It used to be that the closest thing to livestock in the city were pets: Cats, not cattle, and cockatoos instead of chickens. But in recent years, more and more people are bringing animals out of the paddock and into the precinct.

Photo Credit: Heidi Kooy of Itty Bitty Farm in the City

Beekeeping is very much on the rise. Bees take well to urban living — they do, after all, already live in cities — and do not require great expanses of land, just airspace. Moreover, healthy, independent urban hives may be important as larger populations of commercial bees die off from Colony Collapse Disorder. And considering nearly a third of our produce is pollinated by honey bees, those urban bees just might be the future of our food supply. So keeping bees is about more than just honey for your tea.

Urban chickens have been a hot trend. In the last few years, there’s been a fair amount of media attention to folks raising chickens for eggs (and, occasionally, meat) even in such densely populated areas as New York and San Francisco. But chickens are just the tip of the urban livestock iceberg. Rabbits also make fine urban livestock; they’re small, can be kept confined and are both quieter and less stinky than chickens. And they’re, um, delicious.

If you’ve got a little extra space, you can move on to larger four-legged creatures. San Francisco’s Heidi Kooy of Itty Bitty Farm in the City keeps goats, which she describes as having a temperament “like a cross between a dog and a cat.” And while she says they do make good pets, be warned that you should be prepared to keep more than one, as they’re social creatures. Still, if you want an unending supply of fresh, tangy goat’s milk, this might be the pet for you.

A farmer in Cuba has even bred a miniature cow designed for urban living, though we haven’t seen many cattle roving inner city streets yet. Personally, we’re holding out for diminutive buffalo so we can make tiny mozzarella di bufala bocconcini.