Note to a Press Enterprise reporter concerning backyard chickens

Flightless Birds

I have two flightless birds living in my back yard, so my interest in Corona's chicken ordinance is not casual. I think what the council is missing is that most people who want to own chickens are not interested in chicken farming. We don't intend to build large chicken houses and sell eggs by the dozen. Some of us just love chickens because they are cute. My flightless birds think they are dogs. They come running when I walk outside and squat so that I can pick them up or scratch their backs. They hang out with the dogs and sleep on top of a box. They do bark, but it sounds more like bok, bok, bok, and they are never as loud of the neighbors’ dogs who howl each time the sirens go buy which, where I live, is many times day and night. Around 10AM they are the loudest because they lay their eggs and are right proud of it. They go to bed at sunset and never make a sound, also unlike dogs. Hens are less noisy than roosters. I'm not a proponent of rooster husbandry. Because my flightless birds aren't caged, they are actually much less smelly than dogs; they eat lizards, bugs and japanese beetle grubs; they scratch and soften the soil and speed up decomposition in my compost pile.  And they provide a food source for chicken feed (which is about $7 per 25 pound bag which lasts about two months at my house.) If my neighbors comment about the presence of large flightless birds, I give them several medium-sized eggs. And flying chicken feathers in someone's pool? When I owned a pool all sorts of debris flew into it, including wild bird feathers. Again, as long as the chicken owning is in the pet category and no butchering is regularly taking place, feathers in someone's pool isn't likely to be a problem.

Now if you'd like to use any of this in a future article, that's fine, but I do hope you'd protect your source as I am afraid that someday someone may knock on my door and tell me that I can't have chickens in my yard which is considerably smaller than 10,000 feet. But then I don't have chickens after all. I have Buff Orpingtons which are simply large, flightless birds who happen to lay eggs that are quite delicious scrambled.