Envisioning the End of ‘Don’t Cluck, Don’t Tell’

[randomness]

From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/nyregion/30towns.html

In the modest backyard of Rosemarie Morgan’s 1890-era house, about a half-mile from Yale University, there is a small Buddha, azalea and forsythia, Japanese cherry and plum trees, and an Amish-made chicken coop with five residents — four who lay eggs and Gloria, who is barren but one heck of a watchdog.

The fowl are technically illegal under New Haven’s zoning code, which prohibited raising hens and other livestock when it was updated during the 1950s. But these days, many dozens of backyard hens are generally tolerated under the city’s informal enforcement program — call it “don’t cluck, don’t tell” — that mostly looks the other way. With urban fowl increasingly common, Alderman Roland Lemar has introduced legislation that would allow residents to raise up to six hens.

Seattle recently allowed residents to have up to three goats. Minneapolis just legalized beekeeping.

At the center of the Brave New World of urban ag is the humble hen, whose care and keeping is the subject of Web sites like thecitychicken.com, urbanchickens.org, backyardchickens.com, or Just Food’s City Chicken Meetup NYC, which has 101 hen-friendly members in New York.

Most municipalities are much less hospitable to roosters (consider that next door every dawn) than hens. But the clear trend is toward being more permissive. Jennifer Blecha, who did a doctoral dissertation on people’s attitudes about urban livestock, surveyed the zoning codes of American cities and found 53 allow hens, 16 prohibit them and 9 make no mention. In general, Ms. Blecha said, cities are much more tolerant of domestic livestock than suburbs.

Owen Taylor of Just Food, which promotes local agriculture in New York, said the key is for people to explain their plans to their neighbors, so they know what to expect. He praised New York’s codes, which deal with potential bad behavior (smell, noise, rodents) rather than the existence of the hens, for allowing responsible fowl behavior and punishing those who create a nuisance. Citing New York street wisdom, he added, “You deal with it on a coop by coop basis.”

Comments

I have to re-iterate...NO ROOSTERS!

[ddreslough.livejournal.com]

NO ROOSTERS. Seriously. They are a dangerous animal.
Bantam roosters/mini roosters, maybe...but full sized roosters are just too dangerous.

I have had every single one of my roosters go bad and attack me, my daughter or my husband at some point. My first rooster was a huge bird and had 3" spurs. He hit my daughter first! She was fine, but has never lost her fear of roosters (which in a way is a good thing. Its like not losing your fear of a rattlesnake.)

I was a rooster noob at the time...he'd been a perfect gentleman until that afternoon. I'm sure if I knew the language of chickens/roosters better, I could have seen it coming, but it seemed he went bad in a split second. Thank God my husband was out there with her when it happened.

I've raised roosters with several different methods, and all results are the same: Eventually, when your back is turned -- BAM. Spurs!

And my guys LOVED to torment kids. I had to lock them up when my daughter had friends over.

I can imagine some of these full sized roosters running around going after kids. Quickly, the whole 'Chickens Allowed' thing would be over, and for the wrong reason. Hens are lovely, but I would ban the roosters. If people want fertile eggs, they can rent a rooster *to coop up* with their birds for a few weeks and then send it back to someone with the right facilities to keep it safely...or ship out the hens and then bring them back.

Re: I have to re-iterate...NO ROOSTERS!

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

See my comments below about no roosters-- right there with ya. They're _gorgeous_, and I can handle nasty ones just fine, but oh, they're so stupidly, gratuitously mean.