By MEGHAN PIERCE
Granite State News Collaborative
Freyja, a Brahma chicken, leads the pack Carol Tabakaru of Antrim keeps in her backyard. Meghan Pierce / Granite State News Collaborative
‘We are that family,” Leslie Hammond of Chester said: the family that jumped on the backyard chicken bandwagon because of COVID-19.
Hammond said her family decided to get chickens “around Easter when our neighbors had eggs and we didn’t.”
After several stops at small local markets and large chain grocery stores, Hammond said, they eventually found some eggs at Walmart.
“We have been toying with the idea for a while. We live in Chester. It’s a rural community and lots of our neighbors have chickens,” Hammond said. And when the stay-at-home order hit, “All of a sudden we found we had an awful lot of time and we needed a project, something to do outside to keep people busy and out of each other’s hair.”
And the Hammond family is not alone. For example, the number of members requesting to be added to the NH Backyard Chicken Exchange Facebook group is skyrocketing, page administrator Christine Bemis said. Since early March, membership went from around 1,500 to more than 3,300 members in May.
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