If you want a live action, local drama, tonight is the night! The chicken ordinance will be debated and voted upon tonight! Please come out if you support them, we will need all the help we can get. 919 7th Street, Greeley, Colorado at 6pm. Wear a Green Shirt.

Drawing by Rob Smith, Jr

Here we are at the finale, finally. How this issue got so big, I have no idea. People have been keeping chickens in Greeley, legally and as pets for many years, but this time it has the attention of the city and state. Apparently almost all the local radio stations and news stations were talking about them this morning. 

Britton and I just kind of chuckle to ourselves that we were a large factor behind this whole thing, and didn’t even want to be. We just wanted to be left alone to run our lives as we see fit. We weren’t bothering anyone; no one, including our next door neighbors even knew for almost 2 years that we even had them!

We aren’t too worried about the outcome. Either way, we get to keep our chickens. Both options are also actually not ideal. Option 1 is to keep it the way it is which is confusing because they allow 1 chicken for every 1/10 of an acre of land as part of the commercial livestock code. There is also another code, the domesticated animal, or pet code, that says “domesticated birds” are allowed, and there is no limit. So under that code, anyone with any chickens as “pets” would be fine.

Option 2 is the proposed code. To me, this is actually worse than option 1, but at least it legitimizes people having more chickens than the commercial code specifies. Option two is not ideal because it gives government WAY too much power and creates a problem where there isn’t one. To see the proposed code, go here.

The main arguments against chickens in general I hear are 1) smell or noise, 2) Greeley’s image and 3) they belong in the country. While I have already addressed those, I thought I would  give another response.

1) They do not smell any more than a dog or cat. If you keep their coop cleaned and especially if you allow them to free range in your yard like we do, there will not be any build up. If people keep a reasonable number as they would any other pet (say 4-6), there will be no smell to speak of. They are not noisy birds. From our front yard you could not tell we even had them. After we were in the newspaper the first time talking about our hens and got turned in by someone, the code enforcer thought she had the wrong house because she couldn’t see, smell or hear anything coming from our backyard.

2) Greeley’s image. Ah, yes. This is the ever lasting debate about Greeley. If you are not from Greeley, maybe you don’t even know this, but apparently Greeley has an image problem. I don’t think Greeley has too bad of an image. I’ve lived here my whole life and have never felt threatened, unsafe, or that our city services weren’t adequate. The only things I can think of is that we are an agricultural community with an economic base in feedlots and slaughterhouses. While I don’t agree that that is how we should raise and process beef and I think Greeley is a great case study of what our food system should NOT be doing, that is the reality.

With that basic fact, we have the occassional awful stench that hovers over Greeley, lower overall wages (and therefore lower cost of living which I think is great!), more poverty than elsewhere and the associated problems that poverty causes to a community.  Many of the people living in poverty come from Central America and Mexico to make a better life here and this is really what this chicken debate boils down to: racism. People are afraid we will turn into a “3rd World Country”. People have actually said this to me.

There are so many things wrong with these statements, but let me put it to you this way. Chickens and dogs live in developing countries. They also live here. Are dogs (or chickens) inherently bad just because in some areas their laws are different than ours? I agree that we need humane laws (like the current ones we have in Greeley), that chickens  -and dogs- should be fenced, that dogs and cats should be spayed and neutered and kept out of the streets. But this is not a reason to ban them altogether. Chickens don’t make “3rd World Nations”. They also don’t cause image problems, nearly every city in Colorado allows chickens. Many large, metropolitan and “hip” places (with great images) allow for chickens.

3) Chickens belong in the country…or…your backyard interferes with my backyard. Why do chickens belong in the country? Because that is the social norm? Do you realize that over 90% of the population lives in cities? And it’s only growing moreso. There are fewer and fewer “farmers” and unless we want all of our food and therefore our ability to be self-reliant and self-sufficient to be wiped away completely, we had better protect our ability to grow our own food, raise our own pets and know a little bit about what it’s like to live without the government or food conglomerates supporting us.

We should be allowed to be a little different. If we don’t have tolerance of others who are different, who try to live life differently in a way that is beneficial to them what’s to say that your differences won’t be on trial next? If your backyard can have 10 dogs (which in Greeley they can any number of pets), why can’t mine have 4 hens?