Natural Perspectives:

Both Sunset and National Geographic featured stories on urban chickens last winter. Raising chickens in one’s backyard is the hottest craze in green living, and I wanted in on it.

Vic and I are not total strangers to chickens. We kept chickens — both laying hens and broilers — on a very small scale at our former house on Goldengate Lane during the 1980s. We gave it up 20 years ago when our last hen died of natural causes, and we moved to our present house.

Much to my surprise, Vic agreed to my idea of keeping chickens again. But not with any enthusiasm, he says. And not with a full understanding of the costs!

The thing that inspired me to want chickens again was a change in city codes. The old code required that chickens be 25 feet from the chicken-keeper’s dwelling. Our present yard is too small to accommodate that. The change in code eliminating that provision meant that we could now have chickens at our new house legally. They still need to be 25 feet away from any neighbors’ homes.

The code allows hens but not roosters because they’re impossibly noisy. That’s fine as far as we’re concerned. All we want are eggs from the hens.

I was surprised at how many people have told me that they thought that a hen needed a rooster in order to lay eggs. Way back in my egg-salad days, I took poultry science at Purdue University. I know a thing or two about chickens. One of those things is that hens don’t need roosters to lay eggs. They only need a rooster to lay fertilized eggs.

City codes specify that a resident may keep up to six laying hens or 24 broilers up to the age of 4 months that are being raised for meat. However, one is not allowed to slaughter chickens at home. I asked about that at Midway City Feed Store, and they suggested that the Vietnamese poultry butcher on Bolsa Avenue at the corner of Beach Boulevard might be able to process home-raised birds. I’m just including this information in case you are so inspired by this column that you rush right out and buy some chicks to raise for the barbecue.

City codes — and common decency — require that each hen have at least 10 square feet of space. The chickens also must be enclosed by a fence and not allowed to run free. Free range doesn’t mean that they get the run of the neighborhood. Chickens can be kept entirely within a coop, but most people will give their chickens a “run,” which is a fenced area where the chickens can stretch their legs but not escape.

I went to www.chickencoops.com and looked at many designs for coops and runs. Most were way too large for our space. Some were basic, functional boxes. Others were elaborately decorated structures that looked like enormous dollhouses. One of the fancier ones was called “Cluckingham Palace.” We didn’t need anything that swanky.

To come up with a plan for something small, functional and still aesthetic enough to suit Vic, I brought in a consultant. My friend Simeon Jasso is a carpenter and recycling supervisor at the Orange County Conservation Corps, where I work part-time. Simeon and I sat at the computer and looked at dozens of designs, and together we worked out a customized plan that maximized the use of space.

Vic had some lumber in the garage that was left over from his campaigns for City Council back in the 1990s. Simeon took that to use for the coop, splitting the two-by-fours to make smaller sizes of lumber. Why buy new when you can recycle? Simeon painted it all with some primer that he already had on hand. For the finish coat, we’ll use paint left over from our last house painting.

The coop itself is a relatively small box that the chickens will use only for roosting at night and laying eggs. The coop is inside the run, an area that is fully enclosed (sides and top) with half-inch mesh hardware cloth. The coop is on stilts within the run to maximize the ground area that the chickens can use. A fold-down door will allow me to access the three nesting boxes to gather eggs without entering the run.

Because there are dozens of different breeds of chickens, selecting a breed was a major issue. Each has advantages and disadvantages. I selected a breed known as buff Orpington because they are well known for being calm and gentle. Our three little granddaughters will want to play with them, I’m sure, so I didn’t want a high-energy breed like the Rhode Island red. Another advantage of Orpingtons is that they are supposed to lay eggs all winter. Most breeds stop laying when the days get short, and don’t resume until about Easter.

I have submitted my request to the city and am waiting for my chicken-keeping permit to arrive in the mail. Once I have it in hand, I’ll pick up my chickens from a farmer I know.

At one point, Vic asked me to show him my business plan. I didn’t have one, but to satisfy him, I sat down and listed my anticipated expenses and revenues. My one-time costs include the city permit ($189) and the coop ($800). That was disappointingly high, even with a friend discount and using some recycled materials. We also needed a watering device, a feed trough and a can to store the feed. Those cost another $54. I hope that the three hens won’t cost more than $8 apiece. Recurring costs will include feed and straw (about $98 per year). My first year costs came to $1,162. Yikes!

I’m estimating that three hens will lay about 18 eggs a week, although that may be overly optimistic. That gives us 936 eggs a year, meaning that each egg will have cost $1.25 during that first year. And they’re not even organic! If I want to buy organic feed, which I will the next time I get a bag of feed, it will cost $25 a bag instead of $15 a bag. Good thing I’m not doing this to save money.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].