Tour downtown's backyard chicken coops this Saturday

You’re in cluck! It’s once again time for the Food Conspiracy’s most popular event – the annual Chicken Coop Tour.

You’d be amazed how many people around town raise chickens in their backyards. Plenty of them are right in the Downtown neighborhoods.

Food Conspiracy’s self-guided tour is a great way to gather information before bringing home a brood. The tour takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Dec. 3.

See a wide variety of creative coop styles and sizes. Talk to backyard chicken keepers. Learn about raising chicks.

Food Conspiracy launched Tucson’s first urban chicken coop tour in May 2009. The event is designed to introduce people to the joys (and challenges) of urban chicken keeping.

Food Conspiracy hopes it will inform people about chicken rearing and encourage folks to raise their own chickens in order to have a regular supply of local, fresh, humanely-raised chicken eggs.

Tickets are $5 and are available at the Food Conspiracy Co-op and will be available up until the day of the tour, while supplies last.

Virtually every major American city now boasts at least one annual chicken coop tour, including Raleigh, Atlanta and Spokane. Urban chicken coops have become trendy enough in Chicago to allow Jennifer Murtoff to make a living as an urban chicken consultant.

Once you buy ticket, you will be added to a list of tour participants. All participants will receive an email with a downloadable packet that includes a map to all participating coops and descriptions/pictures of each coop. For anyone without e-mail, a hard copy of the packet can be held for pickup at the co-op.

On the day of the tour, anyone with a ticket can visit any coops they choose to visit anytime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

There is no set route. Participants can start at any coop. They do not need to visit every coop, and can spend as little or as much time at each coop as they want to.

At each participating coop there will be at least one person available throughout the tour to answer questions about their chickens and coops. Many of the coop owners also have other home sustainability features like cisterns, desert gardens, rainwater harvesting basins and solar ovens, and they’ll be happy to talk about them, too.

All money raised from ticket sales will be donated to the Watershed Management Group’s co-op to offer subsidies for installing backyard chicken coops.