In 2017 , I decided to bring chickens to the inside - city primary school where I teach in Chicago , Illinois . The scholar were over the moonshine at the prospect . Most had never allude a chicken .
But I was nervous — afraid , really . I did n’t have any chicken experience and was hesitating to commit to an animal I did n’t know at first hand . So I signal up for a wimp lease Robert William Service . My school liked the organisation so well that 2022 will be our fifth consecutive year of renting chicken .
We ’ve never bother to buy !
Why rent poulet ? It seems crazy when a chick cost less than $ 5 . But consider my side of the equivalence . I did n’t have the equipment , did n’t require the hiss class round and upset about everything from mill about predators to the hens spend wintertime in a playground hencoop .
lease chicken is a terrific resolution to these problem and not just for me . Many kinsfolk identify poulet renting during the COVID-19 quarantine , and the wimp rental manufacture is expand at a dizzying pace , generating hefty profits along the way of life . In the not - too - distant future , two or three chicken rental may be vie in every metropolis , town and suburb nationwide .
For School
My crybaby - letting tale hints at some of the factors driving this niche industry . First , there ’s the want for convenience . My rental package includes on a regular basis lay biddy , coop , food for thought , confluent and transposition chickens if one dies , all delivered in leap and picked up in tumble for a fee just under $ 1,000 .
That ’s a lot of money . It ’s also a lot of time value — one - end chicken shopping , if you will . I did n’t have to search breeds or drive around town comparing provender toll . Courtesy Erielle Bakkum
secondly , rental chickens provide a modified committedness . Most people new to chickens are n’t sure if they ’re in it for the long - term . As a teacher , I badly need an out if something went wrong , such as if a student got salmonella , parents were up in weaponry and the schooling poulet were pick . I needed a way to give the poulet back without sending them to an animal shelter .
Courtesy Erielle Bakkum
( Chicago ’s shelters are overwhelmed with chicken that masses have make up one’s mind they just ca n’t keep . )
Third and perhaps most important , Gallus gallus rentals provide a connectedness to farm life . The farmers I rip from , Rob and Susan Yeary , have become almost honorary teachers at my schooltime . When their schedules permit , they spend an hour during bead - off talking with students , showing them how to handle the hens , and pointing out features of volaille anatomy . Those wonderful , sports meeting - a - granger minute are like a field misstep to the country without the students ever climbing on a bus .
Read more : Can chickens babble out ? Sure ! And they have fate to say .
Courtesy Erielle Bakkum
What You Get When You Rent
A rental wimp is more than the skirt itself . It ’s also a packet of provision , information and support that make the rental experience as fail - proof as potential . One of the reward of renting chicken is that you always get hens at peak productiveness , lay every day . And you ’re typically getting a variety known for being gentle and laidback — think Barred Rocks and Cinnamon Queens .
Rental packages typically start at two hens and go up to six or higher , with escalating fees , of track .
Thecoop is a straightforward affair , often smartly painted and with wheels on one ending so client can use it as a chicken tractor . Newbie renters have no idea how simple chicken ’ needsare , so some rental businesses offer fancier coops appealing to customers ’ sense of notion .
Courtesy helen john photography
Willow City Farm in central Illinois offer a custom coop package . “ Sometimes renters have a specific look or larger design they want for the coop , ” says owner Tara Davlin Moore . “ We did one coop that looked like a city . We did a coopthat looked like a Western public house . ”
Many rental business concern also rent out dame to hatch or climb . These software program are freestanding from the laying hen with a different , usually depleted price . It ’s not hard to imagine why family with young children would jump at such an offering . Why go to a petting zoo when your kids can have their own for a twosome calendar month ?
The duration of a rental can depart widely . I have seen chick rentals as short as two workweek and biddy rentals as long as seven months . well-nigh every chicken letting business proffer costless speech and pickup within a certain radius .
Delivery and pickup are typically available outside that region with added fees .
A nifty slew of customer education is built into renting because most of the customers do n’t know much about 24-hour interval - to - twenty-four hour period crybaby care . Some rental job put lots of this information on their websites . Others give customer a homemade manual of arms or a favorite poultry guide . Still more is passed along through email central , phone conversation and tenacious confabulation during the speech .
Willow City Farm fling , but , “ unlimited phone and e-mail documentation . ”
Toward fall , the business owner touch out and offers renters a probability to purchase their chickens , often with a computer software of supplies . It ’s a last - arcminute chance to capitalise on the attachments build up over the long summer .
Variations on a Theme
There are as many ways to structure a chicken rental as there are breeds of chicken . Doug Anderson runs a modest business , The Chicken Rental Place , from his home in Goochland County , Virginia . He rents up to 15 coops a season , with at least two hens per coop , while holding down a solar day job as a design locomotive engineer .
Most of his customers are youthful families . “ It gives them a fortune to try chicken out without spending a lot of money , ” he says .
The growing popularity of rental chicken has also drawn nonfarm businesses to try it . Dave Zahn , for example , is a carpenter in Imperial , Missouri , who used to spend most of his sentence remodel human homes . But Zahn ’s sideline businesses — A+ Builds and The Easy Chicken — build pet homes , admit deluxe coops with feature such as radiant warming and ceiling fans , have develop so big that now they ’re his main Book of Job .
Zahn rents a coop for $ 400 plus a obstetrical delivery fee . He will also bribe back undesirable bird from henhouse renters at season ’s end , which is strange because he does n’t hire or provide chickens . He is buying back birds the customers purchase and raise on their own .
“ That means , they can have confidence that their biddy end up with a good dwelling , ” he says . Zahn anticipate to rent 10 coops this season .
A few businesses have sit rentals ’ surging popularity to become relatively large . Rent the Chicken , started by Phil and Jenn Tompkins in 2013 , has more than 30 affiliates ( they ’re not “ franchisees”—it ’s a legal thing ) in Arizona , Connecticut , Delaware , Florida , Georgia , plus 19 more states , the District of Columbia and three Canadian state . Courtesy helen john photography
The Tompkins do the sale and customer supporting . Their affiliate throughout the country do the hands - on bringing and pickup arm . Rent the Chicken ’s sale grow 48 percent from 2020 to 2021 . And 50 percent of the ship’s company ’s renters either take up the wimp at time of year ’s end or ask for the same bird next year — all but guaranteeing they ’ll be repetition client .
( Full disclosure : The hen at my Chicago elementary school come from Rent the Chicken . )
One Rent the Chicken affiliate is Farmer Joe ’s Gardens , a full - inspection and repair garden center and farm market in Wallingford , Connecticut . Expanding into rental chickens grew out of customers ’ sake , fit in to co - owner Ida DeFrancesco . She and her husband , Joe , opened the retail farm stand in 2010 and had chickens at the farm stand to civilize and entertain our community .
During their chicken 101 workshop , they notice that folks were queer about hen and also paralyzed about how to have their own chicken .
“ Offering renting chicken has also deepened our relationships with our community of interests , ” Defrancesco says . “ family line want volaille , and they want a guiding bridge player to commence off correctly . It ’s a true joy to deal the experience of chicken - guardianship . We get to see barnyard life every day . It ’s normal to us . ”
Chicken rental lets the community experience a footling flake of farm life without having to figure everything out themselves . “ From the first pips of living , to the first orchis from a vernal hen , to being followed by your hen when you walk around the yard — we want to partake that , ” she says . “ It ’s a lifelike extension of our agricultural rage . ”
Then there ’s RentACoop , a completely unrelated stage business with 15 employee renting in six East Coast state . get going by a young couple , Diana and Tyler Phillips , in 2012 , they rent 40 coops a yr . That ’s a self - impose limit , because they focus instead on their chick hatching and chick lease business . They lease chiliad of chicks a year , mostly to schools and families with minor .
RentACoop also deal a significant amount of poultry merchandise . The Phillips acquire and manufacture product nonpareil for the backyard coop owner . “ We were n’t thrilled with the poultry products on the mart , ” Diana Phillips says . “ So we do out to make solutions to distinctive domestic fowl problems . For example , the hen ’ waterer was always beat tail in it . So , we create a waterer that the hens ca n’t poop in ! ”
The Phillips have a built - in market of thou for their product via their rental business .
Read more : Therapy chickens bring calm to the henhouse !
Do Rental Chickens Pay?
The solvent is yes , of course , or else so many folks would n’t try out the business . That read , it does n’t necessarily generate lots of dollar bill in good order away , nor are there many folks renting wimp as a full - time occupation .
Jenn Tompkins of Rent the Chicken encourages her regional affiliates , all small-scale farmers , to think of renting as a way to land in more direct - to - consumer dollars . “ We are creating an additional revenue stream , all while help oneself to bring sustainability , joyfulness and overbold eggs to the backyards of many . ”
Tompkins mark that the profit margins can be small during the first years while build coops for client . Once the rental coops are pay for , net income beat upward .
For Doug Anderson , the Virginia locomotive engineer - and - chicken - tenant , renting chickens is a passion projection that happens to reverse a lucre . “ It generates my fun money , ” Anderson says .
Time and again , folks constitute in the business noted that wimp rentals , like farming itself , are about more than money .
“ It ’s so fun when you flatten off chickens , ” Anderson say . One mother coiffure the chicken ’ drop off to fall out during a girl ’s birthday party — to shrieks of delight .
“ It ’s heavy to take a rupture once you start , ” Phillips says , echo the lament of many a husbandman . “ We really do it because we know the pleasure it brings . ”
Afinal encouraging Son comes from my personal pet : farmers and rive the Chicken affiliates Rob and Susan Yeary . Every year , they contribute hen down from their Michigan farm to my Chicago elementary school .
“ We initially got Gallus gallus … as a stress reliever from our busybodied jobs , ” Susan Yeary says . “ We presently line up out what a joyfulness they are , and rental has allowed us to share the same passion with others that did n’t know where to start . ”
More Information
come up out more about rent volaille from the places mentioned in this article .
The Chicken Rental Place(Goochland County , Virginia ):
The Easy Chicken(Imperial , Missouri ):
engage the Chicken(nationwide )
RentACoop(Maryland ; Washington , D.C. ; Virginia ; New York ; New Jersey ; Pennsylvania )
Willow City Farm(central Illinois )
This article originally appear in the July / August 2022 issue ofChickensmagazine .
