Resident promotes backyard chickens for Tecumseh

To the Editor,Tecumseh Backyard Chickens is a grassroots organization whose mission is to educate residents about backyard chickens, amend city ordinances addressing them, and promote responsible chicken-keeping. Backyard chickens are currently prohibited by city ordinances in Tecumseh. We hope to change that.Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Ypsilanti, Milan, and Raisin Township allow residents to keep up to four hens (no roosters) in a secure enclosed coop in their backyard. On September 2, we formally asked City Council to allow Tecumseh residents to do the same. We are currently awaiting their decision.We believe that backyard chickens are essentially pets and, as with other pets, residents should be allowed to keep them as long as certain conditions are met.As pets, backyard chickens have many benefits. They’re easy to keep (less work than a cat or dog); they’re smart, curious, friendly, and fun to watch; they provide healthy eggs for the table and nutrient-rich manure for the garden; they control pest insects such as Japanese beetles and ticks; and they’re an ideal way to teach kids responsibility.We believe that any perceived drawbacks of backyard chicken-keeping can be overcome through education and good management practices. For example: • Many people think chickens are noisy, which is incorrect. Roosters are noisy because of their crowing, but hens don’t crow and their soft clucking and cackling sounds can rarely be heard outside their yard. (And just FYI: you don’t need a rooster to get eggs — you only need a rooster if you want the eggs to hatch, which we don’t.) • Many people also think that chickens are dirty and smelly, which is incorrect. In actuality, only huge commercial chicken operations smell bad, and that’s because of their crowded, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions. A backyard coop with a flock of four hens requires only simple maintenance, similar to your cat’s litter box (i.e., scoop the waste once a week). A flock of four hens produces less waste per day than one medium-sized dog, but chicken manure can safely be composted, while dog and cat waste cannot be composted for health reasons. • Many people think chickens attract urban wildlife like raccoons, skunks, and opossums, which is incorrect; urban wildlife is already here among us. So coops must be built to be predator-resistant, and chickens must be kept confined at all times for their own safety (unlike dogs and cats that are allowed to roam freely, causing problems and complaints). Similarly, feed that might attract wildlife must be stored securely, preferably inside a garage or shed, or in the house.People want to keep chickens for a variety of reasons, such as to live a “greener” lifestyle, to produce some of their own food, or to teach kids where food comes from. Regardless of their reasons, we believe that residents should be allowed have a small flock of hens if they so desire, thus we believe the time has come to legalize backyard chickens in Tecumseh.You can learn more at our website, www.tecumsehbackyardchickens.com, or on Facebook at www.face-book.com/TecumsehBack-yardChickens.Lee WalshTecumseh