Raising Chickens in the City: The Pros, Cons, and How-To

For city-dwellers, high-quality food tends to cost more than the industrial-scale stuff you get at your local grocery store. Sadly, large cities are often rightly criticized for a distinct lack of outlets where you can get truly farm-fresh food.

As ever, raising your own chickens for eggs and meat in the
city is a great way to cut out the many middlemen occupying the supply chain bringing in high-quality foods. This can, quite literally, save you a fortune when it comes to feeding yourself and your family,

But because some of us live in the middle of the cramped, congested, sprawling city rather than out in the country with all its wide open spaces, raising chickens seems impossible.

If you don’t have the room for your birds to roam, how can you possibly keep a flock of your own? Is raising yardbirds doomed to remain just a dream for city-living homesteaders?

Not hardly! Not only is it possible but it is a lot more achievable than you might think if you’ll simply modify your approach to keeping them. In this article, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about raising chickens in the city: the pros, the cons, and how to do it.

Pros and Cons of Raising an Urban Flock

Despite the notion that “urban environment” and “chicken keeping” are mutually exclusive concepts, that is not true; densely populated cities are just another kind of environment, one with pros and cons like any other.

There are factors you’ll be forced to deal with that folks living in the country don’t have to worry about, but on the other hand you’ll enjoy some advantages they don’t have .

Pros

✅ Chickens Don’t Need Much Space

Chickens simply don’t need a lot of space. It’s entirely possible to keep a small flock of chickens in a space-efficient coop situated in the middle of a tiny
urban backyard.

Depending on the size of the breed, your birds will only need between 1 and 5 sqft (per bird) in their coop, and 5 to 10 sqft in the run or other enclosure. Letting them out of the run or tractor to roam around and stretch their legs for a couple of hours a day is generally sufficient for their needs.

And don’t think you are cramming them in too tightly, either: When you put them up in the coop, they will often sleep shoulder to shoulder naturally, meaning you don’t need some big, expensive, permitted structure to keep them.

The only other animals that come close to the space efficiency of chickens are rabbits, and they sure aren’t as versatile.

✅ Fewer Predators Overall

Coyotes, foxes, wolves, bears, badgers, hawks, eagles, mountain lions, snakes; those predators and more will be constant threats to your birds when living in the country.

Luckily, most aren’t present in cities, or if they are they are in present in greatly reduced numbers. That means your birds are less vulnerable overall. You’ll still have to stay aware and predator-savvy, though. More on that in just a second.

Cons

❌ Typically Insufficient Room for Free-Ranging

One of the best things you can do for chickens is letting them free-range. This better replicates their natural lifestyle and provides them with exercise and wild-foraged or caught edibles in the form of insects, plants, and other tasty tidbits.

Regrettably, most urban homes simply will not have a yard sizable enough or suitable for letting chickens free range.

This isn’t to say you can’t let them roam around, but there will be some consequences: chickens will rapidly deplete plant and insect life from a small yard, nibbling every grass blade and plant down to the ground and then scratching everywhere, making a mess.

Limited room to move also means they will deposit waste in a smaller area, which can quickly become a nuisance and hygiene issue.

❌ Prohibitive Laws and Regulations

The single biggest problem for would-be city chicken keepers. Cities are always fortresses of prohibitive rules, laws, and various other regulations.

Chances are good that you won’t even be allowed to keep chickens at all within city limits. Or if you can, you’ll be saddled with yards and yards of red tape.

Violating these laws will often result in substantial fines or potentially even criminal charges. This is something you must investigate thoroughly before you even think of bringing home your first bird or fertilized egg.

Luckily, there are some websites that can help you find the info you need to know without wasting a bunch of time searching.

❌ Noise and Odor

The defining feature of any city is population density. People are crammed on top of one another in something that is more analogous to a concrete termite mound than a place human beings would actually like to live.

This means the normal noises that chickens make—clucking, cooing, crowing, and flapping—are far more likely to cause problems.

Don’t assume that those noises will just be drowned out in the background din that is inherent to all cities. If neighbors start complaining, you could be fined or even forced to surrender or rehome your birds.

Your only straightforward options for reducing bird noise pollution is to choose quieter breeds from the get-go (Cochin, Wyandotte, Faverolles, Australorp) or keep them in an oversized coop at all times (making sure you have enough space for them to move around!)

Solid fencing and walls can help mitigate some noise, to a degree, but are generally ineffective at curbing it.

Likewise, chickens tend to stink, and
living right next to a stinky coop or a backyard full of chicken droppings will quickly cause problems with neighbors.

❌ Predators are Often More Persistent

I said above in the pros category that chickens are lucky to get some relief from predator attacks when living in the city. However, there is a trade-off to this: the predators that do go after them in the city tend to be more persistent.

Dogs, coyotes, raccoons and especially rats – ever a menace in cities – will be far less deterred by the presence of people, and even by aggressive action, than they typically are in rural areas where contact with people is less common.

Believe it or not, birds of prey that hang around cities looking for small dogs, squirrels, and rats also tend to be frighteningly bold and determined.

Just because you’re in the city doesn’t mean you can rest easy when it comes to keeping your flock safe. Worse, those ever-present city regulations might tie your hands when it comes to dealing with these predators, too.

Your countermeasures and defenses must be up to the task as always: taller fences to keep out dogs and coyotes, proper locks and latches to stop raccoons, tightly constructed coops to fend off rats, and buried wire mesh or stones to stop digging attempts.

Oh, and don’t forget to cover the run with netting to mesh if birds of prey are a factor! Trees and nearby buildings are not sufficient to stop them!

❌ Roosters are Not Allowed as a Rule

The legal landscape varies so much from city to city and state to state that I don’t like to make blanket statements concerning the keeping of chickens. However, I have found in my time that there is one rule you can always count on: roosters will be forbidden entirely.

Every city that has regulations on keeping chickens invariably bars the keeping of roosters. And it’s for the reason that you would think: they are noisy squawk boxes that do nothing but start property wars.

We don’t have to dissect that reasoning here, but it’s something you should keep in mind. If you don’t want roosters anyway, this won’t affect you at all, but if you want a guardian to watch over your flock or to naturally expand its numbers, that will be a major wrench in your plans.

Considerations for City-Living Keepers

Even if you have the green light to keep chickens on your property in the city, there are lots of things you’ll have to do differently and be aware of compared to keeping them out on a rural homestead.

Read over the following and think carefully about each of them and how they will affect your lifestyle before you commit.

Be Prepared to Clean Up After Your Flock More Often

You’ve always got to clean up after your chickens. Everybody knows that. However, routine cleanups, poop scoops, sanitization, and other maintenance need to happen more frequently if you are keeping them in the city.

Coops start to get stinky very quickly, and with the coop likely being much closer to your house, offensive odors are going to be a bigger concern. This is especially concerning if your neighbors are downwind of the coop! More on that in a minute.

Something else to consider is that since your chickens will be spending more time in the run or have a much smaller patch of land to range over, their poop will accumulate much quicker. That means your birds, pets, and people will be tracking it around more frequently.

Manure management and management of soiled bedding need to be high on your daily chore list. If you want to compost, make plans to securely contain it and throw it out with the garbage.

Your Chickens Might Start a War With Your Neighbors

Just because you love chickens doesn’t mean everyone else will. Your neighbors might not think they are cute, fun, and plucky. They might think of them as annoying, dirty, noisy pests.

Right or wrong, some folks are worried about diseases that chickens might spread. Almost no one likes how noisy they can be.

You might have a great relationship with your neighbors, one that has stood the test of time for years already. But I’ve seen too many times that getting chickens ends up putting that goodwill to a severe test.

If you are wise, you will approach and talk to your neighbors frankly about your intentions. Answer their questions, try to address their concerns, and if they are absolutely against the idea, you really should think twice.

Angry, narcing neighbors will sic code enforcement on you, file official complaints, and potentially even try to hurt or kill your birds.

Pets Are Your Biggest Predator Worries

You might have the sweetest, gentlest dog or cat around and be shocked to find that they just decide to go after your chickens for whatever reason.

Long story short, there’s just something about these birds that activates the prey drive of all carnivores. You can’t trust your pets around them 100%, and you certainly can’t trust other people’s.

This is another potential source of friction between you and the folks that live around you: well-behaved dogs or cats might suddenly stop at nothing to dig under or climb over fences and get at your birds, leading to messes, potential injuries, dead chickens, and a whole lot of heartache on both sides.

As I said above, you can’t just deal with most predators in the city the same way you could in the country, and that counts doubly if the predator happens to be someone’s beloved pet!

You Probably Can’t Slaughter Your Chickens in City Limits

Something else I mentioned previously is the fact that chickens can be a wonderful source of high-quality meat for city dwellers. This is true, but getting that meat legally is another story.

One of the many complications cities will put in your path is a ban on at-home slaughtering. As a rule, this is done under the auspices of hygiene and sanitary food. In reality, city folk just don’t want to see how the sausage—or in this case, chicken—is made.

You’ve got few options here assuming there are restrictions in place: you can only slaughter out of sight and out of mind of other people. Maybe in an entirely enclosed shed or workshop, in the garage, or in the basement.

If you want to do this out in the open, though, you’ll risk turning people against you and likely getting fines.

Most City Vets Won’t Have Chicken Expertise

Most seasoned chicken keepers end up learning a lot about the behavior, health, and biology of their feathered charges. This is a great thing, but invariably chickens will get sick or injured and need expert veterinary care.

This is where things get especially tricky in the city because most city vets, in my experience, don’t have the specialized knowledge and experience to properly treat chickens. Most know a little bit, at least, about avian biology, but that will only take you so far with different species.

This will require you to call many different vets to find which ones have the know-how, or in some cases, even travel outside the city to get the care that your flock needs.

There Will Be Relatively Few Local Sellers

If you already live in the city, the chances are pretty good you won’t be able to trot on down to a tractor supply or a local hatchery to get your chicks.

If you aren’t willing to travel, and aren’t fortunate enough to have another city keeper in your area that sells birds, you’ll have to go the mail-order route.

There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but most keepers I know—and that includes myself—greatly prefer to have an actual connection with a breeder and, if possible, see the birds and the conditions they were kept in before buying.

Limit Free-Ranging Time to Reduce Yard Damage

Letting your chickens free range is, as I said, wonderful for their health and overall well-being. But being so limited in the amount of space you’ll have in the city, prolonged free-ranging can turn problematic in a hurry.

Dealing with the accumulation of poop in a small space is one issue you’ll have to deal with, and the other is that chickens can quickly turn destructive.

They will nibble and scratch away all of your grass, leaving you nothing but a muddy patch of dirt. They’ll eat up all of your landscaping and even pull mulch and other decorative coverings away from where you want them.

The best way to prevent this is to keep your chickens contained in a run to limit the damage, letting them out only for a little while in the morning or in the evening before they tuck tail for bedtime.

Hardly ideal compared to letting them free range at all times on a larger, rural parcel, but such is city life.

Should You Try to Breed Chickens in the City?

Assuming there’s nothing else stopping you from bringing home and raising a flock of your own in the city, there’s no reason why you can’t breed them.

But once again, you’ll have some major obstacles in your way in most urban areas.

The biggest one is, of course, the fact that you usually can’t keep a rooster for any length of time or for any purpose. Another is that headcount limits are quite common, usually capping at 25 birds or less.

If you aren’t going to cull or sell, your new arrivals won’t have a home unless you want to risk fines or having your flock taken from you.

Other than that, the breeding itself is straightforward. Roosters will readily mate with hens, or you can try to go the route of artificial insemination.

Whether you want to let mom hatch and raise her babies or bring in the fertilized eggs and keep them in an incubator, you should have plenty of room with your existing setup.