The chickens come home to roost for Silicon Valley’s wealthy elite

IT IS the heart of America’s technology industry and home to many of the country’s latest digital innovations. But a rather more prosaic pastime has taken hold among some of Silicon Valley’s wealthier residents – a trend for urban farming has seen chicken coops, beehives and water wells cropping up in backyards across the Bay area.

Leslie Citroen, a local chicken broker, counts a number of the industry’s biggest names among her customers.

“All of the [tech chiefs] you read about have got chickens,” she said.

“More of my customers are definitely tech [people], they’re definitely affluent. I’m selling much more rare heritage breeds so my customers are not penny-pinchers.”

According to Ms Citroen, environmental concerns play a big role in the new trend.

“I do think that people here [in the San Francisco Bay area] are more sophisticated about our food chain and climate change,” she said. “Really wealthy people in Silicon Valley have drilled their own wells so they’re able to landscape and irrigate their properties with their well water.

“It’s kind of obligatory now, they’ll have their barbecue fire pits, swimming pools, chickens and a lot of them have beehives too.”

Alison Peltz, who runs three theatre companies, said watching the chickens range around the back yard was “instantly calming”, adding: “We call it chicken TV, you feel like you have nature in your life.”

She added that her husband Danny, a banking executive, finds it a great way to switch off. “When he’s not working crazy hours he goes out and collects the eggs, it’s kind of a ritual.”