Help us legalize hens!

Backyard hens can provide a healthy source of fresh eggs.  The greater nutritional value of eggs from pastured hens is scientifically proven.  It offers an opportunity to teach children about stewardship and where food comes from.  Owning hens reduces the animal cruelty suffered in factory farms where chickens are de-beaked and crammed so tightly into cages that they cannot stretch their wings or turn around.  It reduces the impact on the environment and local landfills since owners can feed scraps to their hens and compost the waste.

No one is asking for a cow or a 400 pound hog.  Just a few 4 lb. chickens that produce less waste and noise pollution than dogs.  I feel this is a very unfair comparison.  We are not asking for roosters either.

I am starting this petition to give the Warner Robins City Council the chance to see how popular this is in Warner Robins.  It costs a dollar and sometimes more for just 1 bell pepper from the grocery store.  Eating healthy is not cheap.  In fact, it is cheaper to buy processed foods subsidized by our government.  When a large bag of Doritos is cheaper than the vegetables necessary to make a healthy meal, something is wrong.  By allowing people to raise chickens, people can know what goes into their food and have a reliable source of tasty, healthy, and cheap eggs.

Please consider supporting this petition so that we can show the city that this measure has more proponents than detractors.

Below is an ordinance I can get behind.  If you support it too, or even most of it, please sign the petition.  Thank you,

-Elijah Lewis from "CLUCK"

Chickens may be kept within the City subject to the following regulations:

a.
All such animals shall be provided with adequate and sanitary housing. Such housing shall have a solid floor. All such housing shall have a minimum floor space of four square feet per bird over one month old.
b.
All housing where such fowl are kept shall not be nearer to any house in which humans reside, other than the residence of the person who is the owner of such animals, than one hundred (100) feet. In lots too small for this requirement to be met, coops shall be placed an equal distance from adjacent dwellings.  This shall not apply to the dwelling of the person who is the owner of such animals.
c.
Every person owning or keeping fowl in the City is hereby required to keep such fowl under fence and not to allow such fowl to run on any property other than his own.
d.
Any housing or enclosure used for the keeping of fowl shall be well drained, free from accumulations of animal excrement and objectionable odors, and otherwise clean and sanitary.
e.
No roosters shall be permitted.
(b)
Owners or possessors of chickens impounded for violation of this article or any state and/or federal laws will be charged in accordance with actual costs of impoundment plus impounding and boarding fees.
(d)
Impounded chickens shall be held for a period of 10 days. If such impounded animals are not claimed by the owner during that period of time, the animals may be given to persons willing to accept them, in the discretion of the department of police services.
(e)
No chickens shall be permitted to run at large upon any public street or public place or elsewhere in the City. Any person owning or controlling any such chickens who shall permit the animal to run at large shall, upon conviction, be subject to the maximum penalty provided by city code.
(f)
No person shall have or keep within the City any chicken infected with a disease that may contaminate other animals.