Ducking The Chicken Issue

The anti-chicken sentiment is still riling me up.

Neighborhood cats eats birds. Dogs are allowed to poop in my yard by their owners. Ducks block traffic on city streets. Yet the Record-Eagle wants to worry about roosting chickens in Traverse City neighborhoods?

More from The Atlantic: Why Backyard Chickens Are a Trend

...chicks are getting hard to come by in Austin. Our local feed store, Callahan's General Store, now sells out of a thousand chicks a week, as there is a "boom" in interest in backyard chicken flocks...

Chicks In The City

The Traverse City Commissioners are pretty good at avoiding innovation so this will probably not happen for a few more years, but backyard poultry is a growing trend. Here are some recent stories:

Does My City Allow Me to Raise Chickens?

Whole lotta clucking going on in cities

The communities of Fort Collins, Colo.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Wake Forest, N.C.; have passed laws allowing residents to keep a limited number of backyard birds. Other chicken-friendly cities include New York; Oakland, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; and Salt Lake City.

Fresh eggs for breakfast aren't the only benefit of raising chickens, say hobbyists. The birds provide organic fertilizer, and their appetite for pesky weeds and bugs helps gardens thrive.

"If our economy continues on the downward spiral," says Ms. Shell, a third-generation poultry hobbyist, "you're going to see a lot more people raising their own chickens in their backyards and starting up vegetable gardens."

A mostly complete list of chicken laws by city: Chicken Laws