Chicken Little in Chattanooga

Chickens in Chattanooga? The Sky is Falling!

As many people become more concerned about their food choices, or simply want to try their hand at urban farming, one of the most popular trends across the country has been for towns and cities to approve ordinances allowing citizens to keep a few backyard hens.

With urban chickens there are no roosters crowing to wake neighbors. Hens eat bugs so they can actually be a benefit to the neighborhoods where they’re kept. And any mess associated with keeping the birds is kept strictly confined to their own backyard. It’s their owner’s responsibility to keep the area clean and tidy. Chicken litter can be a great composting material. When it’s allowed to dry and cure it can be a great manure for gardens.

Besides these benefits, chickens obviously lay fresh eggs for their owners. Owners don’t have to worry about where the eggs come from, how they have been handled, or how the chickens have been housed and kept. In short, keeping a few backyard hens can be a win-win situation for everyone, including the hens who typically live a comfortable life as backyard pets.

Knoxville recently passed an ordinance allowing backyard hens in their city with little fuss or fanfare:

Backyard chickens get the go ahead in Knoxville

Posted: Aug 24, 2010 10:55 PM

KNOXVILLE (WATE) - Knoxville residents will soon be able to keep chickens in their backyards.

The Knoxville City Council passed a measure Tuesday night allowing chickens, with one controversial issue removed.

Originally, the ordinance stated if a person gets a permit for the chickens, animal control officers could come on to that person's property at any time.

The ordinance was revised to state that residents still have to obtain a permit, but animal control will not have unlimited access to residents' property.

The ordinance does come with a number of other rules including: no roosters, only six hens per lot, and no selling of eggs or breeding.

The Metropolitan Planning Commission must rewrite city zoning code to match the new ordinance.

Seems pretty sensible and straightforward, right?

Well, people in Chattanooga also wanted to keep some chickens in their backyards. Unfortunately, things aren’t going nearly as smoothly. The animal folks in Chattanooga seem to be much more into controlling everything that people do with animals. For instance, at an early meeting to discuss keeping chickens, McKamey Animal Center and the City Council estimated that it might cost $200,000-300,000 to regulate and enforce regulations concerning backyard chickens in the city.

Some Council Members Skeptical On Urban Chickens; Crockett Is "Pro-Chicken"

posted October 19, 2010

Some City Council members on Tuesday expressed skepticism about implementing an ordinance allowing city residents to keep chickens, but Office of Sustainability Director David Crockett declared himself "pro-chicken."

Mr. Crockett said cities all across the country are moving to allow chickens as part of a movement toward urban farming and home-grown food.

But Councilman Jack Benson said regulating chickens might add from $200,000 to $300,000 of the budget of the McKamey Animal Center.

The McKamey Center raised a litany of concerns:

having a procedure for permitting chickens, amount of distance chickens should be kept away from surrounding homes, how the chickens’ feces and feed could affect water quality, whether roosters would be permitted and whether owners would be allowed to slaughter the chickens.

But the largest concern could be that more animal control officers may be needed, depending upon how many people want to take advantage of a backyard chicken program, she said.

Could it be that McKamey simply wants to discourage people from having chickens? Do you think they’re simply trying to come up with excuses to nix this urban farming idea? Consider some of the statements of Karen Walsh, McKamey’s executive director:

“We don’t want to end up as the McKamey Chicken Farm,” she told council members.

Walsh told the council she did not have any cost estimates about increased costs for the city. She said she feared once the city started, it could be much like a fad where some people buy rabbits on Easter and then they end up at the shelter.

She said some chicken owners might lose their infatuation with the birds and want to fall back on the McKamey Center to take them.

She said the center is already being asked to find spots for goats, sheeps [sic] and other critters.

It would seem that Ms. Walsh feels that owners are not responsible enough to actually take care of a few chickens in their backyard. So that estimate of $200,000-300,000 would be for hiring more animal control officers to check on chickens and their owners. One person has also suggested the money would go toward confiscating chickens and housing them at the McKamey Center. Doesn’t it seem strange that Knoxville was able to pass their ordinance without this kind of increase in manpower or budget? Are people in Knoxville that much more responsible than they are in Chattanooga? Is it that much harder to keep a few hens in Chattanooga than it is in Knoxville?

The latest chicken bombshell came at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting when Ms. Walsh offered a compromise plan:

Compromise Plan Offered To Bring Chickens To Chattanooga

posted October 26, 2010

Karen Walsh, executive director of the McKamey Animal Center, on Tuesday floated a compromise plan for bringing chickens to Chattanooga.

She told the City Council it was an alternative to not allowing chickens in the city on the one hand to making it possible for residents to raise chickens in their backyards on the other hand.

Ms. Walsh said an alternative would be to have three sites were residents could participate in chicken raising.

She said it would be similar to having communal gardens.

Ms. Walsh said three possible sites would be the McKamey Animal Center in the Dupont area, Crabtree Farm in South Chattanooga and Greenway Farm in Hixson.

She said it would be much easier for her staff to regulate the chicken raising with the three sites than if there were chickens being raised all over town.

City Council members had a crowded agenda and did not discuss the latest chicken plan.

How pathetic is that idea? Communal chicken raising? It sounds like Chattanooga is in the Dark Ages, keeping livestock communally on a village green. The only people who really benefit are McKamey staffers since they won’t have to go to the effort of visiting people to approve coops and fencing and it would drastically reduce their paperwork for permits. But the idea does nothing to help homeowners who would like to have their own chickens in their own backyards.

Perhaps McKamey Animal Center should just add words to their mission statement stating that they don’t actually want people to own any animals. It’s too much trouble for them to do their jobs when people have animals at their homes. It’s so much easier for McKamey to monitor the animals and keep everything under control when they can just let people visit the animals. Get real, Ms. Walsh! This is not an acceptable alternative for people who want to keep their own chickens.