Quack!
Welcome to Save the Ducks!
Hello and welcome! If you’ve found your way here you’ve probably heard about our little duck and chicken problem. Please take a look around. If you’d like to help, you can email us at cambridgebirds@gmail.com. Please also Sign our Petition to show your support for this kind of urban agriculture.
NEWEST PAGE: Our yard does not smell.
UPDATE: Here is a link to a packet we have put together for the BZA meeting. (15.6MB PDF)
We have had chickens in Salem for 30 years. Recently the zoning board of appeals here decided the issue once and for all of whether or not we would be allowed to keep our pets. It was determined thankfully, that we and other residents-would be allowed to keep our wonderful chickens! They eat our scraps, turn them into compost, and provide us with wonderful fresh eggs. They make fabulous pets. They are the perfect addition to the family for pet lovers, backyard gardeners, and environmentalists.
Please continue to let private individuals raise ducks and chickens and do anything else that would encourage the practice of urban agriculture.
This is the antithesis of factory farming! Clean and friendly pets with benefits…eggs, pest control and recycling nutrients from food waste that would usually end up in the trash. NYC allows hens and Portland, ME recently passed an ordinance allowing hens. People have the right to feed and nurture themselves as long as it doesn’t have a negative impact on the neighbors. I’m sure these well-cared for birds are posing no problems beyond someone’s idea that they just don’t like it….period.
I have 5 laying hens and they don’t smell or attract rodents and they make less noise than the local sparrow mob. My neighbors love getting the surplus eggs too!
Yay Duckz!
Urban agriculture is essential and ducks are a good beginning. (And these ducks are obviously talented – they dance, they canoe, and they trampoline!)
Do it well, do it healthy & neat. Make your simplest and best practices known to all. Modest capital input. Lots of human attention. Lots of sharing with those around you + internet communication.
Sustainable ways for city, suburb and rural culture have these earmarks.
Best of luck with duck & chick to you, from Baltimore.
We are working for a healthy environment and sustainable Agriculture. I can’t understand why 8 co-owners of a house are not allowed to have access to a natural and healthy food, fresh eggs and poultry, and may be forced to buy C A F O S (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) food? Is it organic and sustainable operation obtained food a right only for the rich? I guess it’s not. We’re promoting Environmental Justice, let’s also include Healthy Food Justice. Let the hens and ducks eat the kitchen scraps and feed the human been in a better natural way and of course fallowing regulations that permit harmony for all in the neighborhood. Good Luck, Hector
We have 3 lovely hens, Lola, Henno and Checkers. We got them as day olds 10 months ago and they have been such a joy! I grew up with chickens, but my family was skeptical. They are friendly, quiet, and such fun! Our neighbors love them and the kids on the street beg to come and help “collect” the eggs.
Yesterday, we had a girl visiting who hadn’t met the chickies… I wish I had a picture of the look on her face when she came through our back door, clutching 2 eggs… one still warm…and shouted “let’s make omletes!” Read all you want about food and farms… nothing teaches like experience… even on a micro farm in the city.
I am also excited about our garden this year… I have been mulching with chicken droppings and hay from their coop and expect to have a record ” crop”. Chickens don’t smell ( like any animals… all you have to do is keep them clean!) ,we havent noticed any “predators” around (just the usual squirels), and they eat tons of scraps and food that would go to the landfill.. They are fantastic! And our neighbors would surely attest to the fact ( of course not all of them know… they’re very quiet!) Good luck! We’ll be at the hearing!
Thank you Kristyne! We look forward to seeing you.
I love these birds. They’re happy, well cared for, and friendly, and their accomodations are well built and well-kept. There was no smell, and no obnoxious noise when I visited. I grew up on a farm with 50-60 head of chickens and turkeys of various varieties (including roosters and toms), and even that amount of poultry did not smell nor was there much noise aside from a gentle clucking and the occasional over-zealous rooster. We also definitely did NOT have rats, and I would have been insulted had anyone suggested we did; rats are dangerous to your flock and your food stores, so it’s in the owners’ best interest to keep them away. The Cambridge flock contains no roosters, so I don’t really understand where the noise complaint comes from. Hens are not noisy, and the Cambridge ducks are no noisier than the wild ducks who pass overhead; even less noisy, since there’s only three of them! Unfortunately, it sounds like the neighbor’s complaints have stemmed from misunderstanding and ignorance of these animals rather than any real hazards to health or home. Good luck ducks (and chickens) I’m rooting for you!
i volunteer in the poultry barn at nevins farm — a branch of the mspca. the chickens and ducks are delightful animals. they are less work to keep clean and odorless than dogs and cats (which the mspca also keeps, as i assume do many cantabrigians). one of my favorite tasks is “socializing the chickens”, which means i get to cuddle and scritch them, so that they will make better and more adoptable pets.
and yum, fresh eggs!
your poultry will get to know you. your zucchini never will. support backyard agriculture, and support chickens and ducks as wonderful, rewarding pets. (many fine candidates are waiting to meet their forever homes at the mspca!
You should move to Chinatown. They would welcome the ducks there.
Fight the Fight! I grew up in Dover MA and Cape Cod. My family has always had chickens. There are more and more laws to stop people from having chickens in their backyards. We all have a right to grow our own food and enjoy the experience of having chickens. I paint roosters to help educate people about the history of people with their chickens as backyard pets. I hope Ms Hamilton and the CIty of Cambridge lose this case. Does Ms. Hamilton eat eggs or chicken meat? If so, where does she think it comes from? THE MOON???? xoxoxoxo JLowe, The Chicken Painter. PS My late grandparentes Sadie and Percy Lowe would be very proud of what you are doing.
I feel no one has the right to prevent anyone from small backyard chicken keeping and the self sufficiency that comes with.
No doubt Tyson who has the monopoly of chicken farming would love that.
Chickens who are free-range and forage produce eggs with 1/3 the cholesterol and twice as many vitamins, such as B and the Omega group.
(Cage free is not the same thing and the eggs labeled as so at the market come from chickens who sit on a warehouse floor so crowded they can’t walk around)
Really the bird flu card, this neighbor is an idiot of the grandest kind.
If she wants her eggs to come from chickens cramped shoulder to shoulder, fed antibiotics their whole lives because otherwise their disgusting living conditions would kill them that is her right but she needs to butt out of the business of others!
The chicken industry both meat and egg is disgusting and I will not feed my family any eggs that comes from it.
Our food industry is broken and producing ones own eggs are the best consumer vote we have.
http://www.victordev.com/chicks/
Move to the country if you want to keep ducks.
As long as the smell and noise dont bother anyone, oh wait, they already have. So this is about your rights to torment the neighborhood for you personal pleasure.
Good luck with that
The neighbors initially only complained about the increased risk of avian flu and the rats they thought the birds would attract. We went to great lengths to calm their fears about avian flu, and invited a city rat inspector to our yard to search for signs of rats so that if there were any the inspector could help us figure out how to keep them away. The inspector found no evidence of rats.
I do not believe our birds create a smell that is even noticeable from our neighbors yards. It is true that we tried a few things in the beginning that didn’t work out very well such as composting the used bedding in bins with poor drainage, but we addressed those issues as they came up. If our neighbor had asked us to move the pool away from her fence because the smell bothered her we would have done so right away, but instead she yelled at us about rats and threatened to sue us. The pool in question has been removed completely and has been for months now.
As for noise, there are no roosters. The birds mostly make quiet clucking and quacking sounds. They do tend to get a bit excited when people are out in the yard with them, but it’s no different than a dog and usually they are not any louder than the people. They go into their coop as soon as it gets dark and don’t get let out until 9am at the earliest.
We feel that this is about our neighbor’s right to police what goes on in our back yard. We agree that if we were really causing a bad smell and loud noises and there were no other way to stop them we should have to get rid of our birds. If you’re in the area and would like to come and see/smell/hear the birds email us at cambridgebirds@gmail.com and we’d be happy to have you over.
Best of luck. When I lived in Cambridge, the city had no interest in mitigating the issues from our neighbor’s habit of feeding, but not caring for, legions of street pigeons and diseased feral cats. Now THERE was a smell, and some amazing noise, and plenty of ROUS’s due to the habit of “feeding” by spreading garbage on the roof and in the yard.
I currently keep 27 chickens, 12 turkeys, and 7 ducks. (No longer a city dweller.) There is no smell. Really, NO SMELL. Even though they are cooped up excessively because of the deep snow this winter. And no rodents. I’m pretty sure the hens or the turkeys catch and eat any rodentia that blunder by.
Save the ducks!!!!! =)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8539877.stm
Check this out! Pretty forward thinking…hope Cambridge gets on board!