Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/315999
october/noveMber 2013 Macon Magazine i 45 Pretty much anyone with a Facebook account, Pinterest board or Williams-Sonoma catalog in the mailbox knows that backyard chickens are trending these days. Barnyard classics like Rhode Island reds, barred rocks and buff orpingtons are showing up in backyard coops that range from ramshackle to resplendent, often in urban locales that recently banned backyard poultry outright. In Macon, accurate figures on chicken ownership are practically nonexistent, but anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing numbers of Middle Georgians are turning over a portion of their lawns and wooded lots to these often beautiful and practical pets. For Barbara Fischer, a lifelong gardener and longtime Maconite, chickens have always had a place among the corn, tomatoes, herbs, and berry bushes in her beautiful terraced yard off of North Avenue in east Macon. "I've had chickens for years," she said, "first in a section of the garden that wasn't being used for planting and recently in a mobile pen that moves around the yard." As she spoke, Fischer adjusted the wheels on her mobile coop (referred to as a chicken tractor or eggmobile in some quarters) and proceeded to pull the riding- mower-sized structure to a new patch of lawn near a sprawling mulberry tree. "You can see the path," she said, referring to the outline left by the structure on previous days. "We moved her here today, and she will have cleared this patch of grass today. She'll eat it all." She is Agnes. A year-old, buff-colored hen with a broody streak that keeps her perched atop a clutch of eggs in her nest box for most of the day during the three-week incubation period of chicken eggs. When Fischer noticed that Agnes had inherited the inclination to brood (a trait that is now rare in modern chickens, because of farmers selecting traits for egg production over mothering instincts), she immediately contacted a farmer friend and purchased fertilized eggs for Agnes to raise as her own. When she's not sitting on her nest waiting for chicks to hatch, Agnes forages for food in her floorless enclosure, supplementing her grain ration with grass, weeds, and insects, and fertilizing the lawn with her droppings in turn. Newer to chicken ownership is Jenny Prater, a professional photographer who added backyard chickens soon after she and her husband purchased their first home in Macon. "Our favorite thing to do on Sunday morning is come out with a piece of bread and play with them," Prater said as she unlocked the spacious coop behind her Backyard birds by matt miller C i t y f o l k s f l o c k i n g t o c h i c k e n s Koutsunis and Jenny Prater photography by JennY Prater & haleY sheFField