Backyard coops produce great pets

Neal Brown has a chicken farm so tiny, the North Carolina Poultry Federation doesn’t even know it exists. The City of Greenville does, however, and that’s why Farmer Brown is not looking to expand.

Brown and his wife, Paula, have joined a growing number of urban dwellers cooping laying hens behind their homes. Raleigh has so many city chickens, coop owners organized the annual Tour d’Coop, which sells tickets for a first-hand look at keeping chickens in an urban environment.

Proceeds from the Tour d’Coop benefit a local food bank.

Greenville allows up to four hens per dwelling, but no roosters, for obvious reasons.

While the urban-coop movement is largely egged on by animal or environmental activism, that is not what inspired the Browns to raise chickens at their home in Westhaven subdivision.

“Our granddaughters said they wanted either a pony or chickens,” Brown said. “We went with chickens.”

The retired railroad conductor went to work last fall on building a playhouse for granddaughters Sarah Ruth, 3, and Caroline, 5. The structure’s bottom half became an indoor/outdoor chicken coop this spring.

Playing off the unique building’s dual purpose, an attached sign reads, “Chicks Over Chicks.”

Brown had never raised chickens, so he relied on the Internet for guidance.

“I went on Craigslist and found a guy in Hookerton with about 10 varieties of chicks,” he said. “I asked if he could determine their sex, and he said no.”

From an initial batch of 10 chicks, Brown ended up with four birds he could keep. He gave the roosters away.

Now, the hens have the run of the Browns’ backyard and allow the girls to pick them up and carry them. Holding a big brown hen, Caroline recited their names: “Holly, Heather, Calico and Crooked Neck.”

Crooked Neck was injured as a chick and cannot hold its head up straight.

“I found out that when that happens to them, they’re not supposed to survive,” Brown said. “They’ll either starve to death or the other chickens will kill them. Does that chicken look like it’s starving?”

Crooked Neck manages to strut around the yard and find plenty of chicken feed despite the condition. Besides feed, the birds will eat most any flowering plant. For meticulous landscapers such as the Browns, that can be a problem.

“They’ll eat everything but the weeds,” Brown said. “They love my hostas and every blooming plant I’ve got, but they won’t eat my weeds.”

Brown has had to wrap some of his more delicate plants in chicken wire. To reward him for his troubles, the chickens produce daily eggs.

“We started keeping egg cartons this summer,” Paula said, displaying a carton filled with brown eggs, “because we knew we were going to start getting eggs.”

“I love breakfast,” Neal Brown said. “It’s my favorite meal of the day.”