Backyard chickens among most pampered pets
Lucky cluckers spoiled rotten like cats, dogs
When it came time to decorate the new Amish-built house on her 26-acre property near Lansing, Michigan, Danielle Raad went all out.
She painted the interior walls a lustrous eggshell blue, and spent hours hand-stenciling one with an intricate pattern. She lined rooms with handmade art, including her own work and that of her kids. She brought in vintage objects such as a chandelier and a painted shelf. Her mother added items covered in decoupaged roses.
Raad put her father in charge of prettying up the outside, which features barn-red siding, white picket fencing, flower boxes and a scarecrow.
Eventually Raad, 35, had the house just right, and it was ready to be occupied. But two years later, she still hasn’t spent the night in it – and she doesn’t plan to.
It was for her chickens.
“We just decided that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it all the way,” Raad says. She originally planned a flock of 10 chickens for her backyard hen house. She now keeps 23.
Call them the most pampered chickens in central Michigan. In addition to a home that is more HGTV than Animal Planet, Raad’s hens (and a few roosters) get top-notch health care from a local veterinarian and a well-balanced diet. Their living quarters are sprayed regularly with a soothing mix of essential oils including lavender and eucalyptus. “They’re spoiled,” Raad suggests. Hers are not the only feathery fowl living the high life. The backyard chicken movement that has taken hold across America in recent years is entering a new phase: Owners are pampering the birds as if they were, you know, dogs or something.
Chicken keepers are building ever more elaborate and comfortable coops, plying their feathered friends with gourmet treats and dressing them up in designer outfits.
Some even are bringing the birds into their own homes.
“Some of these chickens live better than we do,” Steph Merkle jokes, sort of. She’s been following the trend from her perch atop Backyard Poultry, a magazine that caters to the chickeny set.
Not everyone is on board. Some chicken-keeping purists find the overthe-top pampering a bit silly. And public health officials are warning poultry fans that getting too cozy with the little cluckers isn’t a great idea.
But Americans have begun treating their fowl more like pets than livestock. And just as with our beloved cats and dogs, nothing is too much for our little Foghorn Leghorns.
“We’re seeing coops with chandeliers, artwork, painted ladder roosting bars and hand-made curtains for nesting boxes,” Merkle says.
“It’s sort of like a Martha Stewart thing. People are trying to have the most beautiful coop.”
It’s a far cry – or should we say crow – from just a few years ago.
The backyard chicken movement evolved out of the modern homesteading movement, which prizes self-reliance and self-sufficiency in food pro- duction. Early adopters were in it mostly for the eggs and, yes, the meat.
‘It’s changed a lot’
Lisa Steele was an early bird to the movement. The Bangor, Maine, woman has watched it take flight.
“It’s changed a lot over the past 10 years,” she says.
Steele fell so hard for her own flock that she started a Facebook page devoted to it in 2011. A year later, she began blogging about backyard chickens, and by 2013, she had written her first book on the topic.
She’s now a leading voice of the movement, with five books in print and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. She documents her chicken-raising life and offers tips for chicken owners at FreshEggsDaily.com.
“People ... wanted to raise their own food and be more comfortable about where it came from,” Steele says. “But along the way they realized they do make good pets.”
An industry is growing. Startups such as pamperyourpoultry.com sell chicken dresses and tutus, colorful, hand-sewn diapers for chickens (should you want to bring them into the house), and “saddles,” which are like capes that go on a chicken’s back.
Fowl Play Products sells swing sets for chickens. Happy Hen Treats has begun marketing a “Cake ‘ N Cluck” cake mix for those who “want to make chicken’s birthday extra special.”
Traci Torres and her husband launched Monroe, Connecticut-based My Pet Chicken in 2006 after finding almost no online resources while starting up their own backyard chicken coop.
She says business has soared in recent years due in no small part to the poultry-as-pets trend. My Pet Chicken now has 30 employees and millions of dollars in sales.
The company sells thousands of chicken diapers. They’re marketed for injured hens who need to recuperate indoors, and broody hens that are brought inside to “break” their broodiness. But many people are buying them to bring chickens indoors just to hang out.
“Some people have chickens sleep in bed with them,” Torres says. “Of course, you have to be careful with germs just like with any animal.”