Fighting for our girls

Well, the city we live in found out we had chickens.  The ordinance was a grey area if we could have them, but they would have never know if our neighbor had not filed a complaint about the smell of chicken poop.

First and foremost, this was an false claim.  Our chickens did not smell..EVER..  The smell she was smelling was the disposable fly trap that she had hanging from her patio.

So we were ordered by the city that we had to remove our girls from our property.  We have a friend who has an acre of land that they are allowing us to use in exchange for all the eggs they collect.  We still go over daily to check on the girls and give them fresh water (ice water in some cases).  We are not happy about the situation, but are now working with the city to allow chickens as backyard pets.

The day we had to make the move we lost 2 girls within an two hours of us leaving them from heatstroke.  We received a call from our son that one of the girls "flew the coop" so we knew we needed to clip her wing.  When we opened up the hen house door, there lay 2 of our girls, one was already gone, the other was blinking, but laying on her side, very lethargic, we did everything we could to try to save her, we put her feet into water immediately, but to no avail, she died in the hubs arms.

We lost our third girl, we aren't sure exactly what happened, she either "flew the coop" or was taken out of the coop by a predator.  When we found her, she was covered in ants and completely plucked.

After these event, we knew we would have to keep a closer eye on them, they were used to our yard and having misters on them to keep them cool, and they were safe.  It was one of the most heartbreaking, frustrating and unnecessary things to happen to us.

So now the fight so to speak has begun.  We have a sympathetic council member who is also our representative and he is going to make this an item of special interest on the August 4th council workshop.  We are possibly looking at a 9-10 month process.

On August 7th our council member did make backyard chicken keeping an item of special interest. I've followed up with his assistant several times since and he says they are working on it.

This are our final 5 girls.  From L-R: Goldie (Buff), Flip Flop (white), Ginger (EE), Cricket (Black Copper Maran) and Freckles (EE).

It's been a trial having them so far away.  There are days that we aren't able to get over there so our son takes on giving them fresh water.  We know we need to find them a new home since we are still looking at a several month process and we just won't be able to keep this up.