Home & Garden
Here's the Scoop on a Salem Chicken Coop
The Murphy family's thriving urban chicken coop on Dearborn Street in Salem is more than just a great green way to produce farm-fresh eggs.
The poultry that live inside Maura Murphy's urban chicken coop on Dearborn Street in Salem are more than just your run-of-the-mill roosters and hens - they're members of the family.
The beautiful backyard coop was the brainchild of Murphy's 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, who fell in love with chickens after spending a long weekend caring for a batch of newborn chicks as part of a project at Glen Urquhart School in Beverly Farms.
Catherine's experience caring for the chicks led to helping out on a neighborhood farm - and after a year of pitching in, the Easter Bunny brought her a coop of her very own.
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"With the help of our neighbors Ed and Betsey, and Dan, the owner of Agway in Danvers, and his daughter, Ashley from Ashley's Chickens, Catherine became the neighborhood chicken girl," Maura Murphy said.
The coop, which is home to more than a dozen chickens, produces between 8 and 13 eggs a day and Murphy was quick to point out that the farm-fresh eggs generated by her coop are even healthier than those for sale at the local supermarket.
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According to Robert and Hannah Litt's book A Chicken in Every Yard, eggs from pasture-raised flocks contain 1/3 less cholesterol, 1/4 less saturated fat, 2/3 more vitamin A, two times more omega, three times more vitamin E and seven times more beta carotene.
Check out the video above for a closer look at the Murphy's Salem coop.
If you're interested in purchasing some of Catherine Murphy's eggs, you can email her here.
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