Residential Urban Chicken Keeping City Code Amendment Nov. 29th

The Planning Board of the City of Sarasota will be considering the Residential Urban Chicken Keeping City Code Amendment starting at 6:00 p.m. on November 29, 2010 in the Commission Chambers at City Hall, 1565 First Street. Ten Issues will be taken up that evening.

City Staff are recommending the measure. The measure will need three votes from the Planning Board to be recommended for adoption by the City Commission and there is a possibility only four members may be present.

"Chickens 101" Workshop Saturday November 13th

Everyone knows not to count chickens before they hatch and there is no guarantee backyard hens will be legal in the City of Sarasota in the near future. But, by the same token, there is no point in being unprepared, so the local Sarasota County Extension Office is offering a three and a half hour "CHICKENS 101" Workshop on Saturday November 13th (8:30 - noon).

Rob Kluson will be the instructor and topics will include the basics (breeds, housing, feeding, health, chicken development) local laws and resources, benefits of chickens, getting started, and biosecurity. The cost is $15 and people need to register in advance online. The workshop will be held at Palmer Farms, 8336 Webber Road. For more information contact Barbara Lechky at 941-861-9812. This workshop will be limited to 20, so act soon if you intend to participate. Those who complete the workshop will receive a certificate documenting their participation.

If you want to meet other Sarasota chicken advocates, please consider our monthly CLUCK meeting, which will be held in the City of Sarasota Police Station at 7:00 pm on Friday Nov. 5th. For lots of up to date information about backyard hens in Sarasota sign up to follow the CLUCK blog with your Google, Yahoo or Twitter account.

Student Wants to Interview Sarasota's (Underground) Chicken Keepers

A New College student wants to interview some Sarasota residents with their chickens. She already has some footage of college-age students, but would like to include a wider range of age and social groups to demonstrate the variety of reasons people like to keep chickens and how they feel about Sarasota's current prohibitive laws.

If you currently have chickens and would like to be contacted directly by the student, please email to sarasotacluck at gmail.com (Of course, replace the at with @)

Or, please come to our CLUCK meeting this Friday the 5th at the City of Sarasota Police Station at 7:00 p.m.

Tons of Rotting Garbage or 1,000 eggs a day?

Would you rather have 127 tons of stinky, rotting garbage waiting for once a week pickup and expensive disposal in a landfill or 1,000 nutritious eggs each day? That's a question the City of Sarasota might want to ask itself. Some of this is theoretical, but even if the numbers are off a little, the argument is still persuasive.

According the the City's website "The average Sarasota resident generates about 3.5 pounds of solid waste every day, nearly half of which is recyclable."

According to WasteAge, food waste makes up an average of 11.7 percent of municipal solid waste So let's use 10% of 3.5. That equals .35 pounds a day. Times 365 days equals 127.5 pounds a year.

Sarasota has about 23,000 households. For the sake of argument and ease of math, let's assume just 1 in 23 households had a few chickens. That's a thousand households. Each household has a little more than 2 residents. So each household probably produces about.7 lbs of food waste a day, or 255 pounds per year. That's about 5 pounds per household waiting by the curb once a week. You are free to imagine odors, flies, or hungry noisy raccoons if you want. Times our thousand households is 255,500 pounds of food waste a year, or 127 tons.

Now what if those chicken-owning households feed the food waste to their hens? Well, some food waste won't be eaten by chickens-- things like bones, citrus rinds, and onion skins. So lets conservatively use .5 lbs. times 1,000 households equals 500 pounds of food waste/chicken supplement a day.

Feed conversion will range from 4.2 to 5.6 pounds of feed per dozen eggs.

Household food waste may or may not be a nutritious as production chicken food, but the food waste will be a supplement, so let's use 6 pounds of feed per dozen eggs. That means a half pound of food makes 1 egg. So 500 pounds of food waste each day should produce 1,000 eggs a day!

Can these chickens actually eat five pounds of food waste each week, if "an egg-type hen will consume about 85-95 pounds of feed/bird/year"? That means each hen only eats about a quarter pound of feed each day and the average household is producing a half pound. With four chickens food scraps would behalf their diet with room for bugs in the yard and commercial feed. Taking the number to six (which CLUCK has supported) would mean one third their diet would be household food waste and two thirds forage and commercial feed.

You can question the math however you want, cut the number of households in half, or further discount the feed conversion ratio. And I will adjust these numbers if someone gives me better data. But the fact remains that however you jigger the numbers, we'd be better off converting food waste to edible eggs than putrescence in a landfill.

Next meeting Friday Nov 5th

Friday November 5th 7:00 at the new Sarasota City Police Station, 2099 Adams Lane (between Ringling Blvd and Payne Park, a block east of 301).

This meeting is sort of a double header: getting organized because this will be our last meeting before our backyard hen measure appears before the City Planning Board. Spread the word and come help build the constituency that will put us over the top.

Then we'll take time to watch The Natural History of the Chicken, an hour long documentary that investigates the role of the chicken in American life and tells several remarkable stories.

And ask your friends to join our Facebook Group -- we'd like to get to 1,000 and we're more than halfway there.

CLUCK meeting featured disparate breeds

Dozens of adults and kids crowded around nearly twenty local chickens (some outlaws living a life of crime in the City of Sarasota) as a variety of chicken keepers described the personalities and egg laying reliability.

Jono Miller summarized the status of negotiations with the City and Rob Kluson announced the first Extension-sponsored chicken workship, which will be held Saturday November 13th. Cost will be $10 and there will be a limit of 20 participants. More information will be posted here on the blog regarding location and how to sign up.

Our next meeting will be November 5th at the City of Sarasota Police Station. Mark your calendars. 7:00 p.m.

Ringling College student Jaime Vega is interested in taking photographs of people with their chickens. Please contact respond to this posting with a comment if you are interested and we'll have Jaime contact you.

CHICKEN WORKSHOP "So, you think you want to raise chickens"

There are a lot of great new books out there about raising backyard chickens, but there is no substitute for learning from someone who is successfully raising chickens.

Alex Coe is one of our CLUCK leaders and provided lots of wisdom when we first started defining what we should ask for. Now you can learn from Alex.

"So, you think you want to raise chickens" on Friday October 15th from 10 - noon. At Swamp Castle Farm 1563 Arcadia Avenue, Sarasota 34232.

You'll learn how to set up new baby chicks and see various stages of chicken development. This is an introductory class to the responsibilities of chicken husbandry.

$10 donation to farm - for reservations call SWAMP CASTLE FARM 941 378-0314