Pelican Press Covers Chicken Story

The Pelican Press has printed a news story on the recent City of Sarasota chicken vote. It included the following quote:

Taylor has been the city's point man on chickens since CLUCK floated its idea. "Raising chickens is a nice idea in theory," he said, "but I believe the numbers who make this commitment will be so small, the whole issue will prove to be much ado about nothing."

If Sarasotans heed the chicken call and decide to become owners, they'll find Rob Kluson a helpful ally. He's the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Science (IFAS) extension agent in Sarasota County. He will offer a course titled Chicken 101.

To read the entire article, click here.

Does anyone really care about chickens in Sarasota?

I'm never sure exactly what to say when critical folks ask why the City should be "wasting its time" discussing backyard chickens. Because I would hope whenever dozens of citizens send emails, or 32 show up to testify in favor at a hearing, or 579 join a Facebook group, that their interests and concerns would be precisely the sort of thing the City would want to address. Now we have a new metric, a new milestone or measure of interest in local backyard chickens -- our Sarasotacluck.blogspot.com blog recorded its ten thousandth pageview today.

CLUCK NEWS: Chickens May Affect Where Young People Choose to Live!

One of our local chicken critics posted a entry that contained the following: "Chickens will not bring "young people" to Sarasota. Well-paying jobs will. This is a ludicrous argument and a sad day for this city." And a Janauary 19th letter to the editor in the Sarasota Hearld-Tribune attempted to make the same point: arguing (ironically, it turns out) that we should stop discussing chickens and find a way to get younger workers here. CLUCK begs to differ and has in previous blog entries such as: Can Backyard Hens Make Sarasota Hip?, and How ya gonna keep 'em in Sarasota? And now CLUCK is getting some reinforcement for the notion that chickens might actually help us retain or attract young competent people.