Urbanites choose the chicken and the egg

BROOKLYN. Chickens roamed the rooftop of the Hells Kitchen building where Megan Ryan’s grandmother grew up in the 1940s. Now Ryan is joining the new wave of urban farmers by raising chickens in her Brooklyn backyard.

“It makes sense to me knowing exactly what’s going into my eggs,” said Ryan, 24, whose chicks are 2 months old.

Ryan is not alone.

Owen Taylor, who runs the City Chicken Project to help New Yorkers raise chickens, has received so many calls that he started a Meetup group in March. It already has 160 members.

“You can’t compare the taste of a supermarket egg to your backyard,” Taylor said.

Ryan had to design a coop to protect her chicks from squirrels and other animals and put a barrier separating her lead-contaminated backyard from the fresh topsoil where the chickens scratch and chomp on bugs.

“My roommates think it’s really cool,” she said, “but it’s not like they’re volunteering to get in the coop and clean it out or anything.”