Attention all Portland Mainers - please take a minute to email all Portland City Councilors to ask their support of the Chicken Ordinance! We love raising chickens and eating the healthy eggs they produce, plus they are just fun to watch! We've raised them in both rural and city locations and are confident this would only be a positive choice for Portland and we'd love our own tiny flock when we return home.
Thanks for your support!
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Attention Friends...We need your help!
On February 18th @ 7pm the Portland City Council will be conducting a public hearing regarding the Chicken Ordinance.
http://files.meetup.com/215138/Peeps2.pdf
We need as many Portlanders as possible to email our city council members urging them to pass this ordinance!
A YES vote is a vote for locally produced food and a vote for a greener Portland.
• Fresh organic eggs are healthier for you and the environment: no fuel used trucking them to stores!
• Provides an alternative to factory farms that pollute our environment with animal waste
• Composted droppings make incredible garden fertilizer: Reduce/Reuse/Recycle!
• Pet chickens keep your yard healthier by eating ticks and other insects.
• Hens ~no roosters!~ are quieter than dogs or parrots and when
well-cared-for as suburban pets (not as farm animals) they don't smell.
• Backyard chickens lead happy, healthy lives. Kept in attractive
garden coops they won't roam into neighbors' yards (like some dogs and
cats do!)
• Worried about backyard chickens being carriers of disease? The
international sustainable agriculture organization GRAIN concluded in a
2006 report: "When it comes to bird flu, diverse small-scale poultry
farming is the solution, not the problem," because poultry raised on a
small scale are less likely to carry diseases than factory-farmed
poultry.
• Major Cities all over America allow and even encourage backyard hens. They are fun, educational, and make good neighbors.
Anne Arbor, Michigan; Ft. Collins, Colorado; Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; Chicago; San Francisco and London, England...South Portland; Maine!
The most important time for showing your support will be at the first vote, at the City Council meeting on February 18th. That's when the council accepts and seeks public input. Let’s convince the city council that Portland can be as progressive as cities all over America in allowing people to raise hens as pets and for fresh eggs in our backyards. It’s fun, educational, healthy, and environmentally sound!
If you have any questions regarding city chicks please visit http://www.sailzora.com/SoPoChickens.htm.
If South Portland can do it we can do it too!
Please email all City Council members today! Please forward this email to as many friends as possible!
Thank you!
Congratulations... Portland can have chickens!! We wouldn't be able to, because Daphne and Leo would have chickens.
Posted by: Heidi | February 23, 2009 at 07:32 PM