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Leave chickens on farm where they belong, keep Red Deer fowl free

Out of 90,000-plus people in Red Deer, is there someone out there besides me who is concerned about our city mayor and councillors allowing chickens in your neighbourhood and mine? That is real chickens.

Out of 90,000-plus people in Red Deer, is there someone out there besides me who is concerned about our city mayor and councillors allowing chickens in your neighbourhood and mine? That is real chickens.

Let’s be realistic, chickens are not clean; they produce real manure (dung/poop).

What becomes of it? Flies and other insects live and bred in this manure. Does it go in the weekly garbage? Does our city dump take it? How is the manure gotten rid of?

If my neighbour can have chickens, can I have a cow (for milk of course)? What about pigs, goats or other farm animals?

The list can go on and on.

Oh, another thing I forgot to mention that comes with chickens, straw and their dung, is the mice!

Oh yes and the smell.

We will certainly be connected back to agriculture!

Why can we not leave agriculture where it belongs — on the farm. We have Sunnybrook Farm so let’s visit it to connect to agriculture.

Did anyone hear about the bird flu back in 2009? Many thousands of chickens were killed to prevent the spread, not only to other chickens and birds, but to us humans.

Another interesting news item from last summer and fall was that the town of Canmore was overrun with rabbits. How did the rabbits get their start? It could have been one or two enterprising people who wanted to grow their own meat. It started with a few rabbits and perhaps not too long and the work became boring or too much to keep doing, so out onto the street went the nice little rabbits.

Do we want free range chickens taking over our streets? Not in my neighbourhood.

Let’s stop this chicken thing before it goes any farther.

Buy your eggs at the store and support a farmer.

Please do not turn our beautiful Red Deer into a Third World shanty town.

Please read the article in Thursday, Feb. 2, Red Deer Advocate, Local section C2 under Health.

Eva Jensen

Red Deer