Posted 06.04.2008

A chicken in every backyard?  Fort Collins ordinance seen as good step toward sustainability.

By Mike Taylor

Looking to lead the nation out of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt painted a picture of future prosperity with the promise of “a chicken in every pot.”

These days, the mantra of sustainable-living advocates seems to be leaning toward “a chicken in every backyard.”

Or six.

The Fort Collins City Council voted 5-2 last week to approve a zoning amendment that would allow chickens in the city’s backyard residences. The measure will be brought before the council again later this month for a second reading and final public comment.

According to the Fort Collins Coloradoan, the ordinance will allow residents to keep up to six hens (no noisy roosters) in their backyards in enclosed coops at least 15 feet from property lines.

As a Denver resident and owner of five hens myself, I am of course pleased with this outcome. I got my first four chicks in late March but suffered a setback when my coop proved to be less than 100 percent varmint-proof and I lost three chicks. Something - a fox, coyote or cat, I suspect, dug through the bottom - but I took the hard lesson in poultry farming, restocked and now have five healthy Rhode Island Red pullets due to start producing eggs in early fall.

In the meantime, they’re already producing fertilizer for the vegetable garden. They also get along fine with my two dogs, which have become completely indifferent to the hens and vise versa as the mutual curiosity has worn off.

For any region or culture that touts itself as “green” and environmentally progressive, allowing chickens is a must. They’re the easiest farm animal to raise (my four early casualties notwithstanding). They yield a higher return than a vegetable garden for the work hours they require and the real costs involved (it isn’t for nothing that “chicken feed” is a euphemism for economical, and they eat food scraps, too.)

My only surprise is that the Fort Collins vote had two dissenters. One of them, Wade Troxell, was concerned about the impact chicken waste might have on greenhouse gas emissions in Fort Collins, according the Coloradoan.

Puuhlease. Loveland, Boulder and Denver (in some quasi-legal form since the 1950s) allow chickens in backyards, and there hasn’t exactly been a rush to get into the micro-poultry business in these cities. The only chicken-induced greenhouse gas activity has been from cars driving to and from KFC. That, and maybe human gas emissions from the Colonel’s baked beans.

Last updated on Oct 16, 2009 at 11:20 PM