Hens live the high life
June 22, 2011
By Sebastian Moraga
Snoqualmie woman builds avant-garde chicken coops
Stairs to your apartment, plenty of protection to keep pesky neighbors away, a custom-made door with your silhouette on it and a pair of wheels to get you where you need to go.
Good news is, your house is cooooool. Bad news is, you’re still a chicken.
Tracy Belvill inspects a chicken coop she built for chickens to live in urban, moveable style. By Sebastian Moraga
Tracy Belvill builds these tricked-out chicken coops in her Snoqualmie back yard, and what began almost accidentally has turned into a budding cottage industry for her.
“This wasn’t like, ‘OK, I’m going to be an entrepreneur and think about an idea,’” she said. “This was personal, like building a vegetable garden, something for me. It just turned into something that other people would like to have.”
Belvill’s business, Urban Chicken Coops, has built 12 coops in the past two years, all designed for urban farming.
While they don’t pay all of the bills quite yet, they bring joy to Belvill, a plumbing inspector for King County and self-described “animal lover.”
The idea came, she said, after she realized that a coop, when stationary, turns the ground under it into mud sooner or later. A moveable coop can keep the ground healthier for longer.
“You move it around the yard once a week,” she said, “and it basically stays green. Otherwise the grass wouldn’t hold up.”
A coop takes about 12 hours to build over three days, said Belvill, who builds everything herself.
“This is a low-budget operation, just me,” she said. “Eventually I’d like to get to where I could ship them.”
Chicken coops in urban areas have grown in popularity with the economic downturn. Places like Phoenix, Ariz.; Austin, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle have annual tours of urban chicken coops. Seattle’s tour is July 9.
According to an article on the website www.chickenowners.com, chickens not only produce eggs but also support gardens by eating pests and scraps and enriching the soil.
In Snoqualmie, there’s no permit needed to have chickens within city limits.
“Maximum of one animal per one square foot of structure used to house the animal, and a maximum of 2,000 square feet,” said Gwyn Berry, planning technician with the city of Snoqualmie.
In theory, you could have up to 2,000 chickens.
“That would make for happy neighbors, wouldn’t it?” Berry quipped.
Belvill has two, but only one gets a fancy crib. The other one lives the old-fashioned way, in a stationary coop.
This chicken once did have a modern home, but her owner kept selling it.
“I couldn’t build them fast enough,” Belvill said, later adding, “No complaints from my chickens. They’ve got it pretty good.”
The only bad part, Belvill said, is parting with the coops. She gets a little attached to them.
“It’s kind of like my baby,” she said.
Sebastian Moraga: 392-6434, ext. 221, or smoraga@snovalleystar.com.
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