Home to Roost Helping city folks raise chickens!

Today’s urban livestock expo at the Garfield Park Conservatory was a smashing success, with a huge crowd of over 200 people packed into the Jensen Room. The standing-room-only crowd gathered for information on keeping bees, goats, chickens, and rabbits in the city.

The event started with Martha Boyd of Angelic Organics Learning Center discussing the Advocates for Urban Agriculture and the reasoning and history behind the event. She addressed the necessity for connection and information sharing among city dwellers who keep “unusual” animals, as well as the fact that these people are ambassadors to their neighbors, alderman, and others in their locale. For this reason, she stressed, it’s important to follow established best practices for keeping animals in an urban setting.

Four speakers followed Boyd and reviewed the challenges or considerations that need to be taken into account when keeping chickens, bees, goats, and rabbits.

A break-out session followed, with experts engaged audience members in a Q&A session, and the exceptionally large turn-out led the chicken keepers Q&A to spill out into the hallway.

Organizations represented included Home to Roost, Belmont Feed and Seed, Backyard Chicken Run/Chicago Pet Direct, Antiquity Oaks Farm, Chicago Honey Co-op, and several others, as well as representative keepers of the animals featured.

Audience members participated with good questions and a high level of interest.

Kudos to AUA and the organizers for a very successful event!

For more information on the event, contact Martha Boyd: martha@learngrowconnect.org