"Keeping chickens is simpler in some ways than having a cat or a dog," Paul Farley tells the classroom of people in Seattle, who've paid $35 to attend his sellout seminar, City Chickens 101. Seattle residents can keep up to four hens -- but no roosters due to a city noise ordinance.(Backyard chickens are outlawed in Toronto, but legal in Vancouver.)Farley's two-hour course provides city dwellers with everything they need to know to raise chickens in the middle of a metropolis.

The city chicken concept is so far-reaching in these parts Farley has seen coops on condo balconies. "Some of the chickens are quite small, half a pound. So any location that could take a parrot or a canary, you could fit a chicken," he says. It also helps, in Seattle, that several pet-supply stores carry chicken feed. "They wouldn't be carrying it unless they were turning it over on a regular basis."

Thirty-one students attended Farley's last class, which included a PowerPoint presentation on everything from chicken evolution to what time of day, typically, hens lay eggs: "Sometime between 9 and 11 a.m., occasionally, you'll have a hen that goes broody, and she might give you a good sharp peck when you're collecting eggs but that doesn't happen too often."

Farley, who collects his eggs after work each night, has taught the seminar for four years, and, frankly, given the popularity of the course, he's surprised he isn't contacted more frequently to troubleshoot questions. He has 50 years' experience raising chickens. On the other hand, he says, "most people find a mentor or a support group."

Laura McCrae, for instance, joined her chicken support group, Chicken Lovers, after reading about it in a newsletter put out by Seattle Tilth, the same non-profit organization that sponsors City Chickens Coop Design and City Chickens Coop Tour. McCrae started her first flock -- Agnes, Prudence, Lucy and Penny -- in September 2006. "When they're all laying, [my husband and I] get somewhere between 18 to 24 eggs a week," McCrae says. "We actually eat the majority of the eggs. We're big breakfast eaters on the weekend."

Chicken Lovers held its first meeting in April. "It would've been nice to have had the group when I was first getting my flock up and running," McCrae laments, "because we ran into some issues." Namely, McCrae bought six-week-old chicks -- too young, she realizes in retrospect, to accurately "sex" the birds. She wound up accidentally and illegally with two roosters, which she had to "re-home." "You can fairly accurately 'sex' them around eight weeks by the way they stand and the way their comb looks, but any younger, it's difficult," she said. Some of McCrae's neighbours expressed astonishment that a hen without a rooster can still equal eggs: "People always look at me cross-eyed when they ask whether I have a rooster. 'Well, no, I don't have a rooster.' Then they want to know, how do I get eggs?"

"The eggs come out whether they're fertilized or not," Farley explains to his class. "For the vast majority of eggs we eat today, roosters aren't part of the equation. In a backyard environment, hens are much happier without a rooster anyway."

McCrae lives in Everett, a suburb of Seattle. She communicates online with the support group. "People are looking for advice on things that are actually normal for chickens," she says. Case in point: a panicky email sent out mid-June. "One of my Wyandottes has been badly pecked by her two companions until her lower back was all bloody. I separated them and she's now living in a dog crate until she heals. Can anyone advise on: 1)balms or medicines I can use on her back to soothe and heal it? 2)stopping or discouraging this pecking behaviour?"

"Well, now you know where the term hen-pecked comes from!" replied Colleen Connell. "Also the idea of the 'pecking order' ... I read that it's best to have just one roost, as opposed to having several." Another member wrote, "Pecking is normal. Don't worry too much about it."

"There's also a lot of conversation about how to tell if you have a sick chicken," says McCrae, who had trouble finding a vet when one of her birds developed scaly-leg mites. "A number of vets didn't see birds in general, and those vets who did see birds weren't sure why they'd want to see a chicken. I ended up driving almost 30 miles out to an avian vet."

Nevertheless, McCrae agrees with Farley that chickens are "probably easier" to look after than her two dogs and one cat. She estimates the birds take 20 to 30 minutes of her day, "and that's mostly because I'm one of these crazy chicken people who go out and talk to them and take them treats. In the grand scheme of things, they probably take five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night. They're quite low-maintenance."

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