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 used ot keep hens

[ddreslough.livejournal.com]

(And as soon as I get a predator proof perimeter up, I will again! :) )

If a bird's gone to set, it's upsetting, but not traumatic, to taker her eggs. Better yet, swap the eggs out for golf balls or wooden eggs and let her sit the 22 days, and honestly, she'll never know the difference. She'll just think the rooster wasn't fertile.

But, many breeds today have been bred to never set. I had Plymouth Rock hens who could care less about their eggs. They would lay and go right back out to eat. If I wanted to hatch any of those eggs under a hen, I had to use a different breed, like a Cochin or an Orpington.

I'm curious about your 'killed painlessly' comment about processing the chicken, though. What method are you thinking of? I have processed my own birds, but the stunning, although incredibly fast, is not painless, unfortunately. I have ideas for better systems, but I don't want to re-invent the wheel if there is a truly painless method I just haven't heard about.

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 used ot keep hens

[ddreslough.livejournal.com]

Yeah..those are both pretty quick. I've heard that the block chopping method doesn't drain the bird as well but it does seem the fastest and least upsetting to the bird. I'm just grossed out by the throat splitting method, where the bird *is* still conscious -- just surprised by being hung upside down. I don't consider that particularly humane. I did the neck breaking method when I processed my own, but none of it sat right with me. I'm still looking for a method that sits right with me...but I think that's my issue more than the birds'. :)

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

This story made my day! I want chickens. Also bees. Can Camberville be far behind this "trend"*?

* Caveat: the NYTimes thinks "trend" means "something that a few of my rich white friends in Manhattan noticed." But still... Minneapolis and Seattle!

Re: I used ot keep hens

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

My parents would shoot them in the head with a .22 pistol. Probably about as fast as you can get, but not feasible unless you already have the legal firearms-- and certainly not worth breaking the law around here for.

It's sad that large-scale chicken farming has given the whole field a rep for stinking-- industrial farms like Perdue and Tyson absolutely REEK, but small hen coops really do not.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I would like to get this movement started in my town. Making sure _everyone_ knows that it will involve NO ROOSTERS is critical for a couple of reasons. First of all, my Irish-American neighbors would all assume the Puerto Ricans would use it as a cover for cockfighting. And then, after they'd used it as a racial cover, they would also presume that roosters would be too noisy.

I don't know what's keeping me from doing it-- I guess I just don't want to field all the racism and classism that the rich white folks in my town will use to fight it. I am dying to have chickens again-- raised and showed them seriously as a kid.

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.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

You're not unreasonably bleeding-heart at all. But if you give them fake eggs they will keep laying an egg a day to build up that nest, and just keep sitting happily indefinitely, with no sign of distress that we can identify. They can't tell time, so they can't tell when it's been WAY longer than it should have taken those eggs to hatch.

In fact, putting fake eggs in nest boxes is a typical way to stimulate laying.

[kmhoofnagle.livejournal.com]

This made me no end of cheerful. I've pretty much decided we'll try and do this illegally once I've got a decent fence set up and then when the kids are old enough we'll do a "give peeps a chance" campaign to try and legalize them in our 2 little square miles of silliness.

But oh yes. NO ROOSTERS.

Re: I used ot keep hens

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

Also probably not legal in many non-rural areas even if the firearm is legal-- it's often a crime to discharge a firearm within city limits outside a shooting range.