Welcome to the Future
Backyard Chickens
Eggiwegs, huh? To my considerable surprise, “man-made eggs” are a real thing. They sound absolutely disgusting. It occurred to me to check for other ‘natural’ sources of eggs, and this page provides a partial list:
https://www.saudereggs.com/blog/types-of-edible-eggs/
(not listed: echidnas and duck-billed platypuses). Most or all of them are far more problematic than chickens. DBPlatypus venom in particular is said to be extremely vile.
Regarding a rule-change to allow SF homeowners to keep chickens: I hope you’ll forgive me for being a lazy Board member and handing off to
https://www.hoamanagement.com/how-to-change-hoa-bylaws/
Our process probably varies slightly, but in short: I believe it would require a majority vote of the entire neighborhood.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_chicken_keeping : “Although in urban spaces where homes are situated right beside one another, steps must be taken to control odors. These range from regular cleaning to changing out the chicken's bedding. If not properly cared for, odors can become quite strong given close proximity to neighboring homes. The average chicken eliminates waste, on average, every fifteen to twenty minutes; a coop of nine chickens will produce approximately seven hundred (700) defecations per day.”
Don't get me started on noise. Someone I live with who'd really rather not have their name associated with this discussion reminded me that chicken-sexing is an inexact science, so get ready to kill all of the cute little baby boy chickens you didn't anticipate.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see it happening. And to be honest, I oppose this myself unless it's a piece of a much larger neighborhood-wide anti-zombie defense effort ala what Nick Offerman did in the most recent episode of The Last of Us (highly recommended viewing, BTW). I’d trust Heather to be extremely conscientious about sanitation and maintenance and so forth, but I can easily see this snowballing to where we’ve got a dozen or more households running egg and chicken-feces production facilities in their backyards, endless complaints about odors, property values plummet, dogs and cats sleeping with each other …
Finally: I’m aware that the price of eggs has risen, but … here’s a simplistic analysis of the cost of running a small backyard chicken coop for 5 years:
https://www.thehenhousecollection.com/blog/cost-to-raise-chickens/
It’s from people who sell chicken coops, so I’m sure it is accurate and unbiased. The bottom line is ~$70/month. Which is a bit more than you’d pay to have 10 dozen eggs delivered to your door over the course of a month by HEB or Amazon. Admittedly, this is just a 5-year analysis. Chicken coops last forever, and we'll almost certainly have robots to do all of the work by the end of this year, so by the 22nd century the eggs will be virtually free!
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