Re: Chicken Trend

**V* G* <v*@yahoo.com>**

Doreen, Ellen, GWListers,
   Thanks for the connections to Grow Lively and Mad City Chickens! So creative. I've got to spend some time in these virtual places. But not on this rare and sunny Saturday.
   Indeed, the "Chicken Trend" has been well reported. I think Bill Geist did a clip on Sunday Morning, but I combed the site w/out finding a link.
   Here's what Vermont television WCAX did recently: http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=10603495
   (Calling raising a few hens "chicken farming" seems a bit much, IMHO.)
   I've raised hens for, I think, nine years now -- I'm on my third batch. I always kept six, until last August, when Bantams were so cute and seemed to hardly count....I now have 12 birds in my poultry palace. If anyone needs an interviewee, happy to oblige, including photos. I wrote a piece on the interplay between poultry and gardening, several years ago in my Vermont Gardener column for Gannett -- that was one of my and readers' favorites. While I have won a few gardenwriters' awards, I remember getting the judges comments back on that one saying it was too long, went on and on about the birds.... The judges were likely right, gardeners who add chickens to their landscape, just don't know when to quit!
All best,
Cheryl Dorschner
Vermont Gardener hunt 'n' peck, hen-pecked columnist etcetera

> This is from Ellen Wells, who write in this the week's
> ezine Buzz! from Green Profit about an emerging trend.
> Doreen Howard
> ----------------------------------
> Latest garden retail trend. Chickens. And I'm serious about
> this. I first noticed this trend a few months ago when many
> of my new Twitter followers (@GPBuzz and @gardenquestion)
> were all about raising chickens at their urban/suburban
> homes. Not dozens of chickens, but just enough to provide a
> family with eggs (and eventually meat, I guess). My
> suspicions were raised again when I spotted a chicken coop
> and two hens at Drake's 7 Dees in Portland.
> 
> Leslie Halleck of North Haven Gardens in Dallas is a big
> advocate of the chicken trend. She says raising chickens is
> a natural progression of living within a sustainable and
> healthful framework. And apparently most of the people in
> her somewhat progressive Dallas neighborhood have coops in
> their back yard. 
> 
> Chickens aren't something you get into just off the cuff as
> a retailer. There's a lot of footwork that must be done,
> such as learning about zoning laws and regulations, etc.
> North Haven doesn't have chickens wandering around the
> nursery; they have partnered with someone who does the
> chicken sales. What North Haven does offer, however, are
> classes on raising chickens, resources for chicken owners,
> some chicken "hardware" (feed troughs, waterers, etc.) and
> branded feed products. Check out the Backyard Chickens
> category on Leslie's Grow Lively blog to find out all about
> her chicken experiences! Oh, and definitely expect a Chicken
> Retail 101 article in an upcoming issue of Green Profit. 
> 
> Thoughts on chickens? I want to hear them-e-mail me at ewells@ballpublishing.com.

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