Iowa City Mayor Bailey's Odd Anti-Chicken Concerns

In today's USA Today paper, there's a half-page feature article about urban chickens. In the print version of the paper, the story takes up the whole above-the-fold section of page 6D and includes a list of communities that we know have changed local laws to allow for urban chicken farming: Durham, NC; Portland, ME; Camden, ME; Huntington, NY; Lawrence, KS; and Longmont, CO. Great to see all these smart cities doing the right thing!

Unfortunately, in what I'm hoping was a quest for "a balanced look at the issue," the author provided even more airtime for Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey and her peculiar concerns about urban chickens:

Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey opposes efforts to allow backyard chickens in her community. One concern: University students often leave pets behind, she says, and the city – home to the University of Iowa – would need to develop facilities to shelter abandoned chickens.
Another problem: Small Midwestern farmers are increasingly trying to raise a diversity of organic produce beyond corn, oats and soybeans. But that movement faces an uphill battle, Bailey says, when locals who are passionate about high-quality eggs bypass their local farmers.
"We have a lot of small farmers around here making chickens and eggs available for sale," Bailey says. "My fundamental question is: Why aren't we supporting the regional economy?"

I'd love to see the data that Bailey's consulting in order to form her opinion that she needs to create abandoned chicken shelters. If I'm lucky, it'll be the same data set that's showing backyard chicken owners will be putting small Midwestern farmers out of the organic produce business.

How about it Mayor Bailey? Care to share what's informing your concerns? Or is it just more smoke-and-mirrors in City Hall?

Photo credit gingerjess on Flickr

How to handle neighbors' complaints

With legal urban chickens becoming more commonplace, it's inevitable that some of our less-enlightened neighbors would call to complain about the new noises our chickens are making in the neighborhood.

I've seen a rash of reports in the Yahoo! chicken groups recently about neighbors complaining about perfectly legal urban chickens doing perfectly normal chicken things. It's the neighbors that seem a bit, well, uptight and unreasonable. (Our legal chickens have been reported by an anonymous neighbor, too)

A certain discussion's been tumbling around the Silicon Valley Chickens Yahoo! Group discussion regarding an urban chicken owner whose neighbor called in the city to investigate her chickens saying there was a rooster on premises (there wasn't). Upon finding there was no rooster, the enforcement officer then cited the owner for having a "too small yard" and asked the owner to get signatures from neighbors agreeing the chickens were okay. Not an unreasonable request, right?

Lisa "the Chicken Lady" Green then added a gem to the discussion:

It feels so horrible to have this happen. Write a letter to accompany your neighbor's signatures. Include the fact that most chickens are usually kept legally in coops with a 4'squ / bird recommendation. Therefore your yard should be adequate. I have seen very successful 4-H coop/run combos for up to fifteen full sized hens that measure three by eight covered with wall mount laying boxes and a three by ten open run ( 3.5'/bird).

Remember to note the change in complaint in your letter, of course state it as an error. Go on line and read carefully the ordinance. If you are within legal limits and there is no "neighbor complaint" clause you may be OK. You can often use the letter of the law to your advantage, (and of course the overwhelming support of most of your neighbors). Also remember that the officer that came out may not have had all the facts. People don't always to their jobs properly. You can also contact UC Davis and your local 4-H for advice and arm yourself with their standards for care.

See if you can get to the Animal Control Dispatch supervisor. Describe your situation and request that the complaining neighbor be contacted. Sometimes and offer to see the set up, try some eggs, and work out solutions is all it takes. They won't let you contact them but could pass along the message and request a meeting. Some people complain not because they really are affected by the noise but because they don't like anyone to get away with anything. If they thought you had a rooster and find out that you don't that may be it. (Or they may have used that to get Animal Control to come out).

But we need to fight these things.

I agree with Lisa, we do need to fight these things. It's understandable that we need to be considerate of people's wanting relative quiet in our urban neighborhoods, but when chickens are singled out unfairly, we need to push back.

It's amazing how effectively the brain can become accustomed to the sound of horns, sirens, dogs, kids and other urban dwellers yet the clucking of a chicken will be the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. As chickens become more integrated into urban life again, hopefully the clucking and bawking will fade into the background like all the other urban sounds we've become used to.


BTW, did you know there are over 3,600 Yahoo! groups relating to chickens, you really should find one near you to join as they're full of good neighborly advice like what Lisa's sharing, and they'll let you know what other chickens around you are experiencing in terms of molt, reaction to storms, etc.

Photo Credit: artwerk by alphadesigner on Flickr

VIDEO: Urban Chickens Ambassadors in Chicagoland

Found this great Chicago Tonight TV news segment on urban chickens in Evanston (where they're illegal) and all around Chicago (where they're legal). What I love about segments like this is how they re-kindle the excitement and enthusiasm and "ain't-this-cool?" factor of having chickens in the backyard. Take a look yourself:



If you're saving it for later, the quick synopsis of the six minute segment is: A profile of Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwest University, who is keeping chickens in her Evanston backyard in direct violation of the city code against it. The reporter then takes us on a tour all around Chicago to see the hens and the coops and the owners talking about why they have their legal chickens in the city. A bit talking to a local Feed Store owner confirming interest in chickens is really picking up. There's even a quick appearance by Tashai and Robert (our Mad City Chickens producers)!

All around, a nice piece, and it features some good ambassadors of the urban chicken movement. Thanks to Mr Brown Thumb for the original post about the segment over on Chicago Garden.

As a footnote, when I first started writing this blog, it seemed all things urban chicken were talked about in early Spring as folks busied themselves getting ready for the annual plantings. Now, however, the fascination with urban chickens seems to have decoupled from the gardening season and is on its own track and is building momentum. So great to see so many people interested in the wonderful experience of hosting urban chickens in your own backyard!

Can you help chickens at the animal shelter?

When looking to add to your urban chicken flock, there are many places besides the feed and fuel store where you can find a new hen including Craigslist, the local chicken group's listserv, and... the animal shelter!

Yes, chickens wind up at the animal shelter just like any other kind of animal, but it's not usually the first place people think to look. For a small adoption fee, you can spare these chickens from an untimely demise and add a new bird to your flock.

Here in the Bay Area, there are several chickens available right now (shelter names are linked to the respective web sites for follow-up):

At the Oakland Animal Shelter:
5 Sebright Bantam Hens
1 Sebright Bantam Rooster
1 Crested Polish Hen
1 Crested Polish Rooster

San Francisco Animal Care & Control:
3 teenager chicks
1 teenager hen
1 Chinese Silkie Hen

SPCA for Monterey County:
4 Hens
9 Roosters

If you think you can afford to house one more chicken, please consider reaching out to help those whose time is running out at a shelter near you.

A big thanks to Anne M, a volunteer at the Oakland Animal Shelter, for her helpful reminder and for the photos of the chickens available in Oakland in this post.

urban chickens help with climate change

It's not hard to see that keeping urban chickens are part of at least two of the solutions published in Scientific American's 10 Solutions for Climate Change.

Consume Less: cutting back on consumption results in fewer fossil fuels being burned to transport products around the globe.

By keeping hens in your own backyard, you're able to cut back on the transport requirements from manufacturer to your house for several items at once:

• eggs: instead of trucking and refrigerating eggs en masse from the farm to your table,  you simply walk across the yard and collect your own. Bonus: yard-collected eggs can sit on your counter at room temperature until ready to use (within a month of collecting).
  
• herbicides and pesticides: if you're letting your hens free range around your yard, you no doubt have discovered how good they are at eating many weeds and bugs that you'd otherwise have to spray to control.
• fertilizer: with hens in your yard, you've got prolific nitrogen-producing machines that'll get your compost bin producing rich fertilizer in overdrive.

Eat Smart, Go Vegetarian? Organic produce is often shipped from halfway across the globe. And meat requires pounds of feed to produce a pound of protein. Choosing food items that balance nutrition, taste and ecological impact is no easy task.

By keeping chickens in your backyard as part of a larger gardening experience, you know exactly where your veggies have come from (and where the fertilizer is sourced, too). Moreover, you've got a great source of low-cost high-quality protein produced for you almost every day: the egg.

No need to go vegetarian to lessen your impact on the climate, and no need to eat the birds themselves. A couple backyard hens can produce a dozen eggs a week for you which provides plenty of protein as part of a sensible diet.

As part of Blog Action Day, take a look at the rest of the 10 Solutions for Climate Change and add to the comments any ways you find urban chickens are part of on of the solutions.

Fort Collins Urban Chickens Law: what went wrong?

(Spoiler alert: absolutely nothing!) In early 2008, there were quite a few ruffled feathers and loud squawks of despair around the thought of legalizing urban chickens in Fort Collins, Colorado. The arguments against keeping chickens were the usual "we don't want no dirty, smelly, loud, disease-infested, rodent-attracting critters around here" kind.

However, thanks to the perseverance of Dan Brown of the Fort Collins Urban Hens, the measure (a strict one, at that) was passed in September 2008, allowing six hens per household.

This week, the Coloradoan has a great follow-up story on all that's happened in Fort Collins since chickens were made legal, and as we urban chickens fans would expect, everything's gone just fine, thankyouverymuch.

In fact, a total of 36 households have acquired chicken licenses (and one could assume, chickens, too), yet none of the bad things the opposition had foretold has come to pass.

Director of animal control with the Larimer Humane Society, Bill Porter, says that of the 14,314 calls to animal control since the chicken law went on the books, "There were four calls of complaints from roosters crowing." The four roosters in town that peeved off neighbors were "accidents," Porter reports: owners thought they were buying hens as chicks only to discover they were roosters. "The other two regarded smell and location of the coop, and both cases were unfounded." (emphasis mine)

Longtime readers know that one of the arguments AGAINST urban chickens that's consistently trotted out time and again is the myth of "it'll cost too much to enforce the new rule." Even though the calls to animal control in Fort Collins were bogus, they still took time to investigate. But these calls were less than one-tenth of one percent of the volume of complaints to deal with (0.04% to be exact). A rounding error, at best.

It's satisfying to see real evidence that enforcement costs come nowhere near what the anti-chicken crew would have you believe. Yet another case of proving the anti-chicken hysteria wrong.

Reminds me a lot of the follow-up story Missoula Urban Chickens Law: what went wrong?

knowing where your food comes from

This past Sunday, there was an eye-opening article in the Sunday New York Times about Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old dance instructor who remains paralyzed from a food-borne illness caused by e. coli which came from a hamburger she ate.

The offending hamburger came from a batch of frozen burger patties shipped by agri-conglomerate Cargill. The batch was made from slaughterhouse trimmings sourced from plants in Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota and Uruguay(!) and assembled in a plant in Wisconsin before shipping out as "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties." Given the varied and distributed sources of ingredients for these patties, it's amazing we're not reading of plights like Ms. Smith's more often.

Or are we?

In today's NYTimes blog, Timothy Egan has a lovely yet scary post from the Yakima Valley in Washington state launching off the groundwork of Sunday's column and reveals that there are more than 70 million cases of food-borne illnesses a year in the US, resulting in 5,000 deaths. Egan's post is worth the read, but if you're lacking time, here's the conclusion (what inspired me to write today):

How much of the danger from leafy vegetables can be blamed on the industrial model that produces cheap calories I don’t know. But as consumers follow Michael Pollan’s advice to get to know our food producers, we will learn to see the processed burger and the industrial vegetables for what they are — cheap global commodities that carry some risk.

The best antidote for such a thing is to see, touch and experience food as it comes off the fields. As imperfect as this harvest picture is, it satisfies a need that has never bred out of us as people.

And as I look out the window at my urban chicken coop, I enjoy an even greater comfort that I know exactly where my eggs are coming from, and exactly who handles them from nest to kitchen.

Let's hear it for urban chickens and urban farmers everywhere for reducing the food sourcing risk.

Photo credit: estherase on Flickr