Story by Irma Lachmund, secretary of Permaculture West, December 2014
Do you love chickens?
Have you got some? If not, have you ever thought about rearing chickens?
Mt Hawthorn is a small suburb in the City of Vincent, north of Perth in Western Australia.
There are two kinds of residents in Vincent, the ones allowed to have chickens and the other ones living in the poultry exclusion zone. We are lucky, Mt Hawthorn is outside the exclusion zone.
Transition Town Mount Hawthorn is a community group closely aligned with Permaculture West. We received a small grant from the WA Waste Authority to create a community network around chickens in Mt Hawthorn. This network will be linking people who produce food scraps with people who already have chickens. We also hope to inspire more people to raise their own poultry in the backyard.
We want to give people an opportunity to reduce their food waste and connect with their neighbours. The project includes workshops around organic waste and chickens, we also are planning a chicken walk through the neighbourhood where chicken owners open their property to show examples of rearing chickens in our area. One-on-one support to participants is offered and we finish up with an Urban Chook Picnic at the end of summer.
It took us nearly a year to get this project off the ground and we now hope the idea is an inspiration for other urban chook networks around Australia.
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Irma Lachmund is secretary of Permaculture West and project coordinator for the Urban Chooks Network for Transition Town Mount Hawthorn
Irma can be contacted on… irma@permaculturewest.org.au