Skip to content

Rossland residents on the crawl, learning why ‘chickens are fun’

The Earth Day chicken crawl on April 22 drew a crowd from young to not-so-young for a tour of three backyard coops that have been built since last year’s chicken crawl.
73708trailChicken-5
Sarah Flood talks chicken to a group of enthusiasts on the crawl.

The Earth Day chicken crawl on April 22 drew a crowd from young to not-so-young for a tour of three backyard coops that have been built since last year’s chicken crawl.

The tour stopped at the homes of chicken lovers Sarah Flood, Ali Meredith, and Rachael Roussin.

Sarah Flood let her three silver-laced wyandottes and a black australorp out for a scratch in her veggie garden as she discussed how easy it is to meet their basic needs — water, food (including grit, to grind food in the chicken’s crop,) and shelter.

Shelter is a big issue in Rossland, and all three coops in the tour used burly construction of the hen house to keep out bears, raccoons, and other predators.

The birds’ other needs are easily met.

“Chickens are awesome recyclers,” Flood said. “They turn kitchen scraps and waste food into eggs — four chickens average three eggs a day.”

And those three eggs are mighty healthy, “with more omega-3 fatty acids and less cholesterol than store-bought eggs.”

She also pointed out that chickens are good garden helpers. “They eat bugs and weeds, provide fertilizer, and turn over soil with their scratching,” she said as her chooks did exactly that around our feet.

Speaking of fertilizer, Flood noted, “One 40-pound dog produces more poop than 10 chickens, but composted chicken poop makes great garden fertilizer.”

She also said that there’s no reason for neighbours to worry about noise, chickens are quiet.

“Their clucking is about as loud as human conversation, about 60 decibels. A rooster crowing is about as loud as a dog barking, 90 decibels,” she said, “but you don’t need a rooster to get eggs!”

Over at Ali Meredith’s, kids in their bike helmets crowded around the coop’s window to see the four bantam hens. Bantams are a good deal smaller than regular hens, so a smaller coop goes a long way for them, and the only trade-off is that their eggs are a bit smaller too.

Meredith made her coop out of all kinds of recycled and repurposed bits and pieces, showing that keeping chickens need not be expensive so long as you are creative.

By the time the group reached Rachael Roussin’s bombproof coop built by her partner, Jarrod MacLean, everyone was happy to live in a town that looks favourably on backyard poultry and could agree with Flood’s main point: “Chickens are fun!”