The chickens are coming back...

Under public comment on unagendaed items last night, Ted - did not catch his last name - announced that "they" - one assumes the local anarchist community - will be presenting an ordinance to allow chickens in the city - no roosters permitted.  He stressed the importance of locally grown agricultural products and the high quality protein that the egg offers.  Such protein would not rely on the food industrial complex.

I found an excellent summary of the issues surrounding the introduction of chickens into urban areas put together by the Albany Law School.  It's dated March 2011. Click title for link.  Especially look at the section devoted to zoning and permitting.

My point here is do we really want to introduce another item that needs to be regulated through the Code Enforcement process when we essentially have little effective Code Enforcement now?  The cow is clearly out of the barn now - do we want to add the regulatory burden of chickens along with the other issues?  Most people would say "no" - including me.  Or, would those that propose the ordinance want no enforcement or regulatory infrastructure - which would cause its own sets of issues.

Believe it or not, I must confess that for the first two or so years of living in Lake Worth, we had a chicken in our yard.  I moved in with a person who was living at 7th Avenue South and H Street.  A few months before, one of his neighbors dropped a chicken over the fence.  My friend thought that it was some sort of offering.  The chicken was sort of "beat up" - its beak had been ground down from pecking on concrete and asphalt, but it still produced eggs.  At night, it would roost in a large tree in the yard and then spend the day strutting around..  We met someone who lived on E Street - just north of Lucerne.  He loved chickens - chicken statues and figurines were all over his house.  He already had tropical birds and a big fenced-in backyard.  I am not sure what prompted the action, but we gave him our chicken.  The chicken lived for a while longer, until it drowned in his hot tub.  We didn't ask about  the circumstances, but assume the top was left off or some such.

Anyway, read through the material.  It should be required for anyone considering this - and there are a lot of things to consider.