Cattle was raised in Manhattan up through at least the 1940s (though probably not in huge numbers). Horses are boarded there to this day. I just saw an ad for goats for sale in the Bronx and live poultry on Staten Island. Not saying it isn’t asinine, but it occurs.
Well Staten Island isn’t quite as urban as the rest of the city, and neither is the Bronx. Manhattan before the 1940s wasn’t as built up as it is today, and the horses are boarded there for the quite wealthy. I guess there are exceptions but raising livestock as a trade in the city is pretty ridiculous in general. I guess it really depends on what you define as a city. I grew up in the “City of Los Lunas” in New Mexico and there are straight up farms there, I can’t see how raising lifestock in Missoula is ridiculous, but in New York or Chicago sure.
I’m all in favor of the idea of livestock being raised in the urban and suburban settings. There are numerous advantages. First, there’s no need to transport urban meat and eggs huge distances to the marketplace, hence fossil fuel usage would be reduced. Second, urban and suburban livestock operations would have to be small-scale, so it would reduce the power of corporations. Third, raising livestock would help city-dwellers keep in touch with the agricultural roots of human society. Fourth, anyone who raises their own food controls the conditions of that food, and is not vulnerable to deception about safety and nutrition. Fifth, it’s likely that raising meat would make people happier, just as raising vegetables does.
As for feasibility, that’s already been established in other countries. In German suburbs, it’s not unusual to see a row of houses, then a field of sheep, then another row of houses. Many people raise rabbits or chickens in their own backyards. It can be done. If it’s not currently practiced in the United States, that probably because zoning regulations prohibit it, not because people are unwilling to do it.
Chickens will eat nearly everything. We had chickens for years, right outside the city limits, and fed them leftovers – pizza crusts, spaghetti, although my husband did wince at feeding them chicken.
Yep, I got pet birds now, it’s not the “what to feed them” it’s the bother of having yet more mouths to feed. I only have so much time and energy, and at some point I have to decide enough is enough.
You will find livestock in many, many houses and apartments in Havana and other Cuban towns. In apartments pigeons are good, but chickens are a pain. Surprisingly pigs are usually the best, they can be kept in a bathroom, and are not very noisy.
The first half of that does not apply to cougars. At least not in every sense of the verb.
I like chickens. Keeping 3-4 chickens in the backyard doesn’t seem awful to me, and I don’t see why it would increase rabies more than cats would. As above, raccoons and other animals already have plenty to live on in large cities.
I have several friends who keep a few chickens, and they’re quite restful to have around–roosters obviously not, but you don’t need a rooster to get eggs and most urban chicken folks don’t have them that I know of. They don’t take up much space.
My mom and dad just got 6 pullets this weekend, and my kids are having a wonderful time with them. (My parents have 2 acres, so it’s not the same thing.) I don’t think it’s legal in my own neighborhood.
The underground urban chicken movement is becoming more popular–it’s downright fashionable ATM–and I don’t have a problem with it.
I’ve kept chickens for a few years myself. It started out as a gag Easter present from a friend, but I decided to keep and raise them. That first batch eventually died of old age and I got replacements. The coop doesn’t stink at all … it’s properly ventilated. Unless you have a rooster, they are very quiet too.
Has no one mentioned that chickens are highly unlikely to transmit rabies? CDC records one single pigeon as rabies positive, and it is assumed that any warm blooded animal might perhaps be susceptible to some strain of rabies. Still, this possibility is astronomically, vanishingly, tiny.
Rabies isn’t just some “germ” that is fostered by filthy conditions or accumulated manure. It is a virus that survives only in living cells, and is transmitted only in rather limited scenarios.
(I have many times done decapitations and sent for testing heads of animals with suspicious neurologic symptoms. Several were positive. A number of people had post-exposure treatment as a result. Rabies is no game, and tens of thousands of people throughout the world die annually from this nasty disease. But chicken farms are not a rabies issue.)
No to chickens in urban / suburban areas.
My insufferable neighbor has a chicken raising addiction. We live in a smallish suburban town in NJ and she keeps nearly 80 chickens (rooster and hens) on a 1/2 acre of land. I’m about as animal friendly as they come but I’ve often fantasized about taking a baseball bat to these creatures. They stink to high hell, they dig through my plant beds (they wander about like they own the place), and the roosters are obnoxiously loud. I know it’s not the chickens I should take issue with but listening to these creatures “sing” all day long has an affect like a psychological torture. I am not kidding.
I can’t say what the experience would be like when they are responsibly looked after, but it can get real ugly when they are not. And they do attract rodents; mice come to eat their feed and possums to eat the chickens.
The point isn’t to force people to do it, but simply to allow them. Most people will choose to continue not having chickens, but some will choose to raise them if allowed. And the set of people who will raise chickens if allowed is probably a subset of those who already have gardens, so I suspect that the manure/compost issue isn’t much of a big deal, either.
EDIT:
That’s not a problem of chickens; that’s a problem of too many chickens. The new law in Cleveland allows one chicken per X square feet of property-- I don’t remember precisely how much X is, but my mom’s (fairly large) lot is only enough for something like 4 of them.
Is your neighbor breaking the law? Even if raising poultry is legal in your town, it sounds like he or she isn’t doing it right.
This might be a job for The Chicken Police!
And how do you transport feed and other supplies to individual urban homes? Either it’ll be transported hundreds of miles on UPS trucks, or purchased at a “local” store and transported home in SUVs. And keep in mind that it takes many pounds of feed to produce one pound of eggs or meat.
There’s also the problem of waste. It’ll have to be transported out, or add to the load on sewage processing plants. I also imagine most urban dwellers wouldn’t butcher their livestock at home, but take it somewhere to get it done.
There are other ways of regulating large corporations. And why exactly do we need to keep in touch with agricultural roots?
Amateurs controlling the conditions of their own food is not always a good thing. Store-bought food is at least produced in facilities run by professionals and inspected by the government.
The biggest negative I can imagine is that it escalates the push for urban sprawl. If raising your own livestock becomes more common, more and more people would live further away from the city to they can have the space to do it “properly.” That means longer commutes, and more wasted fuel.
My husband and I will be getting six chickens this spring (can’t wait!) and we will in an urban area. As with pretty much everything in life, you can do things in a conscientious way or be a selfish ass about it. We took a “Chickens in the City” class last summer to informed about it before making this decision (more info on the guys who taught the class here).
Obviously, I am in favor of people being able to raise livestock in urban areas, provided they are lawful, humane and considerate about it.
In Minneapolis, there are some hoops you have to jump through before you can have chickens.
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You must get permission from your neighbors. 80% of your neighbors within (I believe) 100 feet must sign a form giving you their OK.
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Roosters require separate approval from your neighbors. We’re not getting a rooster, anyway.
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You must allow at least 6 square feet per bird in the coop, and have an external run, etc. etc. I can post the specs if anyone’s interested.
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The coop must be inspected and approved by Animal Control.
Chickens will attract pests and predators, but no more so than people who don’t secure their trash, deliberately feed raccoons, have bird feeders, what-have-you. Coops can be easily secured against raccoons and other pests, and ours will be more secure than our own garbage cans.
We will be cleaning the coop and run and composting the stuff in a closed bin to minimize smell. We’ve visited several other urban coops (including one about a block away) and have learned how to handle cleanup and waste in such a way that you have to be physically inside the coop to smell anything at all.
Meanwhile, we’ll be getting fresh eggs, feeding our kitchen scraps to the birds rather than composting or throwing them away, and (I hope) have more compost to use in our ever-expanding garden. I’m really looking forward to it.
Good for you 
Just remember that at night, they need to be safely locked away in their coop, so the “critters” don’t get them. During the day if you are there to keep an eye on them, they can “graze” the back yard. “Chicken grazing” (I’ve found) is a great way to keep the bugs down during the summer. I live in Vany Nuys, so I have to watch out for possums, raccoons, hawks, coyotes, and one time a possible mountain lion (no one got a good look, but what else could clear my tall fence so easily). And yet all my chickens lived to a ripe old age.
For a treat, they really like fresh veggies and fresh fruit.
What about chickens attracts these animals (other than that chicken feed would be an attraction)? Also: possums rarely get rabies [see Cantor SB, Clover RD, Thompson RF (07/01/1994). “A decision-analytic approach to postexposure rabies prophylaxis”. Am J Public Health 84 (7): 1144–8.] Less often than dogs.
Only one? I once lived in an apartment of South Central L.A. that was surrounded by chicken raisers. I actually appreciated the roosters because I have to get up early anyway–but yes, roosters don’t know what a weekend or holiday or even what Daylight Saving Time is.
We couldn’t choose; we got 'em both, but the gunfire is usually about 1:30am, while the rooster crows just before dawn. If only they could be coordinated somehow.
She is, keeping chickens is not permitted where I live. I’ve contacted the “Chicken Police” but they can’t be bothered to actually do much of anything. I’m one early morning rooster symphony away from hiring an attorney.
I don’t doubt that keeping chickens in a city environment can be done without causing a disturbance. But it does take work, and people get lazy. I’ve had enough trouble in a situation where they are not allowed. If they were allowed I’d probably have moved by now and sold my house for a big loss.
A handful of chickens could live decently well on what a normal family throws out. The resulting manure could be used for compost. Ultimately, though, that’s beside the point. Local chicken production would not require zero fuel, but it would require much less than massive chicken production. Corporations always find it efficient to do things in massive amounts due to efficiency of scale, even if ti means more trucking. They’ll send feed from Indiana all the way to Idaho to feed chickens, then send the meat all the way back to Indiana. Far more practical to just give the feed to chickens in Indiana.
Regarding the first, there are ways to regulate corporations in theory, but we rarely actually do them. Regarding the second, I regard it as good for people do be aware of how all their decisions and actions have consequences, and how these fit into society and the world at large. It’s not good for people to consume food for a lifetime, while barely being aware of the fact that the food has to be grown somewhere. It creates a disconnect between producers and consumers, which can lead to conflict.
In theory it is. In reality, most meat-production facilities simply ignore the government regulations, and little attempt is made at enforcement. Ultimately I’d agree that a little bit of government regulation is a good thing, but too much is a bad thing. During the last forty years, government regulation of food has increased hugely, but food itself has become less healthy, and obesity has skyrocketed.
Fair enough, but in case you don’t know, there are a few Pollo Vivero places a few blocks from your apartment. I haven’t been inside them, but I am pretty sure the chickens are raised on the premises.