Out of 90,000 plus people in Red Deer, is there someone out there besides me that is concerned about our City mayor and council allowing chickens in your neighbourhood and mine? They are talking real chickens.

Let’s be realistic, chickens are not clean, they aren’t trained to use a liter box, they produce real manure (dung/poop). What becomes of it? Flies and other insects live and breed in this manure. Does it go in the weekly garbage? Does our City dump allow it in the dump? How is the manure gotten rid of? What about the straw? What happens to it? By the way, mice love living and breeding in straw. Not to mention the smell that comes from chicken manure. If my neighbour can have chickens, can I have a cow? For milk, of course.

Then there are cute little lambs, goats, a small pony won’t be any bother in the neighbourhood and little piglets are so cute who could resist them?

I hear the chickens are so our children can connect to agriculture; can’t we leave this on the farm, where it all belongs? If we feel a need to connect to the farm, right here in the middle of Red Deer is one of the best farm museums in Alberta, Sunnybrook Farm. The people there love to have children of all ages come, buy a membership, get involved, volunteer.

Buy eggs from the store, support our farmers and buy locally.

Does anyone remember back in 2009 when the bird flu gave people a scare in several parts of the world? Many thousands of chickens were killed in the Fraser Valley region of B.C. to prevent the spread of bird flu to both birds and humans.

An interesting news item last summer/fall from the town of Canmore told about the town being overrun with rabbits. How did they get there? Likely someone wanted to raise rabbits for meat (I hear they taste a lot like chicken) and soon the fun of the project became boring and more work was involved, so the rabbits were turned loose. Guess what? The town is now trying to get rid of them. Do we want free-range chickens taking over our streets? Not in my neighbourhood please.

Let’s stop this chicken thing before it turns our beautiful Red Deer into a third world shantytown. I was raised and lived on a farm for 50 years, I know what chicken coops smell like and it isn’t roses.

Eva Jensen

Red Deer