“I thought he was pretty crazy,” Shara Galonsky said when her partner Blaine Taylor proposed raising quails together.
“I thought it was a crazy thing, and then he went and took a class,” she said.
Galonsky and Taylor are part of the effort to showcase sustainability in urban downtown Phoenix taking place this Saturday, Nov. 8th from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. with the 6th annual Tour de Coops. The event is sponsored by Valley Permaculture Alliance, a local 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
The tour will include 21 coops in participating cities including Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert. A special biking tour will host six of the 21 coops in downtown Phoenix, where tourists will have the opportunity to meet Galonsky and Taylor’s quails.
Tour de Coops is a self-guided tour with three starting points, including one downtown at the Phoenix Public Market Cafe.
Tour de Coops is a fundraising event for Valley Permaculture Alliance. The tour will provide funds for programs such as their seed library, edible desert committee and permaculture classes.
Taylor said that having a coop is quite a commitment.
“Do the research,” Taylor said. “It’s not just getting a chicken and having it as a pet in your backyard. There is a lot of work and legal aspect to it too.”
Galonsky said that downtown Phoenix is a good place to raise animals, and that some of her neighbors have sheep and she hears roosters crowing on her morning runs.
“There’s a lot more going on down here, with that sort of urban farming and agriculture with bringing in birds to make people aware of,” Galonsky said.
Galonsky also said that raising animals can be a sustainable practice. Raising birds like quails or chickens prevents bugs, provides eggs and aids in composting, she added.
Taylor and Galonsky are very protective to their quails. They treat them to daily ice blocks, a misting system during the summer and heat lamps during the winter.
One of their favorite activities is working on the yard and giving the quails some weeds to play in. They use the quail excrement for composting, making sure that the vegetables they grow are appropriate for a quail’s diet.
Galonsky and Taylor also love to spoil their quails with what they have deemed “Quail Crack,” which are meal worms.
One of the hardest things about raising quail is that you can’t leave for extended amounts of time without having someone come over to watch them, Galonsky and Taylor said. They rely on friends and family to go to their house to watch their cat and their quails.
Kate Radosevic, volunteer manager for Valley Permaculture Alliance, said that raising chickens has many benefits in an urban setting.
“My mentor once told me her neighbor was complaining about the huge number of June bugs one season,” Radosevic said. “But really, he didn’t have a June bug problem, he had a lack-of-chicken problem!”
Contact the reporter at amcclel1@asu.edu
