Find An Urban Chicken Farmer Near You! | Chicken Coops With Runs

Find An Urban Chicken Farmer Near You!


While sites like MyPetChicken and BackyardChickens are great resources for figuring out how chickens work in a general sense, theres nothing like having someone from your neighborhood to chat with about local sources of supplies, the effects of weather on the flock, and how to keep local predators at bay.

With urban chicken owners popping up all over the place, its getting easier to find someone in your neighborhood whos got chickens in their backyard:
  • Search Yahoo! groups or Google Groups (each of these links drops you on the results for "chicken") to see whos already talking about chickens near you. Join the group and have the discussions emailed to you in a daily digest so you can scan the topics to see what interests you. Listen first, then jump in and ask or offer advice once youre comfortable.
  • Join a Meetup of fellow chicken enthusiasts. There are at least 835 urban chicken meetups happening across the country each month! The best thing about meetups: you get to mingle with fellow chicken owners face-to-face and swap tips and tales in real time. If theres no meetup already existing around you, you can sign up to be notified when one does get started (or start one yourself!)
  • Find the 4-H nearest you and ask about their poultry program. Do a google search on 4-H and your town name to get the contact coordinates for the local program. Unfortunately the National 4-H program is a complete mess when it comes to helping you find a local poultry program, so youre best off just using google to find what you need.
For those of us in the Bay Area, heres just a short list of sources for connecting with fellow urban chicken farmers:
  • Silicon Valley Chickens on Yahoo
  • San Mateo Chickens on Yahoo
  • Santa Cruz County Chickens on Yahoo
  • Alameda Backyard Chickens on Yahoo
  • East Bay Backyard Chickens on Google
  • Fairfax Chickens on Google
  • SF Pet Chicken Meetup
  • Santa Cruz Pet Chicken, Duck, Poultry Meetup
Know of others here in the Bay Area? let me know, and Ill be happy to add them to the list.

Got a list of local resources of your own? Please share it in the comments below!

Photo credit: Daniel Miller/My Standard Break from Life on Flickr

Find An Urban Chicken Farmer Near You!