Feeling peckish

SILVER CITY - It all started in 2011, when Polly Cook's most handsome rooster got a little... cocky.

"I had this one rooster that was just gorgeous," Cook recalled. "He would be the rooster that you would paint. He strutted around big time, and took care of all the girls. He was used to being the only man around the house, so he crowed whenever my boyfriend came over."

One morning, Cook was greeted by a summons to appear in court posted on her front door. When she responded, she learned of a complaint lodged against her jealous rooster, which she agreed to get rid of - but then she was informed that all chickens were illegal in Silver City.

"I just looked at the judge and said, 'I'm not paying a fine, and I'm not getting rid of my chickens,'" Cook said.

Soon she and other pro-chicken residents packed a mid-October Town Council meeting, telling the council that chickens were a good food source, good for garden compost and pest control and, by eating table scraps, would reduce the methane problem at the town's landfill.

"It's un-American not to have chickens," Marcus Woodard proclaimed to councilors during the debate. "The proposed allowable four is not enough."

Cook claims that her neighbor at the time, a "Mr. Smith," "attended the hearing and admitted to being the one who ratted her out. When she asked him why he didn't just tell her over the fence to control her rooster, in Cook's telling, her neighbor admitted to being a retired code enforcement officer - which explained how he was aware of the little-known ordinance outlawing chickens.

"I stood up and said, 'I think chickens should be legal,'" Cook said.

"The council eventually adopted a chicken-specific exception to the no fowl or game birds within city limits" ordinance, subject to a $25 permit. The permit certifies compliance with the following conditions: no more than six hens, kept for noncommercial household use only; the coop must be at least 20 feet from property lines and allow for 4 square feet of roosting space per bird; chickens shall be screened from neighbors, kept humanely, fed clean water and not have food scraps left to rot; and include absolutely no roosters.

Cook, who went on to serve a term on the Town Council herself, remembers a backyard bird bonanza following the amendment. She said the enforcement officer and Humane Society were always calling her up to adopt other people's stray fowl.

"I was a good chicken neighbor," Cook said. "Once I raised my neighbor's runaway chickens for six months."

According to Cook, the post-prohibition boom died down after a few years, leaving only diehard chicken keepers. As she drives around her neighborhood, she can still point out who had chickens when - and which rule-breakers had a rooster.

According to present-day Animal Control and Code Enforcement Officer Vicki Toney, chicken-keeping experienced a second renaissance in Silver City - the COVID boom.

"I saw an increase when COVID hit," she said. "Everyone was stuck at home. It was a way to have a project." And some things have not changed about chicken code enforcement in the last 10 years.

"I think a lot of people still don't know about the permits," Toney said.