This evening I went to the City Council meeting in Carbondale and presented my case regarding the lifting of the ordinance against keeping chickens within city limits. The response was positive and the process is in motion. Here is the text of my presentation. Some of it was taken from various resources that I researched and some was from my own hand:
“Backyard chickens, increasingly popular in urban areas around the country, are illegal in Carbondale. Lifting the ban would put people more in touch with the food they eat and help reduce the city’s carbon footprint.
Raising backyard fowl has long been common in many households around the country. There is a growing civic sentiment – the desire of some urban dwellers to go back to the farm.
People are increasingly disconnected from their food. When most children walk into a grocery store now, there is no clear sense of where that chicken came from, where that turkey came from, where that frozen package of peas came from. Part of people growing food in their backyard is re-establishing that connection.
Concerns over the country’s industrialization of farming also plays a role in this. Carbondale is in the heart of the agricultural heartland, yet the vast majority of the food grown in Illinois is exported. Nearly all the food eaten here is trucked in from elsewhere. Fresh eggs look and taste so much better than those that come from factory farms, and they’ve become a rallying point for the local food movement.When you have a chicken in the backyard, the eggs have to travel only a few feet, you don’t have to drive to the grocery store and a truck doesn’t have to travel from a farm to the store. It’s greener, and more sustainable.
Finally, there is the question of nutrition. Advocates argue that home-raised chickens pack more nutrients into their eggs than do the kind that come from industrial agriculture.
Home harvested eggs have less cholesterol, less saturated fat, more vitamin A, vitamin E and beta carotene, and more healthy fatty acids.
If you can raise hens without bothering or in any way affecting your neighbors, shouldn’t you be allowed to do so? Are they really that different from cats and dogs?
One concern is noise: When people think chickens, they think roosters, and crowing. I am not asking to lift the ban on roosters, only hens. And hens are quieter than most dogs and many cats.
Another fear: odor and flies from the manure. That’s a reasonable prospect, although it can also come up with other pets. And most people who want to raise chickens for their eggs are going to be as concerned about cleanliness as their neighbors, if not more so.
But if these things do become a problem, the city has existing ordinances regarding noise, odor and debris that can be invoked to police any nuisance, not just wayward chickens. These laws ought to be sufficient. The chickens would be in your own backyard, not wandering around and getting out.
Cities from Los Angeles to Memphis to Austin to NYC all allow backyard chickens. Still though, in many cities chickens are still outlawed, but many of these cities do not enforce the ban unless there is a complaint. That gives the neighbors a legal hammer they can use to get action without being mired in endless debates about the time, place and manner in which the chickens are being raised.
That makes it easier for the city to deal with folks who have too many chickens, who can’t keep them in their backyard, who decide to have roosters.
Are there more serious issues? Chickens are certainly prone to disease, but most of the illnesses they get are more common in large flocks than when a few are in a yard. And those ailments that backyard chickens do get are mostly dangerous to the birds and nobody else.
Chicken manure makes great fertilizer, and the chickens eat the bugs.
I have with me a study of 25 cities that have overturned bans on chickens that I will give to the mayor and the city council members. The common themes in this study are:
-The number of birds permitted per household
-The regulation of roosters
-Permits and fees required for keeping chickens (which by the way would be a way to raise revenue for the city)
-Chicken enclosure/containment restrictions
-Nuisance clauses related to chickens
-Slaughtering restrictions
-Coop distance restrictions in relation to homes or property lines
It is my hope that you will take this seriously under consideration. In these times of economic constraint and rising food costs, nutritional deficiencies in human beings, serious ecological degradation, and the effects of climate change, pollution and the over consumption of fossil fuels, I feel that the simple act of raising chickens at home would be a boon for all of us. It is a simple, local action that we can take that will show immediate results.”
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