Thank you so much @reddragonfly ! So sorry about your chickens and that situation.
Once upon a time, it was common to keep chickens for survival, even in towns and cities. It seems to me that modern society forgets things like that, and that's a shame and very risky. Our ancestors had skills and practices that have largely been lost: canning food, butchering animals, growing gardens, hunting, collecting wild food, making their own clothes, etc. People today are spoiled and if they ever had to survive without their Walmarts, they wouldn't know how. They don't know just how close they are to losing their lifeline, should something happen to interrupt the flow of products in the current just-in-time supply chain.
Thanks! I feel blessed to have grown up with parents who were into growing their own food-- not because they were part of any particular "movement," but because it made sense, and they liked fresh food.
Ironically, we live outside the local city limits... were we IN the city, we would be able to have up to seven chickens (no roosters!). Go figure... the official reason was that chicken feed attracts rats. Oh? And your backyard bird feeders don't?
Government idiots are always thinking up whatever stupidity they can.
I grew up on an Iowa farm in the 50s and 60s. Garden fresh vegetables and fruit, farm fresh eggs and other food. So, I know what you were exposed to. Great, wasn't it?