There's a growing craze among city pet lovers to own chickens, and a Crown Heights Community Garden even runs a City Chicken Institute where it teaches city dwellers about keeping man's feathered friends, DNAInfo reports.
"It's becoming a growing hobby," said Lydia Ahonen, who runs the Imani Community Garden, 87 Schenectady Avenue.
Ahonen said it's hard to assess how many backyard coops there are in New York, because no permit is required to keep them, but more and more people are attending the workshops.
The workshops curriculum include such venerable topics as health inspections and solutions, urban chicken keeping and preparing your coop for the winter.
Ahonen told the website that raising chickens has numerous advantages, including getting free eggs and the hens eating food scraps and that their manure provides nitrogen, which can be mixed with fertilizer.
The story notes some chicken owners have received noise complaints for neighbors, but mentioned nothing about the possibility of the fowls providing a Sunday dinner on rent week when the funds are low.
