Hello, new here but have been reading the forums and links for a few weeks. My husband and I are in Cham-bana IL and are looking into getting chickens next spring and doing all the footwork right now. We are currently in an urban neighborhood with a small fenced back yard, two german shepherds, three indoor cats, and a 7 month old baby boy. One of the selling points of buying in the town we did was that we were allowed to keep chickens, although I didn't really think we'd exercise that privilege until this spring when my husband and I were looking at chicks at the local Rural King and noticed the 25 chick minimum. As I was thinking that was way more chickens than our little backyard would handle, my husband made the comment that it was way too many and we'd probably only be able to keep about 5 (ironically exactly the same number I was thinking!). I do personally know one other person in town who has chickens and I can think of at least a half dozen houses within a one mile radius that have chickens so I know we have an active chicken community here in town. I'm also on the local chicken mailing list, but the activity there is very sporadic and I've found BYC to be much more active and so full of friendly people (not that the folks here in town aren't friendly...I'm hoping they'll organize another coup tour as I missed the one last year).
