Backyard Poultry Farms Banned in Hong Kong Probably A Good Idea.....

Recent legislation banned raising live chickens in Hong Konger's backyards is probably a good idea, although, not without its detractors.

The ban, which closed a loophole allowing households to own unregulated up to 20 live poultry, was proposed after it was revealed that people near the border were smuggling live chickens into Hong Kong from the mainland. At least one was found to have died from H5N1 last month.

The ban seems like a good idea since keeping these birds among the population may not be in the best interest of Hong Kongers health in light of the potential for disaster surrounding the H5N1 bird flu worries.

And keeping chickens is not as easy as some city slickers may imagine. This backyard poultry ban reminds me of when I was living in the Ivory Coast. My family had returned to Hong Kong due to the increasingly dangerous living conditions that eventually descended into an all-out civil war. I was lonely and decided that I wanted to keep two chickens in the yard as pets. I fancied the idea of seeing them strutting around my tropical garden and yard while I enjoyed my breakfast and dinner on my patio.

However, the dream was faced with the hard realities of the animal kingdom. The birds ended up flying away outside of the compound the first evening and it took a couple of days for my staff to locate the birds, round them up and clip their wings. Its ends up that chickens roost earlier than I knew and were already sleeping by late afternoon, before I arrived back home for my dinner. Additionally, early to bed, early to rise birds make an awful racket at 4:30 am, depriving me of my much needed beauty rest.

Undetered, I blocked access to the backyard for the birds so that my sleep could continue. But they then found their way into the living room of my villa and fouled my belongings with their droppings. After blocking access with more cardboard to my livingroom, they decided that they wanted to hangout under my patio table, scaring the bejesus out of me when I sat down and they reacted unfriendly to me. The fouling under my breakfast and dinner table with their feces and urine was more than I had bargained for. So, I invited my friends over for a BBQ and we enjoyed my pets for one last time. They were tasty but somewhat skinny. I got a cat instead, which I did not eat despite its early morning howling. But the cat used to see me off to work every morning and wait for my return at night. The cat, named Coulibali, now happily resides in upstate New York at my sister house.