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After 10 years of chickens in the city, I'm done. Yep, the eggs are great, they're fun pets, and they're relatively easy to look after. "Relatively" being the operative word. They poop a lot. Everywhere. They attract pests, such as pigeons and rats, who also poop a lot, and spread the plague and whatnot. Chickens also seem to attract raccoons. Lock picking, super strength, giant greasy raccoons that decapitate your chickens but don't bother to eat them. Trapping is illegal in Chicago unless done by licensed professionals, who then charge $100 a pop, minimum. Since losing 5/6ths of our flock ten years ago, we've set traps every July, and we've caught at least one every year. But this past so-called winter has seen an explosion of wandering coons, looking for love in all the wrong places, namely my yard. Caught 2 coons in January, and returned from vacation in February to find that the house sitter neglected to lock the old biddies in one night, and now there are none.
That's the other problem; the hens go into menopause after a couple years and stop laying. Then you find out what kind of stuff you're made of. Personally, I'm made of stuff that doesn't want to eat stringy, tough bird named Mabel. So you just keep feeding them and their friends, the pigeon clan and sparrow gang. And shoveling shit.
If you're not fortunate enough to lose them to the violent means of wild animals, and stupid enough to get more; you get to learn about all the wonderful diseases that they're prone to, and all the ones they can catch from wild birds. And if you're truly an idiot like myself, you can spend thousands of dollars getting them diagnosed. Sometimes, they just eat stupid stuff like an old screw they've dug up, and sometimes they're just egg bound and you get to learn how to pry eggs out of their ass, I mean, vent. Other times, you learn that all the old adages are true; such as birds of a feather flock together, and if you're not a matching bird the others will peck you to death. One interesting tidbit; chickens bred to grow fast for slaughter at 8 weeks of age will gorge themselves to death if allowed. (maybe she had an eating disorder, I have no idea) And that's yet another thing, any time someone finds a chicken crossing the road...they will bring it to you.
So if you're still interested, I've got a summer coop and 30# of scratch available to the first person that wants it. (I'm converting the winter coop into storage for the snowblower and shovels and raccoon traps, and other no longer necessary things)
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