I have watched with mild amusement, reportorial distance, somewhat befuddlement, and then quiet indignation as the issue of urban chickens has raised its cockcombed head again and again in Salem over the past few months.
I have talked to chicken owners, I have interviewed city councilors, and I have spoken with just about every person I’ve come into contact with about the prospect of homeowners winning the right to house 3 hens (not roosters!) in their backyards under very specific conditions.
And even still, the Salem City Council continues to drag its feet on this issue — this time putting off deciding on it and sending it to the city planning issue for further discussion during a meeting last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a groundswell of support for the chicken-keepers and interest in chickens is making them a lot more than just a twee agri-fad to shrug off after the 6 o’clock news.
Strangely, the more I talk to people about whether or not this is a good idea for Salem, the more I discover that people who hear about owning chickens starting wanting to own chickens. And many of them have already hatched the idea in their own homes.
Some friends of ours live just outside of the city limits, and are thus not beholden to the city’s comparatively rigid coop laws (you can own a pot-bellied pig, but no cloven animals. Chickens, by virtue of omission, are illegal). They got their five little black chicks around Easter and have been feeding and caring for them while building their own barn-red, movable coop for the past month or so (the chicks have meanwhile reached the ugly duckling phase, hence the cuter pic).
Watching my friends’ grade school-aged children has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of using chickens as a learning tool. For one, the kids aren’t allowed to see the hens as pets — they aren’t named, like pets are — and are involved at every stage of the caring for them. My friend was pretty reluctant to get the hens in the first place — it was her husband’s idea — but I think she has seen that they aren’t just one more thing she will have to take care of as mom. There the kids are every day, cleaning the mess, gauging the chicks’ growth, preparing the coop for the big move-in.
Now, this is perhaps not your ordinary family. They are all pretty active participants in the food web, often digging their own clams, growing their own vegetables, and getting milk from an actual local milkman.
But I am somewhat insulted by the city council’s reasoning — a way of thinking that I have come across again and again since moving here last December. There is a prevailing attitude that “there is something about Salem” that sets it apart from other comparable cities. Some people cite the city’s state capital status, others site the penitentiary, other talk about the relative lack of industry in the area. But whatever the reasoning behind the “something about Salem” comments, I think they smack of an underlying prejudice against the citizens themselves and their abilities to take an active role in shaping their own lives.
Argument: But Salem is a capital city…
Answer: Chickens are a go in Olympia, and yet, “there is something about Salem.”
Read: We can’t take care of our yards, our families, our urban livestock.
Argument: But Salem can’t pay to enforce the laws, even if we allowed them… it would be a code enforcement nightmare.
Answer: Cities larger and smaller have not seen increases in chicken infractions.
Read: Salem’s citizens are less trustworthy than the 60% of the nation’s cities that allow chicken-keeping.
Argument: But all the city dogs will start barking at the chickens…
Answer: Um… since when is it my fault if your dog barks at my yard?
Read: Put a dog in a story and it will win every time.
I don’t really have any stake in this game. I’m not going to get a chicken even if this measure ever passes. But I will defend to the death the right to argue with fair-minded reason, which is exactly what these chicken people have done, again and again, at these council meetings.
In the beginning, I was pretty sure this was going to be an actual case of “you can fight city hall,” but I’m increasingly thinking that this might be a sign that Salem’s backwater status is deserved.
By the way, just within the past few weeks, one of my favorite writers, Susan Orlean, has started tweeting about caring for her pet chicken.
She lives in New York City.
emily:
For the record the City Council has to refer all code changes to the Planning Commission for a public hearing. I know it may seem like they are dragging their feet because they didn’t approve anything but they are following the rules that exist for all code changes. Referring it to the planning commision actually was a victory!
Yes, the clarification is perhaps in order. I have it on good authority that the Wall Street Journal is writing an article on urban chickens and has interviewed some of the people involved in the movement here in town. I’m excited for that story to come out. It should give a pretty good judgment on whether or not the advances here have moved, as many have suggested, at a glacial pace.
Hmmm…. Sounds like a pretty good topic for a poem, doesn’t it?
Yes, Mike, it does. Are you publishing said poem anywhere?
Bawdy Renaissance Doggerel Please!
Well, I’ve got the space if you’ve got the rhymes. Or you could put it up on Poetry and Popular Culture and we could link.
I don’t live within the city and I have chickens.
I used to have a lot more, and some ducks too.
I have neighbors with dogs.
I have fewer birds and the dogs have had some ‘fun’.
I think that chickens in town would lead to neighbors fighting about dogs eating/scaring chickens.
On the other hand, I think that people who want chickens should be allowed to have them.
There are dogs on farms and in town ! You keep your animals confined to your own property ! No matter what kind of animal ! It only requires a hot wire around your coop and run to keep the neighbors dog at home and if he is on your property shoot him !
I’m pretty sure that you’re not allowed to unload guns within city limits. And that doesn’t seem like a diplomatic solution either way.
Maybe not diplomatic, but I didn’t see anyone asking permission before letting their dogs run loose.
Living in the country has opened my eyes to the fact that many people move from the city and think fences no longer exist. I was glad when we moved here and it was already fenced. I figured it would keep me on my own property as I wandered around enjoying Ma Nature. Some of my newer neighbors do not share the same philosophy.
My chickens aren’t confined to a coop. They have one to sleep in and they don’t wander far from it. They are almost smack in the middle of my property, nowhere any dog other than my own belong.
The neighbor dogs I have seen make me fear for my Rottweiler’s safety. He’s full grown but small by comparison. So far he’s always been in the house when we’ve seen the other dogs – he’s old, but he knows those are his chickens and since he can’t eat them, no one should.
Ah, that explains a lot. I’m generally pretty welcoming of other peoples’ dogs, but I think bad dogs often belong to bad people. I LOVE the idea of a rottweiler that takes care of “his” chickens! I wonder how many people in Salem already have chickens and are living in the underground. I’d much rather run into a chicken in a dark alley than someone’s wayward pup.
I do possibly *know* of a poem about chickens in Salem that’s been circulating in underground literary circles, but I unfortunately can’t claim to have written it myself. In my vast forays into the poetry of and by popular culture, I come across lots of bad, bawdy, and beautiful verse, and the last thing I’d want to do is to claim the anonymous genius of popular authorship by “publishing” it under my own name. If you’d like me to set Tommy Eliot, my man-on-the-street, looking for this particular bit of verse, I perhaps can do so.
Oh, I think Tommy Eliot might usefully be employed! The Ballad of Ben Cannon needs the counterpoint of a Chant of Chicken or Rondeau of Rooster…please, a fowl fricassee!
The dog argument fails to hold kibble if you throw cats into the mix. Do neighbors break into heated arguments over dogs killing, barking at, or chasing cats?
Bottom line is, if you free range your chickens, it doesn’t matter if you’re in town or in the country. Chickens are prey, and predators lurk everywhere, be it the neighbor’s aggressive dog or the hawk perched in a nearby tree. As much as we love our chickens, the reality is that we might lose one to…erm, unfortunate circumstances, and thus must be prepared to handle that reality. It is part of owning an animal.
I always think it is funny when people say “the bottom line is.” It’s like inserting an obvious end to the conversation. But yes, chickens can die, and violently. And that is indeed a bottom line.
Sorry… guess I could have said “Thus,” or “Ergo,” but we’re talking chickens and eggs here. so bottoms seemed fitting
Don’t you have a more updated picture of our chickens?! Now they are outside and have feathers!
We are still feeding them their normal food but now they have tasted a huge variety of things, like dandelions, slugs, moths, daisies, strawberries, a little bit of banana, and some other things that I forgot.
I am against having chickens in Salem. I’ve had neighbors in an apartment in Keizer who had two chickens they kept on their postage-sized stoop on the hot pavement without food or water under an overturned plastic laundry basket. In my current neighborhood, I’ve seen a neighbor with chickens running loose around their house and yard. Unfortunately, I’ve also driven around the remains of squashed chickens in the street. Keep them in the country.
Are you opposed to pets in general, or just the feathered kind? Your argument could apply to dogs, cats, kids — just about anything, really. Frankly, if I saw someone keeping any creature in hot weather without adequate food, water, or shelter, I’d be making some phone calls. I sure wouldn’t say that because one neighbor didn’t take care of their dog/cat/guinea pig, nobody should have them.
Besides, keeping chickens is not about having a rare pet species. It’s about having some control over our food, and where our food comes from. Plus, chickens eat a TON of bugs that you don’t necessarily want running around your yard or crawling in your house. Chickens provide benefits beyond the fresh, incredibly healthy eggs they produce.
A detractor! How exciting and brave of you to voice your opinion in a sea of wanna be chicken keepers!
People who don’t follow rules will have the chickens anyway, as you have learned in Keizer (incidentally, Keizer allows chickens). The people in Salem who are trying to push through the measure are people who want to abide by the law, and are thus more likely to follow the terms of the proposed amendment.
As for road kill, it is everywhere, a fact of life. I did a ride-along with a DOT worker who picks up road kill once. Chickens aren’t really the big roadkill problem.
Emma, we’ll have to take some new pics, also of the coop! I had some of the ugly duckling stage, but much prefer the chicks…
Thanks, that sounds good.Right now my friend Madison is at my house. My teacher and mom both think their feet look like a dinosaur’s foot.