Homegrown chickens part of spring ritual

By Kyla Goodfellow and John Fetter
BengalNews Reporters

Spring is an exciting time as the snow begins to melt, the ground thaws, streams swell with runoff, the weather has turned towards the warmer, green grass appears and flowers begin to bloom.

In Buffalo, spring is the perfect time to start a flock of backyard chickens. That’s according to Monique Watts who last year captured the hearts and minds of many local residents with her fight for her chickens that can be heard clucking away quietly in her backyard coop on Rhode Island Street.

In July last year Watts urged the Common Council to pass a legislation that allows Buffalo residents to keep up to five chickens per dwelling in backyard coops.

Watts and Diane Picard, the executive director of the Massachusetts Avenue Project, believe spring will see an influx of permit applications for backyard chickens as it is the ideal time to start hatching.

Diane Picard addresses potential growing interest in backyard chickens:

“You can hatch chickens at any given time but spring is usually a better time to hatch because they need a certain regulated temperature for 12 weeks or so. So if you hatch now then by the time they are big enough to be outside its warm and more suitable,” said Watts.

Picard has even applied for a chicken permit and ordered five chicks just in time for the start of spring.

“For us it just made sense to get our chicks in the spring when the weather’s warming up; it’s not such a harsh environment,” she said.

“We didn’t want to order our chickens in the Fall and then have to worry about them all winter and when the lights less they lay less.”

Watts started this new movement towards backyard chickens, but ultimately towards the community being self sustainable and growing their own food.

“That’s exactly what Monique was into chickens for. Her whole thing was the production of eggs that she could then share with people in her neighborhood,” said David Rivera, Niagara District councilmember.

Picard is hopeful that residents on the West Side will jump on board and benefit from everything that chickens have to offer.

“In our neighborhood there aren’t any grocery stores and most people don’t have access to cars. So to get fresh, affordable food they have to take the bus and that takes all day and they can only carry what they can carry on the bus, or they shop at these little corner stores that often don’t have the healthiest food,” said Picard.

“We’re really trying to encourage people to grow their own food and provide options for them in terms of healthier foods.”

Picard believes the chicken movement is a step forward especially in the West Side where there is huge poverty and health related problems.

“I think any opportunity we can give people to raise their own food, be it produce, eggs or chicken meat, is a step in the right direction. It provides them with a cheap good source of food that they raise themselves and also augments what they would spend on food,” she said.

Rivera among many other local supporters believes backyard chickens not only provide a healthy food resource at a lower price, but also a product that is of excellent quality.

“You save money. It’s nutritious. And I would ask anybody to compare their eggs—the eggs that they get from their chickens, to the eggs that you buy in a supermarket. I think you’d probably say hey these are great. In fact, I think they’re better than the ones you buy at the market,” he said.

Watts sees backyard chickens as one more tool in teaching neighborhood children and community members about where their food comes from and the health impact of being able to access healthy food.

“It’s definitely something we feel is really important to teach kids and hopefully we’re going to push them in a better direction,” said Watts.

To accommodate the predicted spring influx of chicken permits Urban Roots Community Garden Center, a local grass roots organization on Rhode Island Street committed to enriching the surrounding community is offering a new program to guide budding chicken owners along the way.

“We’re hosting a workshop at the end of March at Urban Roots on starting a flock, I think a lot of people will show up for that,” said Watts.

But residents should be warned: Once you buy your chicks and take them home, you may risk falling in love.

“I think they are just very endearing kind of creatures…people that keep them fall in love with them…some of them eat them. Monique loves her girls. She’s very attached to them. I can never see her eating them,” says Picard.