They didn't plan to, of course. They really thought they were about to become more responsible citizens, raising a little of their own food, eating locally and reducing their dependence, in just a tiny little way, on fossil fuels.
But instead, they became the subject of an investigation by Missoula Animal Control. Their transgression?
“Well, we are interested in sustainability and raising food,” Morgan Valliant said recently in the backyard of his home at 737 Beverly Ave. “We've just had a baby, and we're interested in raising him to understand where food comes from. It's important to do that.”
The Valliants are hardly alone. The so-called “urban chicken” has flourished over the past five years, as city residents across the country have built coops, loosed chickens in their gardens, even housed them in the basement in an effort to eat more locally produced food.
Bigger cities like Portland and Seattle already allow people to keep small numbers of chickens, as long as they are properly caged, kept clean and don't cause a nuisance.
Newspapers across the country have chronicled the trend, and there are a host of Web sites that help people with every detail of urban chicken keeping, from building cages to the best way to recycle chicken poop.
You can even get architectural plans to build chicken coops that will fit into the most discriminating town's design standards.
Plenty of Missoulians have fallen in line, setting up small chicken operations in neighborhoods all around town. Most have just a few birds, and they're raising them primarily for eggs rather than for roasting.
Trouble is, raising chickens in Missoula is illegal.
“We had no idea,” said one gentleman farmer with a coop and five chickens in his backyard near Reserve Street. “We asked all our neighbors, and they said it was no problem, so we just went ahead. We even give them some eggs every week. We didn't give much thought to the possibility of it being illegal.”
Neither did the Valliants.
“We thought about a lot of things, but we didn't give much consideration to that,” Morgan Valliant said. “We'd talked to all of our neighbors, too, and they all seemed supportive.”
One neighbor, however, only seemed supportive.
That neighbor reported them recently, which led to Morgan's recent trip to the animal control office, where he found out who turned him in and got the lowdown on the city's animal ordinance as it applies to chickens.
To wit: You can have chickens if you have more than an acre of property, or you can have chickens if your house was annexed into the city in 1989 or later - and you had chickens at the time of annexation and have continued to have them.
Otherwise, no chickens, even if your neighbors love them.
Most other farm-type animals are also illegal in the city limits. Horses, pigs, sheep, goats and other domestic fowl like geese and ducks are all off limits. Even those adorable little pot-bellied pigs, which some folks keep like dogs, make you a scofflaw.
Now, animal control really doesn't care about chickens. Their officers aren't prowling neighborhoods looking for illegal hens. On the other hand, they will respond to complaints because they have to.
“We haven't had any chicken complaints for years, maybe decades, but in the last year we have had a few,” said Ed Francschina, animal control supervisor. “And we did respond to those and we did have the chickens removed.”
Francschina doesn't really care whether Missoula has chickens or not, but his job is to enforce the ordinance, so when an illegal chicken pops up, his officers do their duty.
“They told us they didn't really care about chickens at all, and they seemed pretty lenient,” said Morgan Valliant. “In fact, they said they knew of all sorts of chickens all over town that they don't do anything about.”
Even so, the Valliants were given 10 days to get rid of their chickens, and they've been giving them away ever since they got busted.
“It's a silly law, and something needs to be done about it,” Valliant said. “If we want people to eat locally, be less dependent on food that comes from who knows where, we ought to do something about it.”
Missoula City Councilwoman Stacy Rye has heard enough from prospective chicken owners that she just may be willing to take up their feathery banner.
Chickens, she said, are an issue she never really imagined confronting when she was elected to the council, but then again, the life of a City Council representative is nothing if not surprising.
“I can't say that I would have envisioned chickens as an issue, but I've heard from a lot of people about them, and it seems like it's something maybe we ought to pay a little attention to.”
She's even heard from the Valliants, who live in her ward, and she's inclined to pursue the matter.
The mayor himself agrees.
“It seems that if we want to be a town that does its part for sustainability, this is something we ought to consider,” said Mayor John Engen. “I think we want to allow folks to use their good judgment and move toward more sustainable food practices.”
That's precisely the sentiment that Taylor and Morgan Valliant hope will carry the day.
“We don't think we're going to change the world by having a few chickens, but it's still important when we talk about where our food comes from,” said Taylor. “It's important on a personal level and a collective level.”
Said Morgan: “Even with just a small number of chickens, we could basically keep all our neighbors in eggs. Doesn't that make sense? Isn't that the way we should be thinking?”
Rye thinks so.
“Things like this should bring the neighborhood together, as long as it's done in a reasonable, clean way,” she said, echoing Engen's concern that raising chickens be done thoughtfully and in a way that doesn't make the birds a nuisance.
The Valliants already had seen their neighbors respond, with neighborhood kids routinely coming over to check in on the chickens, which can make affectionate pets in addition to being egg producers.
No one is arguing that Missoula should turn the university or Rattlesnake neighborhoods into chicken factories, of course. Rye, Engen and the Valliants all agreed that an ordinance allowing a small number of chickens would be appropriate.
“If we had a half-dozen chickens, we would be able to keep the neighbors in eggs,” Taylor Valliant said. “It seems like everybody would enjoy that. That would be neighborly, and that seems like what we want our town to be about.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)