Legalize Urban Chickens in OKC????

[BadgeBunny]

Chickens can still lay eggs for more than 3 years. We have a couple of Silky bantam hens that still produce a couple of eggs a week and they are about 7 years old. It's just not commercially viable to keep them long, but for a hobbyist they can live up to ten years.
As for feeding them, chickens will eat anything, ours get all our leftover fruit and vegetable scraps. "Chicken feed" is synonymous with cheap.
Chicken poop is ideal fertilizer as well, it can be blended into soil without composting.
And, if you like thinking about SHTF scenarios, having some chickens around is a good idea.

OK ... my bad ... what I should have said is I'm not feeding a chicken unless it is producing regularly ... and a couple of eggs a week is not productive IMHO ... any chicken that get the honor of living here needs to be prepared to meet it's maker right around it's third birthday. Unfortunately at my house we don't generate enough table scraps nor have enough land to make feeding them cheap.

And SHTF or not, I MUCH prefer the taste of fresh home-raised meat and eggs over store bought.

Are you sure about the not composting the chicken poo?? We did that with rabbit droppings but I was always told chicken poo was too hot (like horse and cow manure) to use fresh so it always went into the compost pile.

 

[LightningCrash]

This is actually one of the first things I want to do when I move to OKC.

I also want to raise some rabbits. Haven't researched into rabbits much though.

 

[peanut]

Mmmmm! Fresh eggs with the bright orange yokes!
I had chickens till a year ago. They don't make any noise. Roosters are noisy.
What happens when the dogs running loose start eating those city chickens!!
I lost a couple to hawks, 1 to a dog that i didn't have the heart to shoot( he was so proud of his catch, tail waggin and all), momma backed over 1 with her car.
I even picked them up and carried them around with me.
I wouldn't have a prob with them in the city till they STARTED CRAPPING all over MY DRIVEWAY AND WALK.

 

[Hawgman]

Rabbit dropping don't smell too bad but wwwhhhooooaaa Nelly chicken poop sure does. And you know, most people in a city getting chickens aren't going to be out there every week shoveling out the chicken coop to keep the smell down. Some won't even bother with a coop. City folks make some odd decisions when it comes to animals. You can't even get a lot of folks to control their dogs and cats....good luck with chickens.

 

[elcaBob]

I think the original question of this thread is, well, questionable. It's none of the City's damned business if I have chickens in my yard. I can't believe this was made illegal in the first place.

 

[dennishoddy]

Just as a side note, there is quite an abundance of free-ranging chickens living right down the street from the Gov.'s Mansion. They have been there for years ....

HMMMM no hunting season dates on them either........

 

[dennishoddy]

Are you sure about the not composting the chicken poo?? We did that with rabbit droppings but I was always told chicken poo was too hot (like horse and cow manure) to use fresh so it always went into the compost pile.

The chicken poo, is what has contributed to the poor water quality of our eastern streams and lakes. The nitrates leaching from the soil where chicken litter is used for fertilizer has turned once clear lakes into green goo. Tenkiller for instance.
Every household in OKC get some chickens and let the runoff into the storm water system, and then into local ponds, lakes and rivers will do the same.

 

[thefenux]

My neighbors across the street (Southside OKC, Hispanic) have had chickens for years. The first few years I lived here, you could hear the rooster every morning. I never realized it wasn't legal. Just thought it was obnoxious.

 

[OKMike]

Backyard chickens are great, built my ex wife a chicken tractor (google it), she moves it around the back yard, no stink, no ticks or bugs in yard, very small amounts of manure with 4 hens. 4 hens should be plenty for most families (4 eggs a day almost every day). Very small chance of contaminating water supply with back yard chickens. It is the big producers who spread tons of manure on fields that are the issue.

 

[OKMike]

Goats are the ultimate SHTF animal, eat weeds and brush, milk em or grill it's all good, have 2 babies a year like clockwork.