Everywhere a chick, chick

The “Tour de Coops’’ featured 10 backyard setups and attracted more than 50 people, about a third from out of town, organizers said. One family crossed the road — no joke — to see what all the fuss was about in their neighbor’s yard.

Melanie Ingalls came from Sharon and said the event was all that it was cracked up to be — although she admits a bias toward poultry.

“I love chickens,’’ said the communications consultant, who keeps six hens in her backyard. “I don’t have a television set, and I just stare at them all day long. I find them endlessly fascinating.’’

Anecdotal evidence points to more and more people discovering the joy of chickens, although scratching out the exact numbers of the backyard birds is close to impossible, since neither the state nor federal agricultural agencies keep track.

“Apparently, backyard poultry enthusiasts fly under [government] radar,’’ said Elaine Belanger, editor of Wisconsin-based Backyard Poultry magazine, which saw its circulation go from 15,000 paid subscribers four years ago to nearly 80,000 now.

While the state doesn’t count backyard chickens, UMass Extension, the Amherst-based agency that advises the state and public on conservation and agricultural issues and works with 4-H programs through its branches around the state, says it’s obvious backyard poultry farming is on an upward trend.

“People want to know where their food comes from . . . and there’s nothing like a fresh egg versus a store-bought one,’’ said Carrie Chickering-Sears, an extension agent.

“All of a sudden everybody wants chickens,’’ said Ed Little, animal inspector for the town of Sharon. “It’s like an outbreak.’’

Last summer’s outbreak of salmonella in eggs was another reason for the rise in backyard chicken operations, said Steve Watson of Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, Mo. The 74-year-old company did its best business ever this year, shipping 165,000 day-old chicks a week, he said.

Others link the trend to the rough economy — likening the backyard coops to the victory gardens popular during the two World Wars.

And then there’s the fun factor.

“They’re very entertaining,’’ said Debbie Alsebai, whose husband, Manar, built what was billed as the Taj Mahal of coops on last Sunday’s tour. “My husband actually put a bench [outside the coop] so you can sit and watch them.’’

Observation is not only therapeutic, but also educational, Alsebai said. She learned that calling someone a chicken has a basis in bird behavior: “We’ve had them since last May, and they still run away when I bring them food,’’ she said.

When Alsebai isn’t looking at her family’s 13 hens, she can see shops, neighbors’ yards, and an MBTA stop from her window — proof that chickens don’t require a rural setting. In Milton, too, no permit is required to keep them.

A number of area towns, such as Sharon and Hingham, do require a permit from the local board of health, and the city of Boston doesn’t allow chicken rearing at all.

But for those who can keep them, chickens don’t need fancy accommodations; one of the coops on the Milton tour was made from an old Little Tykes plastic climbing structure.

“It looks like four puzzle pieces,’’ said Judy Lieberman, whose family has three hens — Ducky, Howard, and the miracle bird Oakley, who survived a wild animal attack about a year ago. “We call it the chicken slum. . . . It doesn’t look like the most appealing chicken house, but the chickens are happy.’’

Meanwhile, keeping neighbors happy is key to successful backyard chickens, officials and bird owners said.

When one of the chickens in an earlier flock that Lieberman’s husband brought home from his job in the biology department at the University of Massachusetts Boston turned out to be a rooster, the family shipped him and his crowing off to a friend in a more rural setting, she said.

The town of Sharon doesn’t allow roosters, to avoid the noise issue. Officials there said they’ve only had one complaint about backyard chickens, and that was solved by moving the coop farther from the property line and away from the house next door.

“It’s more about the chicken owners than the chickens,’’ said Linda Rosen, administrator for the Sharon Board of Health.

Owning chickens doesn’t take much work, which, according to their keepers, is part of their appeal.

“You can give chickens anything,’’ said Alsebai, who teaches children’s cooking classes. “Bread’s gone a little moldy? Feed it to the chickens. Your kids didn’t like what you made for dinner? Fine, the chickens will eat it.’’

And then there’s the bonus of fresh eggs. “I’m not a big pet person, but with the chickens, you take care of them — and they take care of you,’’ she said.

The growing popularity of backyard chickens is what inspired the “Tour de Coops,’’ said co-organizer Mark Smith, who runs the educational programs at the Wakefield Estate in Milton.

Last February, he and Cathy Smith (who is not related) from nearby Brookwood Community Farm held a workshop on backyard chicken-keeping and were astonished at the standing-room-only crowd it drew. It turned out that dozens of people had chickens in their Milton backyards, or were interested in getting started.

Most of the participants were relatively new to the backyard chicken scene, Mark Smith said — an observation echoed by Watson at Cackle Hatchery.

“Five or 10 years ago, when people called and wanted chickens, they knew what they wanted,’’ Watson said. “Now, we’re teaching Chicken 101 every time we pick up the phone. They’re starting from scratch.’’

Nationally, the interest has hatched numerous aficionado websites.

The website backyardchickens.com out of California says it attracted more than 19,000 members its first two years.

Another site, urbanchickens.org, started three years ago in Albuquerque, N.M., declares that it is “dedicated to promoting backyard chickens in urban residential landscapes . . . and an effort to organize urban chicken keepers worldwide.’’

Cathy Smith said she modeled Milton’s “Tour de Coops’’ after an event in Oregon that she read about online and the “Coop Loop’’ in Weston that Land’s Sake Farm has been running for about five years. Ingalls said she’s already planning a chicken coop tour in Sharon for next spring — and she’d like it to be eggs-actly like the one she enjoyed in Milton.

Smith’s coop, a shed off the garage, houses 13 hens and was part of the Milton tour. The last visitors of the day happened to be her neighbors from across Central Avenue.

Why did they cross the road? They wanted to see what was on the other side, of course, Smith said.

Johanna Seltz can be reached at seelenfam@verizon.net.