ROCK SPRINGS –– A decision about if residents of Rock Springs should be allowed to keep chickens on their property was tabled Tuesday night – delaying the decision to April 15.
An ordinance amending city regulations to dictate how residents could house chickens on their property was in its third reading Tuesday night. However, Councilman Rob Zotti motioned to table the issue until the committee formed to handle the issue comes back with a recommendation following its April 9 meeting. The motion to table passed unanimously, with Mayor Max Mickelson absent from the meeting.
Residents both supporting and opposed to the ordinance’s passage were in attendance, though Council President Jeannie Demas asked those who had previously spoken about their views on the ordinance to only approach the Council if they have something different to discuss from their initial comments.
Resident Amanda Margrave supports having chickens and wanted to address some criticisms that had come up about the ordinance, focusing on concerns about avian flu and with the city’s animal control department.
She said avian flu shouldn’t be a major concern for the city. Using the difference in avian flu rates in Canada and the United States, she said Canadian rates of avian flu infection is lower than the U.S. because Canada is colder and barns housing chickens are sealed tighter, with bird farms being smaller in Canada than they are in the U.S. She also said avian flu is contract from bird to human through direct handling of the bird, saying a person living near a person’s coop won’t contract it. She also said the University of Wyoming offers tips to help chicken owners avoid avian flu. To date, only one Wyoming resident has had a confirmed case of avian flu.
Margrave also said concerns about chickens being a major issue for the city’s animal control department, using statistics from other animal control departments throughout the state. She said chickens don’t represent large call volumes based on the data she received.
Candi Folks, an animal control officer for the city, said she doesn’t have an opinion if the city allows chickens or not, but informed the Council the department doesn’t have the space or resources to tackle the workload chickens would represent. She is currently the only animal control officer in the city. A second person was recently hired and will also be an animal control officer, but she contrasts this with Green River’s two full-time and two part-time animal control officers serving a smaller city than Rock Springs. Additionally, she said the planning and zoning department would want animal control officers to measure and inspect chicken coops to ensure they conform to the proposed regulations, something she won’t have the time for.
She said the building itself has problems that need to be addressed, saying the building is “kind of falling apart.” Additionally, the department finds it doesn’t have the space for the number of dogs and cats it can receive, sometimes forcing the animal control officers to double up dogs or cats within the limited kennels they do have and leaving no room for chickens should animal control receive surrendered chickens.
“I have no safe spot to put them,” she said.
Folks said the department is also seeing an increase in the number of raccoons within Rock Springs and believes introducing chickens to the city would result in higher numbers of predatory animals such as skunks, foxes and coyotes venturing into the city. She said she recently saw a coyote carrying off a cat within city limits.
