South L.A. backyards are becoming barnyards

Residents of South Los Angeles are discovering that roosters -- and other farm animals -- are joining their neighborhoods. Times staff writer Jessica Garrison reports that not everyone is happy about it.

For many, the image of South Los Angeles is that of a paved, parched, densely packed urban grid. But increasingly, it is also a place where untold numbers of barnyard animals -- chickens, roosters, goats, geese, ducks, pigs and even the odd pony -- are being tended in tiny backyard spaces....

The cacophony of cock-a-doodle-doos south of the 10 Freeway is one of the louder manifestations of a demographic change that has transformed South Los Angeles in the last few decades.

Once primarily an African American community -- and still the cultural and political heart of the state's African American population -- the area has absorbed tens of thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America and is now predominantly Latino.

Apparently, one person's comfort (a rooster in the backyard) is another's headache. And in a related story, Times Foreign Editor Marjorie Miller explores some of the wildlife in her Koreantown neighborhood.

-- Alice Short

Photo: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[sheri]

I think chickens should be legal anywhere that people have a yard. Maybe for apartment dwellers, they could have a common hen house in the open space around the apartment building. Hens make such good environmental and economic sense.