Hens
Somehow, amidst all the glorious success stories that supporters tell about cities who have promoted backyard chickens, feral chickens never get mentioned. The problem of feral chickens represents another problem for supporters of the proposed “food producing animals” (FPA) ordinance. Continue reading
Urban goat
The draft of the Denver “Food Producing Animals” ordinance states: “There must be at least one hundred and thirty (130) square feet of permeable land area available for each dwarf goat, plus adequate shelter space for each dwarf goat.”
Is this amount of permeable land area per goat enough to be humane? If not, what would be enough? Continue reading
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Hens If the ordinance currently before the Denver City Council to allow virtually anyone to keep chickens and goats passes, what would this mean for Denver? Denver currently allows chickens and goats in residential areas but only under highly restrictive conditions, and probably fewer than a dozen households have the permits to do so. Roseanne Jelacic is therefore one of the few people in Denver to live next door to someone legally keeping chickens and goats. Last Monday she sent an e-mail letter to all the members of the Denver City Council concerning her experiences. After receiving her permission, I have reprinted it below (deleting only contact information). Continue reading |
Hens
Denver is poised to pass an ordinance allowing livestock in people’s backyards, specifically, up to eight chickens and two goats. Keeping backyard chickens as pets isn’t necessarily a bad idea, if you did it right, and I wouldn’t have a fundamental problem with that. We have even toyed with the idea of adopting chickens ourselves. But this is something very different. It would create a new class of backyard animals, animals that are valued for their meat, milk, or eggs. Continue reading
Heating of buildings is a significant chunk of the nation’s energy consumption, and many buildings are quite wasteful. This has huge consequences for climate change and resource depletion, and decisions about buildings have consequences that last decades.
So, in the summer of 2007 we decided to superinsulate our house. In 2009 we took further action to reduce heating consumption, installing a tankless hot water heater and further sealing the house. This post is a visual depiction of what happened. Continue reading