Talk to Alison or Kirsten Aune -- esp. Kirsten b/c she lives in a similar neighborhood as you do. She can give you some intelligent advice, as she raises chickens.

The chicken people have their own website:
duluthcitychickens.org
yeah, I said chicken people

No longer in Duluth, as many of you know, but out here in the country we raise a small amount of chickens, turkeys and (soon) geese. Chickens are easy. All they really need is cracked corn (a 50 lb bag is around $8) and water. You can also feed them all your table scraps. The buggers will eat pretty much anything. They'll about stop laying when it gets below 20-30 degrees, but all spring, summer and fall you can count on about 1 egg per day per chicken. Kids love them. They're drama queens and fun to watch. 

Bad points? Biggest one is, as Zra mentioned, they're defenseless (even if you have a rooster). This is why we have turkeys (and geese soon), which will scare the crap out of most any animal. Most dogs, especially German Shepards and other large breeds, will eat chickens. We used to have a German Shepard and she ate all of our chickens in one weekend. We gave that dog away. Our two current dogs, a pit bull/lab mix and a border collie... leave them alone and are only interested in eating their food. 

You'll need a coop (or part of a garage) with laying boxes and one or two roosts, and a penned in area, preferably. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just out of the elements. Chickens can fly by the way, though not very far.  

Also, you'll need at least one heat lamp in the winter or they'll get frostbite and possibly freeze to death. 

Noise? No problem out here, though I can imagine some pissed off neighbors if you have a rooster. Our turkeys (males) are far more noisy than the chickens could ever be. 

If you do it right, for whatever size your property is, the poop smell shouldn't be a problem. Clean the old stuff out in the spring and fall. Start small. Our current brood came from someone who overdid it and was overrun with too many chickens and not enough space. 

Why do it? There's no comparison in the quality of eggs (or meat, if you so choose) to factory farm raised chickens. Also, as I said, they're fun to watch and kids love them (as do I). Chickens, as I've found, are pretty amazing and very taken for granted creatures. Not to mention "growing your own" is always cool.

Oh, and as Zra also wrote... bards (black & white) are a good breed, as are the plain ol' white variety.

On the noise issue: roosters are not allowed in town for obvious reasons.

we miss you, gwanto...don't worry, we're looking after molina while you're away.

Additional thanks to 'Zra and everyone, actually for all of the good information experience and detail.  

The Lady is nixing chicks on the count of "salmonela" and new baby fears, I think that is crap and that there is more health risk from getting factory farmed food than anything we raise ourselves.  But speaking of crap, I (per 'Zra and others) forgot about how smelly the stuff can be.  And the noise. I could and would love to tell stories sometimes of my life in Belize (where with any room at all has chickens, even in the "city." 

Thing is, they are noisy and that whole cock crows at dawn thing is crap.  The ones I lived around crowed ALL THE TIME.  A minority of my Hillside neighbors can be profoundly annoying  and shockingly bad-mannered late at night and chicks might just be the just desserts some deserve.  But more likely there is a risk of vandalism and antagonism from various malcontents and undersupervised children.  Add that to the smell problems, the varmint issues and my lovely Lady's (over zealous) concerns about Salmonela and ... Chicks are nixed, for now.  

When/if I can afford the coop solution and we have more word of the Duluth Chicken people (thank you Beverly) experiences leaks out maybe I'll do it. 

Meantime, I guess it's another summer of trying to figure out what to do with all my grass and come up with some more creative, less smelly/noisy solutions to never having to mow again ...

Thanks again for the quick and painless trial and error kudos PDD-land!  Fun to be a budding part of this vibrant, thoughtful, altruistic and occasionally cantankerous virtual community

Don't accuse me of being a being a baby, please, but I'm allergic to bees, so that is not viable in our case, but a really good choice for many people, I'm sure.  

I have some friends who grow/barter honey from their hives at an undisclosed location in Duluth and they have shared a few bottles with us, it is tasty, totally agreed.  And they really enjoy the hobby a great deal  They also say that certain gardeners and tree lovers in their neighborhood appreciate having bees nearby for pollenation effects

I just realized, after doing a search, that chicken scratching usually refers to embroidery.  Should have said "scratching chickens".  My bad.  To make up for it, a rather off topic quote from "Snatch"...

"That's why you should beware of any man that own's a pig farm." -- Brick Top (and he doesn't mean the smell) :-)

chicken scratching is great in the garden... *after* the harvest, not before. they eat a whole lot of stuff you wouldn't expect.

Wow! what an idea ! What a concept ! Beautiful .. Amazing 

we have chickens at our house there really cool. They make your house a home. Every1 should have chickens they can be kinda messy poop wise. We let our chickens free during the day an coop them in the night we live in the country of northern minnesota. We have had up to 40 chickens at one time thats 40 eggs aa day. Right now we have 2 an 3 chicks cause last summer alot of them were old died or something. We have a chicken that is 8 years old right now. I didnt think that they got that old. We have hatched many healthy chicks over the 5 almost 6 years we have had them. There was a chick before we found frozen to death in the corner of our laying box. I was 9 or 10 years old an really wanted it to live. We put it under the hair dryer for about 45 minutes on high before we left to our uncle jeffs funeral my dad didnt think it would live but i did i had faith it would. After we were done hair drying it it started to move an open its beak my dad still thought it would die. By this time we were late to my uncles funeral so we put it back in the coop with its mom. Wen we got bac i was so excited ta go see it. I ran ta the coop it was sitting there looking at me talking. Thats how it got its name miracle jeff.