Keeping chickens here in the city has its drawbacks. For one thing, we can’t let our four hens free range. Our yard is only partially fenced, and the risk of “the girls” wandering into one of the nearby streets is too great.
We also do not have the option of owning a rooster. Although our lot is large by city standards, there are several houses located near our property line. The neighbors might tolerate an early-morning cock a doodle do once or twice, but then the complaints probably would start pouring in. Local ordinances only allow livestock so long as the animals don’t bother neighbors, so we’ve settled for the (relative) quiet of a coop that is sans coq.
But is there a plus side for city coop dwellers?
Perhaps.
Historically, city chicks probably have had one slight advantage over their rural cousins: the comparative scarcity of predators. Yet, as our collective human footprint grows ever larger and wildlife habitat shrinks, is that still the case?
In more than two years of keeping chickens, no animal has forced its way into our coop or pen, or even tried to do so, as far as we can tell. There are no loose dogs in the area. And the neighborhood cats who pay us a visit from time to time have shown only a mild interest in our hens, who are not afraid of the felines.
But raccoons saunter through the yard from time to time. One night a few months back, Liz looked out at the deck and saw one of these masked bandits standing on its hind legs and staring back at her right outside the glass door. As a species, raccoons are notorious for not only wanting to feast on chickens but also figuring out how to get at them.
What else lurks out there in the dead of night, even here in the city?
I was reminded of all this recently when I bumped into a woman who lives in a small, rural town here in Maine. She keeps chickens, and we talk about our critters whenever we see each other. When I asked how her girls were doing, she replied glumly that a fox had made off with two of them. Not only that, she said, but her neighbor has been having the same problem. Their experiences are not unique, by any means.
As it happens, this particular culprit is a very thorough and methodical fox. Instead of leaving behind gruesome evidence of its crime in the form of chicken bits, it steals the hens intact. One day, this woman’s chickens were hanging out in the yard or the run or the coop, and the next day they were gone without a trace.
I’d like to think there’s less risk of Brer Fox or Rocky Raccoon scoping out dinner in a congested, heavily developed neighborhood like ours, although raccoons are not uncommon in urban areas. I’d also like to believe our hens are secure at night, locked up as they are in their coop, but foxes and raccoons are known for their wiles, after all.
So who’s to say? There are no guarantees in life, for chickens, humans or the rest of God's creation.
