at 6:45 PM on August 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

I’m cool with my chickens wearing diapers in the house because chickens in the house are cute af, come at me bros.
posted by nikaspark at 6:59 PM on August 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

in the last few years she’s noticed a shift in her customer base.

How's that again?
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:03 PM on August 4, 2018

I keep chickens. They dont come in the house or wear diapers, but its none of anyone's business besides mine if they did. There are plenty of ways to keep your flock productive, and still house the older hens who dont lay as often. With all the things there are to worry about in the world, how people choose to keep their chickens doesn't seem very high in terms of importance to me. What is important to me is knowing that my source of animal protien comes from creatures who are content, healthy, and well cared for.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 7:06 PM on August 4, 2018 [4 favorites]

What is important to me is knowing that my source of animal protien comes from creatures who are content, healthy, and well cared for.

To Serve Man
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:52 PM on August 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

This is the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this post.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:53 PM on August 4, 2018 [7 favorites]

I think the Bay Area has replaced Japan for “people sure are weird” stories, with the notable advantage that the Bay Area stories might actually be real
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:06 PM on August 4, 2018 [8 favorites]

During my college years, we brought my appenzeller spitzhauben inside a couple times once and got a few cute pictures of it sitting on the cat tower.

Anyway, there was this one time when I came home and the chicken had snuck into the house like a toddler or something, gotten into my bowl of popcorn, and evenly distributed said popcorn all over the living room and was perched for the evening on the couch.

It was a late addition to the flock and was nearly henpecked to death a couple times. Its ornamental head poof probably didn't help, but gave it a special place in our hearts. We eventually rehomed the whole flock to a 4-acre farm, where it happily followed the horses around to eat the bugs near their hooves.
posted by aniola at 8:18 PM on August 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

Jesus, rich white people, you're embarrassing the rest of us again.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:29 PM on August 4, 2018 [6 favorites]

I have 10 chickens because it's cheaper than buying eggs, and the girls provide eggs for half the relatives and provide good will or trade goods for friends. Their job is to clean up bugs and flies and turn the manure over in the compost pile. They free range, have a big coop, shade, clean shavings, warm water in the winter. No names, no diapers, but it's a pretty good gig, if you're a chicken. If the suckers don't lay, they are soup, but they never see it coming, and it's quick.

They do have a custom built coop painted to match the house and other outbuildings, with decorative painted wooden chicken cutouts and a hand painted sign in black with gold lettering: Chez Coop. But in my defense, I built it myself from scrounged materials and leftovers, and DH did all the cutting for my art work.

I noticed in Boise about 2/3 of the people who buy the $1000 coops and fancy birds with custom equipment and diapers get tired of hassling with the pooping, bead-eyed, feather shedding peckers and soon list them on Craigslist or Facebook, or give them away.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:04 PM on August 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

How many eggs does your dog lay
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:07 PM on August 4, 2018 [9 favorites]

This woman makes $9000 to $18,000 a month selling chicken diapers?

I’m in the wrong business.
posted by Autumnheart at 9:10 PM on August 4, 2018 [11 favorites]

Autumnheart, that's the gross receipts. She's not making that much because she's got material and labor costs and taxes etc.

However, it still sounds like a reasonably successful small business with a chance to get larger.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:23 PM on August 4, 2018

It's not just diapers. Tutus. Patriotic diapers. Peep pouches. Saddles to protect the hens from the roosters!
posted by stowaway at 9:49 PM on August 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

PS my chickens are named after female super heros.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 10:22 PM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

When I was married, my farm-raised wife insisted that she have chickens. We lived in the country, and chickens provided eggs and meat. I despised those damn chickens and everything I had to do to help with them. I came to dislike eating eggs and chicken meat, too. The only good thing about them was that they disposed of kitchen scraps usefully. If some neighbor tries to bring them into the city where I now live, I will fight them tooth and claw. Chickens stink and carry disease.

As for expensive coops and diapers, this is why we need income redistribution.
posted by bryon at 10:23 PM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Chickens stink and carry disease.

Only when they are overcrowded and not properly cared for, just like any living creature, including humans.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 10:26 PM on August 4, 2018 [9 favorites]

PULL-UPS FOR PULLETS
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:06 PM on August 4, 2018 [8 favorites]

They're bloody eggs. Must everything in America be about colour?
posted by pompomtom at 1:19 AM on August 5, 2018

“We’re typical Bay Area people,” she said. “We’ll spend anything if it’s labeled ‘heirloom’ or ‘heritage.'”

Bullshit you're typical (unless an editor removed "stereotype of"); this is some serious NYT Style-level reporting writing.

On second thought, fuck it, I wonder how much I can sell my heritage Franco-Hibernian "fertilizer" for. Just Like in the Old Country™
posted by MikeKD at 1:30 AM on August 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

If I had to guess what “luxuries” would send a chicken into paroxysms of pampered joy, diapers would not make the list.

You’ve descended to kink-shaming chickens?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:18 AM on August 5, 2018 [17 favorites]

Doesn't that stop them from preening? Or laying even?
posted by lucidium at 5:17 AM on August 5, 2018

I've been thinking of getting chickens. I was told there are breeds that keep laying- maybe slower, but still productively- their whole lives. I was kind of counting on this because no way could I kill a chicken. Have I been lied to?
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:42 AM on August 5, 2018

People in CA keep fucking ostriches on suburban plots.

I had to read that a couple of times.

I mean, I know California has a reputation for being weird, but really...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 5:47 AM on August 5, 2018 [14 favorites]

I bet this lady would’ve bought, or at least made, diapers for her birds. Heck, she even made ‘em tombstones.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:55 AM on August 5, 2018

By the way, those diapers are just a larger version of something made for parrots.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:58 AM on August 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

If kept properly, with enough space per bird and protection from rain (damp poop is smelly poop), they don't smell. All of the people I see on local chicken Facebook wanting to do something about smell don't have a roof on their runs (and there's always many people telling them that the solution is a roof, not some magical bedding material). As for disease (salmonella I'm assuming), all reptiles and birds are vectors. Wear gloves, wash your hands. We've had legal city chickens here for several years now and it's not been a problem.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:11 AM on August 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Our chickens are absolutely obsessed with coming into the house. We let them in now and again to check things out but they get bored quickly when there's no food and wander back out.
posted by tommasz at 6:15 AM on August 5, 2018

Just how many eggs do these people go through in a week to justify keeping chickens? I mean, we love to bake, and eat eggs and all, but we'd never keep up with even two or three layers.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:53 AM on August 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Is there a way to keep rats from nesting in the coop tho? That's my biggest barrier. We have a ton of rats already.
posted by k8t at 8:06 AM on August 5, 2018

You’ve descended to kink-shaming chickens?

I see someone has taken a break from US politics
posted by schadenfrau at 8:16 AM on August 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

We eat three eggs a day (I eat one for breakfast, husband eats two).

As for the rats, make sure there's no available food source for them anywhere. They won't nest in a coop full of chickens if there's no all you can eat buffet available nearby. You want a no-waste feeder for the chickens, of which there are many varieties to choose from. Chickens will also happily eat mice.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:18 AM on August 5, 2018

Chickens in the city are a fact of life in Key West. As we are blessed with free-roaming descendants of the original Havana fighting roosters from the 1920's, I can second the emotion about not wanting to have roosters around.

However, since they are wild, they are protected by Federal wildlife laws pertaining to local and migratory birds, and to harass them in any way can carry a $1500 fine. This is the burden of living in the largest wildlife sanctuary in the United States.

Please do not share this information with any homeless chickens that you might know or run across.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 8:22 AM on August 5, 2018

a whole bunch of California olks moved here and made a fuss about roosters and donkeys being too noisy

Yeah, but when I lived in downtown Oakland about 8 years ago one of our neighbors had a rooster. No good, man. I should not have to wake up to a rooster at 4 am every day. I specifically live in cities so I don’t have to wake up to roosters at 4 am. Absolutely not.
posted by greermahoney at 8:48 AM on August 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

PULL-UPS FOR PULLETS
posted by The Underpants Monster

Now I will forever think of pull-ups for pullets when I see this username.
posted by aniola at 9:16 AM on August 5, 2018 [8 favorites]

LUXURY CHICKEN DIAPERS sounds like a band name we'd make up in college midway through our third pitcher of Milwaukee's Best.

Just sayin'.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 9:26 AM on August 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

9 chooks here. No diapers. They can't come inside because they'll eat the cat's dry.

When they're too old, or if they're roosters, then people buy them from you for meat. They're great for scraps but they're certainly not actually good value, unless you'd be buying some crazy expensive eggs instead. We feed them layer pellet, grain and as much yard time as possible (plenty of bugs). They only stopped laying last week.

Unfortunately, we lost our last four chickens to a fox. So there's had to be a fair bit of work, and cost, in order to secure this batch. Finger crossed.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 10:02 AM on August 5, 2018

Hi, city-chicken stories here:

I found my first "alley" chicken in Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. She was hanging out with a bunch of nice punk kids who said no, she was not their chicken, but they'd given her some water. We spent some time watching other Manhattanites interact with her, which is good entertainment: most folks don't know what to make of a chicken, not even the dogs. Best quote: young boy who said "Oh boy, a chicken!... but maybe it's a robot. Wouldn't it be cool if it was a robot?" Most likely the chicken was an escapee from a santeria ritual in the park.

My roommate had been threatening to get chickens, so I called her, told her to get ready to put her money where her mouth was, scooped up the raggedy white teenage hen and carried her back to our ground-floor apartment. We lived near Yeshiva University, so I named her Hamantaschen.

Setting up a scrap-wood coop for her in the interior courtyard taught me a lot about my neighbors' chicken familiarity. The super was 100% nonplussed when I told him I was going to keep chickens; weren't no thing. The middle-age butch Latina running the hardware shop where I got parts was like "Oh yeah, I used to keep a rooster on the fire escape." (Which is not legal; hens are legal in the city, roosters are not. Even though hens are crazy loud, too.) When the chickens escaped to the next courtyard over, the back area of a doctor's office catering to a mostly Spanish-speaking population, and I had to fetch the hens through the office, people seemed bemused, but not too surprised. (I had picked up a second hen at the vivero market under the 1 train at 207th. I carried her home on the subway in a shopping bag. My friend named her Hassenpfeffer.)

Cracked corn was available at the local pet store, and I supplemented that with veggie scraps. It was a joy to watch the hens attack those huge waterbug-roaches that live in the basements and halls of NYC buildings; not a leg was left when they were done. However, they were also pretty stupid, and one morning my mom found them pecking at a dead baby pigeon.

When I needed to move, I was not ready to limit my house search to chicken-friendly locations in New York City, that being utterly prohibitive. So the chickens went to live in Westchester (*pats belly* delicious, delicious Westchester -- ok I kid, they did actually go to live in Westchester with the uncle of a friend who had also been threatening to get chickens for a while). Unfortunately, they did not thrive, and ultimately succumbed to pigeon worms. Karma, I guess, for eating a dead baby pigeon. Also an indicator that neither I nor the uncle thought to find vet care for them.

We were not a diapering family, when it came to chickens, but we enjoyed having them. They were tiny rotten little velociraptors, but I'd keep chickens again, given the chance. The eggs were delicious, definitely worth the extra trouble.
posted by gusandrews at 10:05 AM on August 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

Oh my god, these people are the reason we will never be able to afford a house in the Bay Area. I wish their chickens would rise up and eat them.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:44 AM on August 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

The Chicken that ate the Bay Area?

Libertarian funded garage shop bio lab GMO's a chicken into that? Could work.
posted by aleph at 11:57 AM on August 5, 2018

I, for one, would like to hear more about the chicken racing.
posted by Pyry at 12:56 PM on August 5, 2018

eat the rich and their chickens too
posted by karayel at 2:11 PM on August 5, 2018

I would never have guessed that $20,000 chicken coops are pareto optimal, but $20,000 trailers for the homeless are not.

As it so happens - one of the things that lead to the creation of the Social Security program was when a government census worker was on the job and discovered an elderly woman living in a chicken coop because she couldn't afford any other housing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:24 PM on August 5, 2018 [9 favorites]