Arizona cities are beginning to look a lot more like the countryside. That’s because there’s been a surge in residents raising chickens in their backyard. While having your own livestock may sound like a very country thing to do, residents are turning their backyards into chicken coups for a trendy, big city-like reason—their health.
Questions have been raised about the conditions in which factory-farmed chickens live. Being crammed in tight quarters, lack of exposure to sun, and walking on metal grates rather than the earth causes factory chickens much stress. In turn, the quality of factory-farmed eggs may become depleted.
On top of that, non-organic farms pump chickens with steroids to grow bigger or give the birds feed containing other chickens to cut feeding costs. These conditions change the health benefits of the eggs produced by the chickens. As a result, consuming factory-farmed eggs may have a negative impact on human health.
Greg Peterson, who is the owner of Urban Farm on the corner of 16th Street and Glendale, has raised his own chickens for decades. The farmer claims that chickens are easy to raise while throwing in that they also keep the bug population low in his yard. Due to the convenience of raising his own chickens, Mr. Peterson doesn’t recall the last time he consumed a store-bought egg.
Peterson retorts to anyone critical of raising chickens in the backyard, “I think the health issue is when you put ten thousand or a hundred thousand chickens in one place. I have 13 back here and we keep it clean.”
Are you interested in raising chickens? Be sure to check what your city’s code is on poultry in the backyard. While most cities give the green light for raising chickens, there are limitations such as yard size and the number of chickens you own.
Click one of the links below to see your city’s codes and restrictions:
- Avondale
- Buckeye
- Chandler
- El Mirage
- Gilbert
- Glendale
- Mesa
- Paradise Valley
- Phoenix
- Scottsdale
- Surprise
