Revolt against urban chickens has begun

Last week The Kansas City Star ran a story about Dave Crupper and his quest to raise chickens, which had run afoul of Overland Park law. Within a couple of hours the story had been picked up on Drudge Report. The Washington Post ran a similar story a day later and suddenly it seemed every newspaper was struggling to get its own chicken scoop.

Now the backlash against chickens has started.

Ornery keeper-of-the-press Jack Shafer has already called bogus on the urban chicken-raising trend over at Slate. His point is simple: None of the half-dozen or so articles show any statistics suggesting that more urbanites are growing chickens. The piece on, Crupper, he says “compiles chicken-raising anecdotes and regulatory issues but never puts a number to the alleged trend.”

Elsewhere, Shafer cites an Associated Press story from Union, Missouri (one hour west of St. Louis) that he claims is also bogus. “The actual story — titled ‘More Suburbanites,

Hobbyists Raise Chickens’ on Nexis — undercuts the headline. ‘Mostly farm

families wait to pick up the chicks,'” the story reports.”

Shafer insists there’s no real trend because chickens are really tough to raise. They succumb to disease rather easily, they’re not people-friendly and, as he so eloquently puts it, “There’s no way around

shoveling the chicken poo, and who the hell likes eggs, anyway?”

Is the media flapping its wings over nothing? I drove through half of Kansas City’s neighborhoods this weekend for garage sales (at least it felt like half) and didn’t see one chicken coop.

Maybe my eyes are bad or I chose the wrong neighborhoods or maybe, just maybe, Shafer is right.

(Image via Flickr: Dizzy Girl)