Don't think that I don't know what Cindy and Dominick were up to with those beautiful eggs he gave us the other day; Cindy still wants to have her own chickens.
On January 31st, the San Diego City Council voted to allow backyard chickens, bees and goats. Unfortunately, this pretty much cuts the ground from under my strongest argument against having chickens in our yard. Under the previous city ordinance, a coop in our yard would have been too close to the neighbor's house, but those regulations have now been relaxed to permit up to five chickens, but no roosters, and up to 2 bee hives.
The chickens must have a coop that is predator proof, watertight, ventilated, easily accessed and cleaned, with a minimum of 6 square feet per chicken.
That first requirement, "predator proof", would be essential for us because of the coyotes that occasionally sweep through the canyon behind our house. They've killed several neighborhood cats and I'm sure they would love a nice chicken dinner. We also have raccoons, skunks, opossums, hawks, snakes and who knows what other critters that also love chickens.
The only ones who would not be likely to get a chicken dinner out of our chickens would be Cindy and me; neither of us would ever be able to kill one of our chickens or even let somebody else do it. We both grew up with Midwestern grandparents who raised and regularly ate their own chickens, but we couldn't do it. We'd end up having to wait until some of the chickens died of old age before we could replace them.
Judging by how carefully she takes care of her worms, Cindy would probably be knitting them little hats and sweaters to keep them nice and warm in the winter.
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