Life Transplanet

UPDATE. Link to article:
We’re on the front page of the Greeley Tribune Sunday Edition in an article entitled Chicken Out (click on hyperlink to see)!

Chickens in the paper and with the paper

On Wednesday afternoon I received a phone call from a Greeley Tribune reporter. He asked if I would be willing to talk about our backyard chickens. I said sure as long as we wouldn’t get in trouble for having them. He said that wasn’t the intent of the story but that the City Council is considering changing the codes for chickens in the city limits. I am not sure if they want to make them more strict or less strict. We have not had any problems with our chickens and I think they knew I would be willing to talk about them because I wrote a blog for their website that they published in the hard copy.

The Americana AKA Greenfoot

He asked me what some of the benefits to having chickens were and if we have had any problems. The benefits I mentioned were:
-Farm fresh eggs with huge healthy yolks
- Bug Abatement
- Free fertilizer!
- Local food = fewer caged chickens
- They eat our kitchen scraps, so less waste in the garbage.
- Fun and easy to care for pets
-A great, hands-on learning experience
-Becoming more self-sufficient and self-reliant
- A personal step -along with our garden- towards decentralizing our food system

As far as problems, I just mentioned that one of our chickens died and that was sad, but it was what made us get the chicks which was such a fun experience. He asked about predators and I told him about the hawks and foxes around but that we’ve never had any issues. Neighborhood cats seem to leave them alone for the most part and Kitty and Schnoodle get along great with them.

He also asked if we had an increase in mice because of them. I said that ever since Kitty has been living outside we’ve had fewer mice problems (since he became a sort-of mouser) and that mice are always going to be somewhat of an issue with an open field behind our house (that’s why they’re called field mice!).

He also asked if we had checked the regulations, which we had. I talked with a city planner about a year ago who thought we would have no problems as long as we didn’t get a rooster. We checked our HOA rules and as long as we call them our pets they are fine as well.

Then he set up a time for a photographer to come over and take our picture. We picked last night at 7pm. It was so weird having this huge camera lens right up in our faces while we either chased the chickens around our yard, fed them, held them or just sat next to them. I wonder how the pictures will turn out. The photographer said she thought it would be printed this week some time.
We’ll see! It was pretty fun and exciting anyway. You never know what kind of fallout will happen when you have press coverage though! But you heard it here first!