Live-in chickens try their cluck in Pittsburgh
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Maybe you've been reading and hearing all the buzz about city dwellers keeping chickens. It was in all the papers.
Maybe you wondered why a 21st-century city council was trying to come up with ordinances regulating poultry farming and beekeeping.
Maybe, like me, you were walking down a street in your neighborhood and suddenly found yourself staring at a random unrestrained chicken on someone's front lawn. That sight gets you thinking. First you think, "Aaaa! Chicken!"
Then you think, "Where did that chicken come from? Who has a chicken?"
Then, "I see no coop, no fence, no owner and no leash. Just a random unfettered chicken at the edge of a city street. I couldn't let my dog roam like that.
"Is it a feral chicken? Or do they make invisible fence systems for chickens?"
So maybe, like me, you are curious about this whole urban chicken situation. If you are, I hope you availed yourself of the Chicks-in-the-Hood Pittsburgh Urban Chicken Coop Tour last Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and even the chickens seemed to enjoy it.
The tour was very well attended; there are evidently many people who want to keep livestock in their yard, or want to see what's behind their neighbors' fences, or just have a thing for chickens.
We started with Brett and Shelly Danko-Day's Highland Park back yard, where a clutch of comedy rubber chickens hung decoratively from the side of the house and Brett was holding forth about the challenges of keeping nonstandard animals in a city neighborhood. He's fully committed now, or perhaps fears he might be, but Shelly was the one who brought home the birds in 2007.
"She had asked, I said no, and one day they appeared," he said.
A coop-coveting woman on the tour wondered, "Do you recommend that approach?"
We were all standing behind the house, admiring a duck in a tub. Brett described the duck as very sweet and sort of a pet, while the chickens behave more like cats, going about their business and taking little notice of their human landlords. They'd let the duck in the house, except she can't be housetrained.
First Published June 16, 2011 12:00 am
