As people grow more concerned about food safety, our environment, emergency preparedness, and animal welfare, they are returning to the basic skills their grandparents understood well, vegetable gardening, canning food, and raising chickens. In response to citizens’ requests, many municipalities across the country have adopted ordinances allowing residents to keep a limited number of egg-laying hens as pets. (Newsweek 65% flu most likely in factory farmed birds http://www.newsweek.com/craze-urban-chicken-farming-85359

The Township of Ypsilanti unjustly prohibits owners of properties less than 5 acres in size from keeping hens. This policy is out of touch with modern urban residents and discriminates against township residents unable to afford at least 5 acres of land that wish to raise a small number hens as pets and egg producers. Recently, a Ypsilanti family was threatened with fines up to $500 merely for having six pet hens in their backyard that they thought were legal after calling the township office and being misinformed by authorities . On the other hand, neighboring municipalities have embraced the concept of self-sufficiency, allowing residents to raise a few hens for non-commercial, backyard hobby purposes. These nearby municipalities (Ypsilanti City and Ann Arbor City and Chelesa ) along with 65% of major cities in the U.S have honored the rights of their citizens to raise hens for backyard egg production, fertilizing of grass and gardens, reducing residential waste bound for landfills a small-scale hobby, and perhaps just as importantly, preserving the rich cultural significance backyard chickens have played in the history of the United States.

Appendix A: Ypsilanti City, Ann Arbor City, Travers City, Grand Rapids, New York, Chicago, East Lansing, and many more across the state and nation. As of 11/16/08 according to Newsweek 65% of major cities allow chicken keeping http://www.newsweek.com/craze-urban-chicken-farming-85359

Major objections cited for resistance.

Odor: The fear of odor problems caused by backyard chickens is unwarranted. Chickens themselves do not smell. It’s only their feces that have the potential to stink, which is also true of feces from dogs, cats, or any other animal that leaves waste in the yard. But unlike dogs and cats, who may leave waste on the lawns of their neighbors or in public places, chicken waste would be confined to the area / coop in the yard of the owner because we will have stipulated that the hens be enclosed at all times.

It’s also important to realize that the maximum number of chickens allowed will be small. Six hens weigh less than 30 pounds collectively, will generate less waste than one average dog. According to Crista? At the Huron Valley Humane Society the average weight of one medium size dog is about 30 to 55 lbs. With dogs you don’t receive the added benefit of eggs. Furthermore, chicken manure is a highly valued fertilizer that can be used in the garden and on lawns, whereas waste from dogs and cats cannot because of the parasites and human diseases it can harbor.

According to Dr. Hermes, Oregon State University Extension Poultry Specialist, “Once added to the compost or tilled into the soil, the odor causing compounds are no longer able to cause objectionable odors.” This statement is an exact quote taken from his letter. The reason people fear an odor problem is because their only experience with chickens (if they have any at all), is a farm or commercial poultry operation. In these situations,chickens are viewed as a commodity and are raised with the intention of profit from meat or egg production. Under those circumstances, hundreds, if not thousands, of chickens are often kept in crowded conditions with poor ventilation or regular cleaning. As a result, ammonia can build up and these facilities can stink. On the contrary, people who want to raise a small number of hens as dual purpose pets are not looking to make a profit. They want eggs laid by healthy, happy chickens that they treat as pets.

A small number of chickens in close proximity to the owner’s home, are extremely unlikely to create an odor problem for neighbors

Only roosters crow loudly, not hens. Hens never crow and are generally quiet animals, although they may announce the arrival of a freshly hatched egg with some clucking. This sound is short-lived, lasting a few minutes at most and takes place once every 24 to 36 hours, and never occurs at night. Some hens are more vocal than others, depending on the breed, but there is no comparing the sound of a cackling hen to barking dogs that may bark for hours at a time, bark and run along fences as people pass by or all night long, power tools. Lawn mowers, garbage trucks, motorcycles, wild crows, kids playing, car alarms, sirens, airplanes, trains, and the myriad of other loud noises frequently heard in the neighborhood far out weigh the short lived sound of a hen.

Chickens do not attract insects, they eat them! They love to eat all types of bugs, including those that can carry human diseases like mosquitoes and ticks. Rather than attract flies, they eat fly larvae (maggots) before they can grow up to become adult flies. In his letter, Dr. James Hermes, OSU Poultry Extension Specialist, supports our claim that if chickens have access to fly larvae, flies will never become a problem. They also eat slugs that would otherwise harm garden crops, especially here in the Midwest. He also states that chickens do not attract rodents and that a small number of hens can be a great addition to any urban family backyard (Appendix H).

A chicken pen is not likely to attract rodents or wildlife unless chicken feed is not stored properly. This same thing holds true for dog or cat food, garbage, and composters.

Hens are world-class recyclers. Within 24 hours, they turn garden and kitchen scraps, bugs, and weeds into one of two things we can use, eggs and fertilizer.

The notion that a few birds confined to an enclosure in a backyard will somehow create a public health threat is also unwarranted. If it were true, others cities wouldn’t permit it. Note: 380,000,000 eggs were recalled due to Salmonella contamination in 2010.

According to Cornell University School of Agriculture graduate and Tufts University School of Medicine Dr. Michael Greger. As reported in the Huffington Post “Before the industrialization of egg production, Salmonella only sickened a few hundred Americans every year and Salmonella Enteritidis was not found in eggs at all. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, Salmonella Enteritidis-contaminated eggs were sickening an estimated 182,000 Americans annually”.... He explains.

“Most eggs come from hens confined in battery cages, small barren wire enclosures affording these animals less living space than a single sheet of letter-sized paper for virtually their entire 1-2 year lifespan. Salmonella-contaminated battery cage operations in the United States confine an average of more than 100,000 hens in a single shed. The massive volume of contaminated airborne fecal dust in such a facility rapidly accelerates the spread of infection.

Just as the feeding of dead animals to live ones triggered the mad cow crisis, this same practice has also been implicated in the global spread of Salmonella. Once egg production wanes, hens may be ground up and rendered into what is called "spent hen meal," and then fed to other hens. More than half of the feed samples for farmed birds containing slaughter plant waste tested by the FDA were found contaminated with Salmonella. CDC researchers have estimated that more than 1,000,000 cases of Salmonella poisoning in Americans can be directly tied to feed containing animal byproducts.”

“There is evidence that eggs from cage-free hens pose less of a threat. In the largest study of its kind (analyzing more than 30,000 samples taken from more than 5,000 operations across two dozen countries in Europe) cage-free barns had about 40% lower odds of harboring the egg-related strain of Salmonella.” Cage free barns are still large scale egg productions. Decrease that scale by say 90% for backyard hens and it seems the threat of Salmonella in the eggs is almost nill.

DR. Greger also concludes that Avion Flu threat significantly increases in the industrial poultry industry. Conclusion: smaller scale is less of a public health threat.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/e-coli-salmonella-and-oth_b_415240.html