Backyard chickens are a growing trend

One of the latest "green" trends is eating locally produced food.

The Main Street Farmers Market grows in popularity every year, with more and more of us jumping at the chance to purchase fruit and vegetables that sprang from the earth within a few miles from where they are consumed, as well as sharing food we grew ourselves with our friends and neighbors.

Many of us enjoyed a bountiful garden harvest this year, and also enjoy shopping at a couple of local truck patches.

But not all of us can grow all of our own food.

Protein, especially, is a problem for the wanna-be urban back-t0-nature enthusiast.

One of the trends, elsewhere in the country, is raising chickens in the back yard for their eggs.

Cape Girardeau, Missouri, headquarters for this newspaper's parent company, is considering allowing residents to raise small flocks of chickens in their back yard.

The City Council is considering an ordinance, modeled after a new law in Columbia, Missouri, which allows residents to keep a maximum of 10 hens in a controlled environment. No roosters are allowed, according to the law, and the chickens cannot become a nuisance.

The proposed ordinance would remove chickens from a list of prohibited animals that also includes horses, sheep, goats, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys, peacocks and guineas.

The coops and surrounding pens would have to be clean, sanitary and free from rodents and odor, the coop walls would have to be whitewashed or painted annually, and the chickens could not be raised for slaughter; only for eggs for personal use.

The chickens would have to be kept in enclosures or fenced areas at all times, and no cat or dog that killed a chicken would be considered a dangerous or aggressive animal if a chicken were at large.

In other words, if your chicken gets loose, it's fair game.

McCook has a similar list of banned animals, including chickens, and in light of the recent controversy over vicious dogs, it would be interesting to see how the city would handle a chicken ordinance.

We remember the brouhaha that resulted, back when potbelly pigs were in vogue, when someone objected to being fined for keeping one in the city limits.

It would be understandable if neighbors complained about backyard chicken coops, or even the argument that the United States was becoming a third-world country.

Still, we can understand the allure of home-grown, free-range eggs, which are touted as lower in fat and cholesterol and higher in vitamins than commercially produced eggs.

And other cities like Springfield, Missouri, New York, Chicago and Seattle have recently passed ordinances permitting backyard chickens.

It will be interesting to see what the Cape Girardeau City Council does about the proposal. It would also be interesting to see what the McCook City Council would do with such an idea.