Coop de ville: Chickens come home to roost in Portland

By Liz Crain

The Portland Tribune, Mar 17, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

It’s time for the spring chickens Ñ if you’re dialed in to safe chicken keeping practices and feel confident in your cooping capabilities.

Although most feed stores carry chicks year-round, the healthiest chicks and the greatest variety of species are available in early spring.

Despite official concerns about bird flu, plenty of Portlanders enjoy farm fresh eggs on a daily basis, gathered right from their own backyards. To help educate individual chicken owners, the Portland nonprofit Growing Gardens will offer an urban chicken workshop series later this year focused on avian flu education and bio-security issues regarding urban chickens. The Oregon Department of Agriculture also is gearing up for an educational campaign intended for backyard chicken keepers.

Many cities, including New York City, Los Angeles and Seattle, allow for residential chickens with certain stipulations. They’ve become such common pets, airlines even allow them onboard in pet carriers.

In Portland, the coop area must be an ample distance from neighbors’ windows, and every household is allowed three hens, no roosters Ñ more and you’ll need a $25 annual permit. Chickens’ contact with migrating wild birds should be limited to prevent disease.

The benefits of raising urban chickens are numerous: farm fresh eggs, free fertilizer, pest control, unusual pets and an easy way to dispose of kitchen scraps.

Debra Lippoldt, executive director of Portland’s nonprofit Growing Gardens, has been raising chickens for several years at her North Portland home. She raises three Barred Plymouth Rocks with a neighbor. “We like to call it co-cooping in NoPo,” says Lippoldt, who converted part of her garage into a chicken coop that leads to an outside chicken run.

Lippoldt isn’t the only Portlander scattering feed and gathering eggs. The local network Portland Chickens Ñ established two years ago as an offshoot of Growing Gardens Ñ hosts educational events and workshops such as Urban Chickening 101 and Coop Design Roundtable. Portland Chickens! events are well attended Ñ most workshops attract between 40 and 60 people.

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