Little story of the Incident that cemented my decision to get hens...

[SIMPleChick]

Yeah....my city only allows 3.... (((secret, evil laugh))) I have 11....shhhhhh....don't tell anyone! I just couldn't stop at 3! LOL! And last week my husband suggested we get one hen that is already laying to get our gilrs in the "mood"!!! HAHAHAHA!!! I LOVE being an outlaw! And my neighbors don't mind, you can't even hear them! I am 2 houses away from a busy street and you hear more cars than anything!

 

[TheJuan-n-Only]

Quote:
You could always be an "outlaw" the life is quite good actually.

hahahaha, you see what some one was talking about...here we go enabling and even encouraging law breaking!! lol I say those ordinance are more of a suggestion than anything! lol I'm going to get my 1st chicks on the 18th and I can not wait!!!

 

[CSWolffe]

Thought of that.
I have this really rotten jerk of a neighbor. He reports everybody for any tiny infraction. He has called animal control on me so many times(without a single citation, I might add) that he is now listed as a nuisance caller, and they ignore his calls. Another neighbor liked to have yard sales every weekend but Mr Jerk reported them, turns out the city only allows three per year. Mr Jerk didn't like people parking in front of his house. I had a debris trailer with expired tags, he reported that too.
I have to be very careful about following the letter of the law with this troll. Once the ordinance is fully passed, I plan on registering my coop and getting it inspected. I spoke with a city council representative and the community director to find out what the regulations are going to be ahead of time to be certain I am compliant. I actually look forward to the first time he calls to report me, when the animal control officer(who I have gotten to know well) comes to visit, and does absolutely nothing! Best kind of revenge I can think of. Second best, but I am still building the excrement trebuchet...

 

[Matthew3590]

Quote:
I can only be an outlaw cause I bribe my neighbors with eggs. Plus I am lucky to have some very nice elderly couples as my neighbors.

 

[CSWolffe]

Everybody else on my street is awesome. THEY will all be getting eggs, next year honey too once I have my bees. Not Mr Jerk. And it's funny, I only have ONE house bordering mine, every other side is a church parking lot. The ONLY house next to mine, is of course, the neighborhood troll... So like I said, I plan on paying close attention to laws and regulations, so when he calls to report me, there is not a darn thing they can do. The impotent frustration is sure to give him a heart attack.

 

[TheJuan-n-Only]

Quote:
Too bad!!! We just bought our house 2 months ago and so far eveyone is great!(knock on wood) Our neighbors 3 houses down even has 2 roosters!! So I may get to "flex" out 5 birds per 5k sq foot rule

But it sounds likt a great idea for you to be on top of your rule book!

 

[ChicksterJo]

Apparently I am not supposed to have chickens at all. The city allows 12 chickens on lots greater than 15,000 sq. feet. Our lot is a little more than half of that...and I have 12 chickens.

on them! I live on a corner lot close to a relatively busy street and we are pretty friendly with our neighbors. I just can't have roosters, is all.

 

[CSWolffe]

I really like how our city went about writing the ordinances. They looked at other cities, both close by and around the nation, for laws and regulations that worked well. Mostly they based it off of Salt Lake City(I live in South Salt Lake City). SLC allows different numbers of hens depending on lot size, R-1-4, R-1-7 or R-1-12, respectively allowing 4, 6 or 8 hens, and requires that any coop, pen or run occupied by chickens must be more than 50 feet from any entrance to a dwelling. Here in South Salt Lake, most of our lots a much smaller than our big neighbor, and a 50' set back is not feasible. The Community Developer realized this, and only requires that the COOP be 40' from a dwelling, school or church. Six hens max in any single family home, so no birds for apartments, condos, townhomes or duplexes.
I've seen some really ridiculous restrictions on keeping birds, some requiring the coop be twelve feet from the property line, others demand the coop be more than a hundred feet from any permanent structure. Rules like that either mean the city council didn't do their homework, or was simply caving to pressure and still stubornly want to make sure nobody keeps those noisy, smelly birds.
As much as I like my girls, four layers will work well for our egg needs. In two or three years when production declines, I can add two more hens to keep getting eggs, that way I wont overcrowd the coop and I stay legal. I will worry about being a chicken criminal later when I want to add two more girls in four to six years when the second wave stops laying.

 

[Life is Good!]

Welcome to the land of self-sufficiency!

Start small, build on your success and grow accordingly. Works well in business, works even better for hobbies!

Bee-keeping is really wonderful. Mother Earth News had a great plan for a 'top bar hive' that you could build yourself to house your bees. Seemed really efficient and not that difficult to build. Here's the link to the article: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Top-Bar-Beekeeping-Method.aspx . If my husband were not REALLY allergic to bees, we'd have one. Instead, we tap our Red Maple trees every February and make our own syrup and use that instead of honey in recipes. Works just about as well - but don't try and put it on toast!

We order a 1/2 of a 'Henry' (steer) from a local farmer each year. Have most of a 1/2 a cow in the basement freezer. Dinnertime, our youngest son (age 9) asks, "is this Henry the first or Henry the second?" (we're on our second Henry with some leftovers of Henry the first)!

Pretty soon, he's going to be asking, "is this Anna's egg or Tiger's?" I cannot wait! Just 10 more weeks until we're getting eggs! But how to know WHICH of the Black Java's laid which egg?! I'm going to have to fib for a while I think....

Knowing where the food I feed my family comes from makes me appreciate the kid's growth even more! It's GOOD-for-you food.

Last weekend, I saw a miniature Hereford breed cow....got me thinking...it wasn't any bigger than my neighbor's St. Bernard...and I bet the poo smells WAY better than my other neighbor's horse manure heap on the lot line....and then I can get fresh milk too! Hmmmmmm....that would be breaking the ordinance though, even though it's smaller than a St. Bernard. Do I? Not yet. But it's tickling the brain! Gotta keep improving our food sources, because what's available commercially isn't always that great. Oh, and I've got to pull the Bluegill filets out of the freezer for Sunday's dinner too! Yummy!

Enjoy your chicks, they don't stay small long!

 

[Hoosierchickengal]

Welcome to the forum!

Oh I am soooo jealous you are starting with bees next year!I'm very interested in beekeeping, but so far can't get hubby on board with that, so have to be satisfied with the raw honey he purchases from a workmate. I would love to experiment with top bar hives. In the meantime, I've been reading up on how to attract native pollinators to our place.

I think what you are doing for your family is absolutely wonderful, and completely agree with the disconnect our society has when it's comes to where our food comes from. One of the best things my mother ever did for me was take me and my four siblings on a field trip to a commercial chicken egg plant. I was blown away by how the chickens spent their life, and resolved then and there to get my eggs from a different source as soon as I was old enough to do so.The first time I had an egg from a backyard flock, I was hooked. The taste was like night and day!

We were fortunate enough to live in the country and raised our children around livestock (lol-with five kids it was the most economical way to keep everyone well-fed).They learned to respect where their food came from. Even though they were raised around it,we had to work through a lot of the same feelings your cousin and boss have in regards to meat, but we gently persisted. Our daughter was vegetarian for a long time because she just couldn't eat the animals we raised, and we supported her in that (we had a large garden also), but continued raising our own meat and educating our children and other people about the reasons why we were doing so. Although she personally didn't feel at that time she could eat the meat, she did like the fact they had a chance to live in a more natural state. Ten years later she is no longer vegetarian and is currently contemplating raising her own meat birds.Our middle son is in the military and asks us to bring him some of our grass-fed freezer beef every time we visit him. He has even talked about having us raise a calf for him.