Daily Star showcases Tucson Coop Tour and my chickens!

In anticipation of the upcoming and sure to be fabulous Tucson City Chicken Coop Tour, the Arizona Daily Star produced a two-minute video on my chickens with an interview from your’s truly…here’s the link to the video and if you haven’t already gone and purchased your $5 tickets at the Food Conspiracy Co-op on 4th Avenue be sure to do so!

Backyard chickens across the country unite!!

Seriously, my chicken lovin’ friends, the backyard chicken revolution has begun.  So before it nose dives into some irrelevant so-last-year-fad, let us celebrate and truly revel in the fact that people everywhere are getting turned on to the idea of keeping hens in their very own backyards for the joys of wonderfully local, fresh eggs, and even more wonderfully local, fresh chicken shit enriched compost.  It’s true.  Chickens are so hot right now.  Here’s the proof:

As you probably already know, Tucson will be hosting it’s very own chicken coop tour on May 23.  But as much as I would like to say that Tucson is on the cutting edge of backyard chicken solidarity, cities and communities all across the country have been organizing to educate people about the benefits of backyard chickens, as is evidenced by this very helpful post on Urban Chickens.

In many places, it isn’t even legal to keep chickens in one’s backyard (shock!).  Philadelphians have created this very fancy and uber cool poster to champion their cause of keeping chickens.

In my old collegiate stomping grounds of Harrisonburg, VA friends of mine have been cited for code violations after keeping a handful of egg laying wonders, thus resulting in the organization of the Harrisonburg Backyard Chicken Project.

Fortunately, there are wonderful places like Austin,  where they recently celebrated everything fowlish by their very own citywide tour of backyard chicken coops, and you can find out all about it and get excited all over again on their Funky Chicken Coop Tour blog.

Tucson is no stranger to the rights of backyard chicken owners.  Which is why I am so very excited about the upcoming tour of the various chicken coops that the Old Pueblo has to offer.  I will keep you all posted as more details emerge.  In the meantime, backyard chickens and their owners everywhere keep keeping on!

Stay tuned…

Rumor has it that there will be a Tucson city chicken coop tour featuring different styles of hen housing options throughout Tucson.  Should be in May sometime, and this chicken wrangler hopes to be apart of it.  Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted as there are more details and locations.

Hopefully this will be a really wonderful fundraiser and a great way to show people how easy it is to keep and raise their own chickens.  Fortunately we live in a city where the limit of hens per household within the city limits is 24 as long as they are 50 feet from the nearest residence (or you have chicken friendly neighbors).  There are plenty of other places around the country where this is not a possibility and residents have to fight for their right to party chicken wrangle in their own backyards.  Thumbs up Tucson!

Let’s roll.

Somewhere over the pond in Willoughby, Northamptonshire, an bowling-pin shaped egg was laid by a chicken.  Naturally, the owner thought about selling it on Ebay.  I mean what else would you do with an egg like that?

Chicken lays bowling-pin shaped egg

By ROSS MCGUINNESS – Monday, March 9, 2009

An animal lover has found her chickens are game for anything after one laid an egg resembling a tenpin bowling pin.

‘I’ve done a bit of research and there’s nothing to suggest you should ever get eggs in this shape,’ said the 43-year-old.

Natalie Wiltshire said the bizarre creation was laid by one of her 20 chickens and reckons it is one of a kind.

The mother of three found it last week and was initially tempted to sell it on eBay.

‘I don’t know how much it would fetch but I remember a cornflake shaped like Jesus that sold for quite a lot of money so you never know,’ added the yoga teacher from Willoughby, Northamptonshire.

But the odd egg has proved such a hit with children Oliver, 13, Edward, ten, and six-year-old Benedict that she has been persuaded to hang on to it.

‘It really is quite an extraordinary shape. All I need now is another nine pins and a round one for a bowling ball and we have the complete set,’ she joked. [Metro.co.uk]

The diction of chickens has never been more relevant.

All you ever needed to know about backyard chickens:

Bucky Buckaw’s Backyard Chicken Broadcast is produced by the Sagebrush Variety Show, and thanks to the privacy squandering world of Facebook, I was able to find this link from a friend of mine.  The piece is only seven minutes long, but packs worlds of useful information in there regarding everything from egg laying tendencies to calcium needs of chickens.  There are also other broadcasts that deal with important subjects of national security, omega-3’s, and coop construction.  So have at it chicken lovers.