Backyard Chickens

On Saturday I had the privilege to attend a backyard chicken seminar on some beautiful property up Main Elk Creek. One of the aims of this seminar was to raise awareness for a City Hall meeting coming up on March 1 addressing the current Glenwood Springs ban on owning chickens in the city limits. From my research I have gathered that every other town in Garfield County allows residents to keep chickens. Even cities such as Denver and New York City allow backyard chickens.

So before getting into the reasons why we should allow backyard chickens, lets look at possible reasons they were banned in the first place. A large argument about keeping fowl in a city setting is that they are likely to attract predators to the area. A legitimate argument, except by those standards we should also ban cats being outside, or small dogs, and while we are at it lets ban dumpsters and fruit trees as these attract predators to our area as well. I can also see noise being a concern. Chickens do love to 'talk' and I can see how it might be annoying to a neighbor, however you can melt your neighbors heart with a dozen fresh eggs a week. Roosters are no doubt loud and with backyard chickens being raised for egg production there is no reason for having roosters and many cities don't allow roosters. 

The merits of having chickens are far more numerous than the pitfalls. First off eggs are a great source of protein, and anyone whom has a fresh egg with its deep yellow yolk can tell you it is far superior than your average supermarket variety. Chickens are a great disposal unit. With landfills filling up with food scraps it only makes sense to utilize biological methods for food disposal such as chickens and composting. Lastly, lets work on our local food production by encouraging locals to raise chickens. I believe Backyard Chickens will be a great step in the long term sustainability of Glenwood Springs. Come show your support on March 1 at City Hall!