A fresh egg nearly every day from city chickens

By Irena GuettelOdetta and Susanna pick away at the mushy white bread. “They go crazy for it,” said Maren Hofmann, who feeds the black hens from her hands. The rooster Dude looks over curiously from the compost heap and bellows out a loud crow to let the whole chicken flock know there is food. While this sounds like a countryside idyll, it’s actually in the middle of a German city.For nearly 10 years, Hofmann has been keeping chickens in her garden in Delmenhorst, a city with 73,000 residents near Bremen. On either side of the pen are neighbours’ properties. While children play in their backyard on one side of the fence, chicken scratch the ground at Hofmann’s place. “I never buy eggs in the supermarket,” said the 49-year-old.Food scandals like dioxin in eggs or fraudulent labelling on organic products do not disturb her. She knows exactly what her chickens eat and that the eggs at breakfast come from contented animals.  “I do not want animals to be exploited for my needs,” emphasised Hofmann.Many German consumers think like her. Not only have the number of vegetarians, vegans and organic advocates increased for years, but more and more people are keeping chickens in their own garden. “The people are increasingly interested in it again,” said Elke Bretzigheimer from the German Association of Poultry Breeders.What was once common during the times of present-day grandparents started to seem old-fashioned from the 1970s onwards. But it’s modern once again. Hamburg-based trend research Peter Wippermann believes it’s a typical crisis phenomenon. “We feel more self-sufficient when we do things like our grandparents did — so more growing vegetables and keeping animals,” he said.Wippermann said high-gloss magazines are fuelling this desire by idealising the country life. “They are spinning up a utopia but very few people actually implement it,” he said.While many people dream of having their own chickens, when it comes to actually keeping them, many people don’t have the space. Who in the city after all has a garden that’s big enough?The poultry breeds association notes that private keepers face the same regulations as those in industry. That means, depending on the type of enclosure, each hen must have 250 to 900sq cm of space.The authorities have never monitored if Hofmann adheres to that regulation. But a spacious hen-run was the natural choice for her. Rooster Dude and his 16 hens can run around anywhere in the back part of the garden, looking for worms between the bushes and peacefully laying their eggs in the henhouse.Hofmann cautiously opens the door to the pen, and sees Maria and Muffin sitting relaxed on their pillows padded with straw. She says: “Let’s see if they have already laid some eggs.”But it will take some more time. In spring and summer, the hens supply one fresh egg every one or two days. In the colder months, they could go days without laying an egg.Olaf Dinne also doesn’t keep any of those high performance hens. His big hens are currently laying two eggs a day but the younger ones aren’t laying any. But the 79-year-old does not want to give up the cackling flock. “They don’t need much work and the eggs aren’t too costly,” Dinne says.Yet he doesn’t even eat the eggs, though his housemates very much look forward to them. Still, Dinne is having problems due to his chickens — with the neighbours in Stadtwerder in downtown Bremen.The reason becomes clear quite quickly. The rooster, a powerful bird that Dinne calls Gockel, crows boisterously to get his hens’ attention — and does so at regular intervals until he goes to sleep. The neighbours aren’t too happy about that, especially in the morning. But Dinne said things have been arranged with them.Maren Hofmann has been luckier. Her neighbours in Delmenhorst have never complained once in all the years. “They have their children who scream loudly. We have our chickens.” — DPA