Raising chickens offers a good life for our feathered friends, a sense of peace, a connection to nature and our food source, eggs with high nutritional value, a composting and fertilization system, free entertainment and another reason to rise and shine.

I appreciate a good, hearty, hot, nutritious and deep yellow omelet. I like humane treatment of animals. When trying to marry these two passions, however, I find myself in an internal struggle. Finding a resource of egg-laying chickens where I am certain that the treatment is humane, cage free, free range and organic has proven a challenge. In my blog post, Quest for a Kind Egg, I tried to get the straight dope. I have also tried with desperation to check farm websites or have a decent conversation with the Egg Guy at the Lake Merritt Farmer’s Market, all with not luck. Finally, I was ready to up my quest.

How about raising chickens? What an original and radical idea. I launched a few investigative e-mails, wondering if anyone I knew could possibly be an urban chicken farmer. It turns out that all the cool kids are doing it. Responses flooded in from Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Monterey, Point Reyes, and beyond, and I was off for some backyard coop adventures to catch up on the trend.

I paid a visit to Mike and Tasha and their three hens at their condo in Rockridge. I found their flock happily hanging in their home-made coop and condo backyard, doing some evening snacking. Tony was raised with chickens in Zimbabwe and went the chicken route because he finds them peaceful and entertaining to observe. He appreciates their free-range roaming of the yard and their innate ability to pull on grasses until they get the seeds. He loves that each chicken lays one egg a day, offering the family plenty of heavy, delicious eggs for eating and baking. He especially loves the way they announce their egg laying with a loud squawking performance and shout out.

Tasha appreciates the relationship she and her three year old daughter have with these gals. They recognize her, respond to her and add a nurturing dimension to her life. They also take care of the family compost as they peck away.

So, I concluded, raising chickens offers a good life for our feathered friends, a sense of peace, a connection to nature and our food source, eggs with high nutritional value, a composting and fertilization system, free entertainment and another reason to rise and shine. No wonder there are so many eggheads out there and so many resources for them:

BackYardChickens
Urban Alliance For Sustainability
Urban chicken trend on rise in Bay Area
Urban Chickens Network

Also watch City Egg, Country Egg on QUEST to learn more about a study at UC Davis that compares store-bought eggs and farm fresh eggs.

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Organic Fed / Certified Organic

All organic eggs are certified by the USDA. Organic eggs come from hens whose feed is free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and commercial fertilizers. Organic chicken feed contains no animal byproducts and the hens have never been given antibiotics.

Hormones and Antibiotics:

The FDA banned the use of hormones – most notably diethylstilbestrol, or DES – in poultry in 1959, after they not only caused tragic health problems in consumers but also failed to stimulate growth in chickens. "Hormone free" is a misleading bit of marketing that suggests other egg producers are illegally dosing their birds.

Kept in Cages

Some hens are kept in battery cages; enclosures so small the animals can't spread their wings. Battery caged hens are crammed as many as six chickens into a cage at a time, leaving each bird with less personal space than a sheet of ordinary notebook paper. Critics say the battery system causes the spread of disease, requires the painful de-beaking of birds, and restricts natural bird behaviors, such as dusting or nesting.

Have Access to Outside

"Free Range" and "Free Roaming" are terms that bring to mind idyllic barnyard scenes. These labels, which are regulated by the USDA, may be used by a producer if their hens are allowed some access to the outdoors. This does not guarantee constant access, nor is there any specification of the size of the outdoor area (which is, of course, a penned area, not a range).

Beaks Clipped

Also known as debeaking, or beak trimming, is a process by which parts of the beak of a chicken or turkey are trimmed. Many variations of debeaking are used. Most commonly, the beak is shortened permanently, with the lower beak somewhat longer than the upper beak. The goal of this is to reduce cannibalism in stressed-out bird populations, such as in crowded egg-laying hen houses.

Forced Molted

When light and temperature are manipulated so hens lay eggs more than normal.

Omega-3 enriched

Omega-3 is a polyunsaturated fatty acid considered crucial by some for developing brains and preventing heart disease and depression. Farmers boost the omega-3 content of their hens' eggs by adding ground flaxseed, algae, or even fish oil to the birds' feed.

My own kind choice is to stay informed, shop at the local farmers' market and ask questions, and someday, raise my own.

If you have any tips or insights into local egg farms, please do share!

For more egg carton terms, go to:

http://blog.pennlive.com/naturalliving/2007/06/eggs.html

Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

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