Slide show of chicken photos from yesterday — check out the pics of other park(ing) spaces posted to Flickr:

A big thanks to the friends who came by and visited with the chickens and bought eggs yesterday at the Urban Chicken Park — I think it went very well, considering we had less than a week to put it together and hardly any spare time to plan. My eggstraordinary collaborator Phil and I failed to communicate our visions for the space clearly to each other: he was apparently imagining something "chic and minimalist" whereas I was picturing it more barnyard-y, full of information about pastured vs. factory chickens and sustainable agriculture. Since I am bossier than Phil, the result was something he called "very Berkeley," which I am pretty sure was not a compliment coming from a San Franciscan. I’m just really glad the rain waited til today — that would have been a big drag.

As Park(ing) Day is about reclaiming asphalt for public green space, a lot of people wanted to know what chickens had to do with that. I believe that public parks shouldn’t be simply ornamental, but ought to be functional as well. Why grow just flowers, when (if your climate allows) you could also grow attractive produce like squash and cherry tomatoes or berries, for education, food security, and tastiness? Why not have urban chicken parks, where eggs could be collected by kids? At the very least, cities shouldn’t have such draconian laws about private citizens’ keeping chickens and having frontyard gardens instead of lawns. I blathered about this, the Bay Area Meat CSA, and Slow Food to probably 200 passersby, plus news crews from Yahoo TV, NBC, and Current TV (Al Gore’s station). I hope I made sense, despite being sweaty, sunburned, and covered in sod and chickenshit — no doubt looking "very Berkeley" as well. Harrumph.

Update: I realized that in my exhausted, cranky stupor I forgot to write anything about the actual chickens. They were beautiful birds — the black outlines around their bronze feathers made them look like crocheted lace; at least two visitors who had chickens themselves commented that Isabel and Claudette were super-healthy specimens. Kids were very taken with them: one little boy had to be literally dragged away by his dad. They were also delightfully mellow. Traffic didn’t appear to bother them a bit, although dogs made them anxious and flappy. A huge shout-out to Bailey Smith for lending the chickens and hay bales to us, and for getting off work early to hang out and share chicken stories. And a big thanks to Phil for including me in his bird-brained idea and for putting up with my farmy-ness.

After the jump, some not-so-fun chicken facts, along with a few of the resources and links that I put together for the event:

Chicken Industry Statistics

• Industry-recommended space per chicken in a battery cage: 67 to 86 square inches
• Square inches of copy paper: 93.5 inches
• Amount of space per chicken recommended for raising happy backyard chickens: 576 square inches
• Number of laying hens in the U.S.: 350 million
• Eggs produced per year in the U.S.: 92 billion
• Number of eggs for each man, woman, and child: 303
• No. 1 egg-producing state: Iowa (13.8 billion eggs)
• Pounds of chicken meat produced per year in U.S.: 49 billion
• U.S. retail sales of organic poultry in 2005: $161 million
• Percentage of conventional poultry sales: Less than 1%
• Annual growth rate of organic poultry sales, estimated: 23-38%

 Resources for wannabe chicken farmers
From the East Bay Express article "On Ruling Your Roost"

Gail Damerow, Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens (Storey, $18.95)
Barbara Kilarski, Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces (Storey, $16.95)
Gail Luttmann and Rick Luttmann, Chickens in Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide (Rodale, $12.95)

Web sites:
Chicken Keeping: General info, plus hen blog and hencam. ChickenKeeping.com
The City Chicken: Coop photos and useful FAQ. Home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken
FeatherSite: A wellspring on breeds and husbandry: FeatherSite.com/Poultry/BRKPoultryPage.html
Backyard Chickens: Coop design and helpful Learning Center. BackyardChickens.com
Biosecurity for the Birds: Bird flu info. www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/birdbiosecurity/
Mother Earth News Chicken and Egg Page: Egg nutrition research. MotherEarthNews.com/eggs
Coop Sales:
Henspa.com
MyPetChicken.com
Omlet.us
WineCountryCoops.com

What do those egg carton terms mean?
Adapted from the San Francisco Chronicle

Cage Free: Hens aren’t kept in cages and can move around the coop freely. Space allowed each chicken varies by producer..

Organic: Hens are fed only certified organic vegetarian feed, get no antibiotics and have free access to the outdoors. Usually, that means the coop has one or more openings to the outside and exterior roosts. Very few chickens run around freely outside, let alone in pastures or orchards. Organic chicken operations have to be certified by designated agencies; cartons usually say which one. Some also say "hormone free," but in fact all eggs are hormone-free; hormone use in laying hens has been illegal since the 1960s.

White, Brown And Blue Shells: Shell color is determined by the chicken’s breed. Brown and white eggs taste the same if the hens are fed the same things. White eggs come from white chickens, mostly Leghorns; the browns from Rhode Island Reds, which have reddish-brown feathers. The pale blue-green eggs that show up in farmers’ markets and some cafes come from a South American breed called Araucana.

Free-Range, Free-Roaming, Free-Farmed: The first two terms mean eggs from hens with outdoor access. Any organic egg is, by definition, free range. Free-farmed is a trade-marked term indicating certified humane treatment of the hens, including adequate space, food and water, with no antibiotics used to promote growth; monitored by the American Humane Association.

Vegetarian Diet: No animal byproducts in the feed. Regular laying hens get beef and pork carcass leftovers like lard, tallow and bone. Note that chickens are by nature omnivorous.

Fertile: Eggs from hens who live with roosters; most of them are cage free. Fertile eggs taste and cook up the same as other eggs, and are nutritionally similar.

Omega 3: Eggs naturally have about 35 mg of these healthy essential fatty acids. Eggs from hens fed flax seed and canola oil have 100 mg to 225 mg (depending on brand) of the omega-3s called ALA, which aren’t as potent as EPA and DHA, the omega-3s found in fish. Eggs from hens fed algae contain up to 150 mg of DHA, plus extra ALA. A 3 1/2-ounce piece of salmon has about 100 mg of EPA and DHA. 

Pointers for the fledgling urban chicken farmer
From the East Bay Express article "On Ruling Your Roost"

The coop: Provide at least four square feet per bird. Chickens like to sleep on elevated roosts, which can be fashioned from an old broomstick or thick branch. Hens will also need nests for laying — any foot-square wooden box will do. Building a coop is a weekend project for toolbelt divas. For t he rest of us, there are simple plans online, and even premade coops.

Eggs: Collect daily so they stay fresh.

Food and water: Buy laying feed for hens and chick feed for the tykes. Feed stores also sell nifty feeders and waterers (the hanging kind work great), which should never be empty. Chickens also love food scraps, insects, and weeds from the garden.

Protection: If you let the flock run during the day, always close the coop door before nightfall. Raccoons are clever and ravenous. Skunks, dogs, cats, and even hawks may also harm chickens.

Sanitation: Clean the coop weekly by removing manure and changing bedding. Pet stores sell pine-chip bedding. Straw makes an excellent, inexpensive substitute, but bales can be hard to come by locally and harder to squeeze into a sedan.

Vermin: A rodent-proof coop and regular cleaning are your best defenses against rats and flies. If you have rat problems, set traps and poison bait outside the coop at night. RESCUE! brand outdoor flytraps are effective in catching stray flies, but no substitute for wise manure management.

Don’t Run A-Fowl of the Law
Bay Area chicken regulations

Alameda: No more than six chickens or other fowl. Coop must be 20 feet from dwellings and should be kept sanitary to deter vermin.

Berkeley: Coop must be 25 feet from dwellings and maintained so as not to become a breeding ground for flies.

Emeryville: Coop must be 20 feet from dwellings and be kept clean and sanitary.

Lafayette: Coop in backyard only; 60 feet from front property line, 10 feet from any property line, 55 feet from neighbors.

Oakland: Coop must be 20 feet from any dwelling. No roosters.

Orinda: Coop must be 60 feet from front property line, 40 feet from any side or rear property line.

San Francisco: No more than four chickens or other fowl, total, in a coop no less than 20 feet from any door or window of any building used for human habitation.

Walnut Creek: Coop must be 100 feet from front property line, 50 feet from any interior lot line, and 15 feet from any side or rear property line.