A Webster City hatchery is getting some national publicity over the chicks it ships all over the country. The New Yorker magazine features the McMurray Hatchery in its September 28th edition. Hatchery spokesman Bud Wood says the article focuses on the increasing number of flocks of birds people are keeping in their back yards. Wood says backyard flocks are hot right now.
Wood says across the country, and especially on the east and west coasts, people are getting a few hens for their backyard for fresh eggs. “Hopefully it’s not a fad, I think it’s a way of life,” Wood says, “I think people like to know where their food comes from, getting closer to nature, the organic movement, the green movement, all those things have kind of rolled into one and produced a real demand for backyard poultry.”
Wood says he’s amazed at how the demand for chickens has changed. He says it’s been popular for many years to have a flock in the midwest and other rural areas, but he says it has been moving more and more from rural settings into urban areas. Wood says just the other day on “Good Morning America” a man who lives in Brooklyn, New York brought in his chickens and showed them. Wood says the movement has kept the orders coming into the McMurray Hatchery despite the down economy.
Wood says he feels bad that the economy is the way it is and people are struggling, but he says they’ve had good years recently and have been very busy. The article in the New Yorker is called “The ‘It’ Bird”. You can see a video showing writer Susan Orlean at her Hudson Valley home with her chickens from McMurray Hatchery on-line at: www.newyorker.com.
Contributed by Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City