urban chickens on CBCradio's "The Point"

There was a discussion earlier this week on the CBC Radio show "The Point" about urban chickens, specifically urban chickens in Canada. (you can listen to the segment on this CBCradio page. Choose "part 2" and then use the slider to fast-forward to the 9:00 mark)

If you can get past the all the puns in the segment (talking of chickens seems to bring punny behavior out in folks), they shared some good points in their banter:

• There's really no difference between chickens and cats and dogs: feeding, caring, cleaning up poop, so why do we treat them differently?
• Typical concerns about city chickens were raised: folks think they're dirty, noisy, attracting rats and tempting raccoons and coyotes with a meal of fresh bird.
• The urban chicken ordinances in the States range from laissez-faire (in NYC) to strict (in Ann Arbor).
• When thinking of writing ordinances, we need to keep in mind immigrant communities and cultures that may use urban chicken laws not just for the yuppie egg-gathering practice but for meat-harvesting as in the home country.
  

Highlight of the show: host Aamer Haleem retells a friend receiving a wedding invitation where the couple said "in lieu of gifts, please make a financial contribution so we can purchase a chicken coop to have fresh eggs."

Lowlight of the show: Simi Sara trotted out her experience as a young girl caring for chickens on a farm and what a horrible, messy, noisy task it was. There's no real comparison between raising mass quantities of chickens on a farm for meat and eggs and just keeping a couple hens in the backyard solely for eggs. Stop with the horror stories of slaughtering chickens!

In any case, was nice to hear urban chickens talked about on CBC again. Reminded me of my interview with Nora Young on Spark back in 2007.