Urban Chooks Perth

I have been thinking about poultry for a while and since April this year I have got chooks in my own garden.
Chicken are good, they give eggs, feed off scraps and food waste and also clear out bugs and beetles from my veggie garden.

Feeding chooks
For most of this year I had four or five chooks. Always hungry they desertified my 63sqm chook pen in less than four weeks, devouring all the green that was growing in that part of my garden. How to feed them and look after them well is not a problem in winter, as green feed is in abundance. With summer arriving fast things changed, my garden no longer looks green outside the watered beds but  is getting drier and browner by the day.

Addressing food waste and ensuring good use of veggie scraps
Food waste is a big issue in Australia. The average Australian wastes 200 kilograms of fresh food each year. The last World Environment Day had a focus on food waste.  I thought if I could marry the food waster with my chooks we would be winning.

Asking friends and neighbours to drop off their food scraps could be a good start. I leave clean ice cream containers out my front door and the neighbours swaps them over for full ones on their morning walk. Four neighbours are on board, one of them has three young boys who come over to feed the chooks themselves. We are still figuring out what my hens like and what they leave untouched in their bowl. I am keen to ask other neighbours to drop off their food scraps and thought this could become a successful system of re-using food scraps. I would be so proud to connect our community around my chickens.

Informing people about how to hold urban chooks
The third component of this venture is driven by how many people told me that they would love to have chooks themselves but don't know where to start. Urban Chooks Perth could be a vehicle to inform people about chooks and even assist with the design and building of chook runs and chook pens. Many properties have empty space that could be turned into a place to hold chooks. Urban Chooks Perth helps people to think it through, and the network can also help with securing local feed supply through in linking the new chook holders with their neighbourhood.

All in I intend to run Urban Chooks Perth locally for a few months and then see whether a broader network could become a reality, depending on uptake and time. Love it!