Visitors to Marcy Tiffany's Palos Verdes, Calif., house
admire the floor-to-ceiling views of the Pacific Ocean, the tribal art from
Papua New Guinea and the courtyard's olive and fig trees. But what really
gets them excited are the chickens .
"We've never thought of them as downscale,"
says Mrs. Tiffany, a lawyer, and owner of Odette, Sonya and Aviva.
"They're just very cool pets."
Call it a chicken coup.
This summer, the pet of choice among some of the McMansion set could well be
the lowly chicken . From Washington state to
Martha's Vineyard, upscale homeowners are placing orders for fancy chickens
, hatching their own chicks and signing up for classes on raising the birds.
A few rich chick owners are even trying to outdo neighbors by building the
most luxurious coops on the cul-de-sac.
"Anyone can have a Sotheby's catalog, but I think
the [breeding] catalog from McMurray's is so much more interesting,"
says New York decorator Bunny Williams. Where does she keep her 20 Rhode
Island Reds and Polish Hens? In a $2,500 coop modeled on a pagoda at her
weekend place in Connecticut.
Blame -- or credit -- everything from a renewed longing
for the simple life to Martha Stewart. Ever since the housekeeping doyenne
started crowing about the joys of chicken
husbandry in her magazine, there's been a run on chicks in upscale suburban
pockets. Like farmers' markets and bread makers, caring for chickens
meets a suburban wish to be down on the farm but still within driving
distance of Home Depot. Then there's the amusement factor. One owner's
favorite pastime: watching her birds down strands of spaghetti.
McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa, one of the
country's largest rare-poultry breeders, says its chick shipments to chic
ZIP Codes have grown 25% in the past two years. In Seattle, the City Chicken
Workshop, which teaches urbanites how to raise chickens,
has turned into a standing-room-only affair. And Egganic Industries, in
Ringgold, Va., says sales of its $1,500 backyard "Henspas," with
sunrooms and water heaters, are up 15%.
Boutros, Boutros and Goldie
Lawyer Jackson Schmidt is so enamored with his new flock
-- dubbed Boutros, Boutros and Goldie -- he didn't think twice about
building a $600 home for them, featuring a 7-foot sloping roof that matches
the trim on Mr. Schmidt's own Seattle home. In Montauk, N.Y., Suzanne Gosman
likes to watch her two-year-old flock of 30 birds take hourlong dirt baths,
chase each other around the yard and preen. "They don't have brains at
all, in fact, they're hilariously dumb," says the landscaper.
![[Chicken Coop]](coop03282002212335.jpg)
Counting your chickens
: One homeowner has built a homemade, seven coop compound (left)
that he calls the 'Egg McMansion'
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Fowl are the latest in a long line of oddball animals that
have struck a chord with Americans. Back in the late 1980s, the farm animal
of choice with fancy folks was the potbelly pig. That was until owners
discovered they were being sold run-of-the-mill hogs that were growing to
150 pounds. After Taco Bell introduced Gidget, the chalupa-loving Chihuahua,
thousands of consumers rushed to pet stores to bring home their own -- only
to abandon them because they were so hard to care for.
But chickens have a leg up on
some of these other critters. For one, they're fairly cheap -- mail order,
they run between $25 and $90 for 25 -- and pretty low on the maintenance
scale, because coops need to be cleaned only every week or so. And while
figuring out what to do with all the eggs can be an issue (hens tend to lay
an egg a day), a few birds will eat only about $20 a month in feed.
The Swiss Chalet Coop
Just don't get caught up in a coop-building competitive
frenzy. Sure, a standard coop can run as little as $150, but who wants a
standard coop these days? Homeowners are building custom jobs that look like
beach houses, Western saloons and even log cabins. After Mr. Schmidt, the
lawyer, saw a coop that looked like a Swiss chalet on a backyard tour in
Seattle, he began planning an upgrade of his own coop, including asphalt
shingles and a covered passageway. "It's keeping up with the Joneses on
a whole new level," says his wife, Maxine Weyant.
Some of this, of course, has other well-groomed neighbors
crying foul. Many are embarrassed by the fact that they're living next to
someone raising chickens and complain that
squawking roosters are disrupting their lifestyle. In Wrentham, Mass., four
incessantly crowing roosters got Jeff Nickerson and his family so worked up,
the small-business owner wrote two registered letters to the owner
complaining. He also organized an (unsuccessful) petition drive to declare
roosters a public nuisance. Now, Mr. Nickerson is researching local chicken
law and gearing up for the next town meeting.
What does his rooster-owning neighbor Dianne Masters say?
That she's within her rights. "Chickens
and roosters have always won every court case in Massachusetts," adds
Ms. Masters, a contractor.
Not that chicken-tending is a piece of cake for the owners.
The birds are prone to fleas, lice and intestinal disease, and it isn't easy
finding a chicken doctor in the city or suburbs
where most veterinarians are used to treating cats, dogs, or, at most, an
occasional ferret. (One treatment -- spaying hens that have problems laying
eggs -- can cost $400.) Some owners lose patience with their pets when they
start pecking apart gardens, while others realize they were never meant to
muck out a coop.
Cast-off Fowl
In fact, the chicken pet
boomlet has also spawned a boomerang movement: chicken
dumping. Margaret Millspaugh, the owner of a feed store in Orange County,
Calif., gets about seven unwanted birds a month from disillusioned
homeowners. (She charges owners $10 a head to take custody of a rooster, but
will take a hen at no fee.) In Seattle, Phil Megenhardt, the chicken-class
teacher, has been left with so many unwanted birds, he's struck up an
arrangement with a local Chinese restaurant, which gives him a dinner
discount in exchange for the cast-off fowl. "I don't eat them, but
someone does," he says.
But even if you tire of your feathered friends, or in
Janice Donaroma's case "lose them" (to hungry raccoons), the coops
at least serve some purpose. Ms. Donaroma's antique wood model with blooming
trumpet vines and pink roses, for example, is the ultimate in lawn décor.
Without the chickens "It's a
gorgeous gardening shed," she says.
