January 17, 2023

The Backyard Chicken Craze Is Going Mass-Market


I stopped at the Big R store in Pueblo last week — my first visit in some time — and wow, that chicken thing.

Big R seems to cater mainly to hobby ranchers and rural homeowners. (Now I'll from someone: "I farm 600 acres, and I shop there!") You can get your Carhart and Wrangler jeans, your muck boots, animal feed by the sack, gopher poison, guns and ammo, tools, horse tack, all sorts of stuff.

And chicken coops. Out front where there used to be kit-built storage sheds are now displayed kit-built chicken coops. I will leave it to you to decide whether where these come down on the cute/utilitarian spectrum and whether you could build you own for less. But who can wait? There's a crisis!

In the parking lot, two middle-aged women of SE Asian looks were loading big sacks of chicken feed into a car. Somehow I felt that they might have been in the chicken business for some time.

In Colorado, we have not just avian flu hitting large-scale chicken operations, but a new law just went into effect setting "cage free" space requirements for laying hens. Some people want to blame both for the shortage of eggs in stores. Others insist that only the avian flu is to blame:

“The data that we're seeing coming out of the USDA is really indicating that what they're seeing...this impact on prices that we're experiencing, is really a direct input of the impact of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza,” said Hollis Glenn, deputy commissioner of operations for the Colorado Department of Agriculture. “It's a fatal disease for poultry, the laying hens, and the flocks of our producers have been tremendously diminished. So, their ability to produce eggs has been a challenge and when they have an outbreak in their facility, the data that shows that.”
Meanwhile, social media is on it! Two samples for yesterday:


And if you made it this far, you need to be thinking about the legalities.

Additional permits might be required for the coops the chicken will live in. 

“Call [your local zoning department] and figure out if you're going to need a permit for your coop,” [Chicken owner Bekah] Russell said. “Because, you'll definitely need one for your chickens, but you might require an additional building permit.”

[Chicken owner Kia[ Ruiz also advised owners to prepare for chicken deaths. The birds are not particularly hardy creatures and predators common in the state will hunt them if their enclosures aren’t secure. And sometimes, the hens might even fight members of their own flock. 

“I had been in that situation when we first got them. They were pecking each other, they were younger.” Ruiz said. “Chickens are dinosaurs. When they see red and they see blood, they will just keep attacking.”

 

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