With backyard farms multiplying across Chester County, pet sitters are expanding their services to include chickens, goats, pigs, and other farm animals alongside traditional pets, writes Brooke Schultz for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Years after leaving being a veterinary assistant career to start Chester County Canines, Nora Murphy Kramp now mostly has chickens as her clientele.
“It’s more common than not,” said Murphy Kramp, based near Malvern. “Basically, if it’s, ‘Hey, come take care of my dogs,’ if they happen to have a nice backyard, a year later, it’s like, ‘Oh, hey, come take care of my dogs. We have six chickens now – them, too.’”
Chickens became popular during the pandemic pet boom, and soaring egg prices pushed more families to invest. But for many, chickens were the starting point, followed by goats.
For some city transplants settling in the suburbs, getting chickens is often among their first priorities.
“There’s a lot of open spaces out this way, where there’s purposely no building going on, so it allows people to have these animals without being on top of the neighbor,” said Shiena Powelson, the owner of I Sit, They Stay, a pet-sitting business near Pottstown.
Read more about pet sitters expanding to include more animals than cats and dogs in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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While 200 animals may be out of the ordinary, local residents are raising more than just cats and dogs these days.
