William R. Cutts Sr., Mankato
I have been following, with interest, the debate pros and cons of allowing chickens to be raised within the city limits of Mankato. I have a comment to add.
As a lad growing up on a farm in the 1920s and 1930s, it was my responsibility to clean the hen house and yard on whichever Saturday Dad deemed the proper time. I have not cleaned a chicken house or yard in over 60 years, but the following facts are indelibly etched in my olfactory memories.
Chickens produce excreta (poop) with a rather high percent of ammonia. With only one exit from their digestive tract, urine and high-protein bi-products are passed at the same time. Also, chicken molt (off with the old, on with the new feathers, that is). The fumes generated by this combination of wet chicken feathers and the highly-ammoniated feces induced me to finish my chores with more alacrity than one usually would expect, if one has ever experienced the difficulties of getting a teenager to do any chore with alacrity.
After a nice, warm summer day, followed by a day of high humidity, the odor factors may be multiplied by a least 10.
I believe you and your neighbor will agree that it is one thing that approximates the intensity of the odor that occurs a few days after your neighbor has dumped fish entrails into his compost pile, in midsummer and when the wind is in the wrong direction.
To compress the above paragraph into one word, chickens “stink.”
NIMBY — not in my backyard.
