Step one complete.

I sat in on the Planning and Zoning Worksession and listened to the concerns raised by our proposal.

All in all, I'd say that the P&Z worksession on Friday went well. It does seem that there will still need work to be done to educate folks on chickeny matters, but it feels doable. I was a bit disheartened that the representative from the Police Department just repeated the earlier concerns about noise, disease, 'gateway animal', etc. I'm not sure if Ted on the P&Z board did not pass our responses on to them, or if they just ignored them.

Their concerns are:

>> Disease of the birds
>> Disease of the remains
>> Precedent setting for ducks, geese, pigs, pygmy goats, etc.
>> Noise,
>> Predatory issues of acceptable pets in the neighborhood

In addition, it was asked that I try to find out if complaints about urban hens increased after the passage of similar measures in other cities.

Addressing these concerns will be my focus this week, as the P&Z meeting is on Thursday...

If any of you have ideas or would like to help prepare for Thursday, please let me know.
Posted by on

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dan,

In regards to runaway hens, chickens may wander on occasion to greener pastures, but as long as you have enclosed runs or fenced yards, this should not be a real problem.

Chicken disease is often one of the first concerns that "non-chicken" folk bring up. There's been a lot of media hype and misunderstanding about Bird Flu, so misinformed people seem to react first with fear rather than logic.

During the making of our documentary film, we had to great opportunity of speaking with Dr. Michael Greger (www.birdflubook.com), one of the world's leading experts on Avian Influenza. He made it clear that small flocks of backyard chickens are not a concern. Bird Flu develops out of the kind of conditions where birds are kept indoors in unnaturally high stocking densities (thousands packed together with no room to get away from each other). According to Greger, never once has has a highly pathogenic variety ever been found in an outdoor chicken flock, and especially small flocks made up of only 4-6 birds.

It won't be available for your meeting on Thursday, but our feature-length film, Mad City Chickens, is being submitted to the Denver & Boulder Film Festivals, and will be available on DVD in the coming new year. It's a film that can help get your zoning boards to see the light.

Good Luck!

Robert Lughai
Co-Producer/Director of Mad City Chickens, the movie
www.tarazod.com/blog

May 12, 2008 at 7:50 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)