Hen Ellyn!
Why we need Hens in Glen Ellyn
Here's our guest column this week from Hen Ellyn member Mary Eileen Gaudette:
For some people, egg color - brown or white - is a serious matter, touching upon freshness, nutrition, or simply tradition. Members of the newly formed group Hen Ellyn, have a more important question: do you like your eggs green? If you keep backyard chickens, the answer can be yes.
The local and national trend is toward legalizing residential henkeeping. DuPage County recently legalized henkeeping in unincorporated areas, as did Lisle, Lombard, and other surrounding communities.
Chickens are hilarious, delightful and quirky creatures, ready and willing to support the movement for sustainable, low impact communities. Like all creatures, when living a healthy lifestyle, their daily habits contribute positively to the surrounding environment. The benefits of backyard henkeeping are varied and numerous, and all of them can be attained with the goal of reducing carbon footprint in mind:
Raise fresh, hyper-local, and healthy eggs: Every calorie of food and protein that we can produce on our own land can reduce the carbon footprint created by the feeding, storage, and transportation of food to our plates. There is nothing quite like the taste of an egg from your own hens, with fresh eggs being rich in flavor, nutrients, appearance, and texture. A Rutgers University study showed that “free range eggs are higher in vitamins, minerals, and lower in cholesterol.”
Reduce household waste
Chickens are voracious omnivores of much of the kitchen waste that is dumped into landfills every year. We can reduce smelly kitchen trash and use the disposal less by tossing these delicacies to the living, clucking garbage disposals outside the back door.
Safely control pests, ticks, and weeds
Chickens love foraging. Hens’ voracious appetites extend to snails, slugs, grasshoppers, termites, centipedes and many other insects you may not want on your lawn or on the cucumber and tomato leaves in your garden. Hens are experts at hunting and as we are in an area where ticks live, we welcome their help avoiding exposure to Lyme disease, a growing and serious threat to human health. Chickens also peck at the grass and weeds in your lawn, and when properly rotated through the yard, can help cull weeds and fertilize. Your backyard flock could be part of a pesticide-free lawn care team!
Food security
The COVID pandemic revealed how fragile our food supply chain is and how many people we rely on to grow, process, deliver, and stock our foods. Henkeeping allows people to maintain an element of food security. Also, an estimated 16.4% of children in DuPage County are food insecure and could benefit from the donation of surplus eggs to food pantries.
Healthier animals and communities
The poultry industry is one of the worst offenders when it comes to abusive animal practices, wasted resources, and the harmful introduction of chemicals into our food and our environment. We can combat this goliath in a very direct way - by keeping our own hens!
Have fun, learn and teach
Where does food come from and how should we treat animals? How do our food choices affect our communities and the environment? Keeping animals is a fantastic way to involve others in a conversation about how and why to humanely and naturally care for our surroundings. We will have an opportunity to teach others the value of food and animal life and to share the fun, joy, and productivity of a busy flock. Hens bring joy, fun and entertainment for the whole family with their unique personalities and habits.
Please consider signing our petition and joining our Hen Ellyn group on Facebook in order to send a unified message to our Village leaders that the Glen Ellyn community wants an ordinance to allow for henkeeping.
