Newsweek's video clip, "Chicks and the City," gives a snapshot of one Brooklyn family's backyard chickens. The Mackin family strives to make their urban chickens a worthwhile and sustainable project by feeding the hens food scraps; selling eggs to a local bistro; and providing chicken manure to a community garden for fertilizer in exchange for hay. Each Easter, they buy more chicks -- a variety of breeds that make for a colorful flock.

While some people are concerned that avian flu -- if introduced to the U.S. -- will flourish in backyard coops, studies indicate that "diverse, small-scale poultry farming is the solution, not the problem."

According to Newsweek, "Many urban farmers are taking that motto to heart." At least 30 community gardens in New York are raising chickens for eggs. And in Madison, Wisconsin, residents overturned a residential chicken ban four years ago and the city now has more than 80 registered chicken owners. In fact, many cities have worked to establish chicken ordinances:

This past year alone, grass-roots organizations in Missoula, Mont.; South Portland, Maine; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Ft. Collins, Colo., have successfully lobbied to overturn city ordinances outlawing backyard poultry farming, defined in these cities as egg farming, not slaughter. Ann Arbor now allows residents to own up to four chickens (with neighbors' consent), while the other three cities have six-chicken limits, subject to various spacing and nuisance regulations.

But these ordinances have had their share of controversy outside the avian flu issue. Here in Missoula, our chicken ordinance inspired this clever video that gives voice to both sides of the debate.

Source: Newsweek

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written by Louis vuitton bags, March 01, 2010

thanks a lot for the share

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