Chickens In the City and Goats on the Roof: Keeping Livestock in Urban Environments

I want chickens. However, given that my yard space is no more than six meters long, I think that this may be an unrealistic goal. Seriously, though, urban agriculture has branched out in recent years, and one of its more prominent branches is the idea of keeping farm animals in urban environments, mostly for eggs and milk, sometimes for meat. While backyard vegetable gardens and community garden plots are considered to be relatively innocuous in many urban areas, the idea of livestock in cities can be a little more difficult to sell.

Different cultures have different ideas about the social acceptability of urban livestock. In Asia, animals have been a socially-acceptable part of cities for centuries because they are used to turn waste into food. In Africa, early colonial powers resisted the idea of urban livestock as backward, yet the practice prevailed. In Europe and the United States, the keeping of urban livestock has historically been a fringe activity that is rarely discussed. Many of the world's urban farmers are landless and rely on restaurant scraps and the leavings of urban horticulture to feed their animals.

While urban livestock provide a valuable source of food and income, these animals are often feared as a source of noise and disease. In urban areas where rats roam the sewers and cars zoom busily around the streets, fears about the potential disease and noise from urban chickens seem a little extreme, but these fears are there. While all animals bring the potential for disease, access to veterinary services and good public health codes can moderate potential problems. Some argue that keeping small flocks of urban chickens may actually be a solution to controlling disease outbreaks like avian flu, since birds in urban, free-range flocks have smaller populations than those in factory farms, and therefore there is a smaller chance that the virus will spread and mutate.

Attitudes towards urban livestock may be changing. In the United States, there is a movement slowly clucking its way into suburban homes across the nation. In Atlanta, classes on raising chickens are filling up. Andy Schneider, owner of Atlanta Pet Chickens, says that most of the chicken owners are suburban folks with minivans. Atlanta allows people to keep up to 25 backyard chickens, and with the promise of new pets and fresh eggs, chickens are making their way into homes throughout suburbia.

What lies down the road for those who keep animals for food in the city and the suburbs? As populations become increasingly urban and we struggle to feed ourselves closer to home, the idea of urban livestock is slowly gaining acceptance. It's a practice that challenges urban dwellers to live beside their food. It also challenges our concept of cities: will they become the new farms of the twenty-first century?