March  2021

Dear Supervisor: 

As a long-time resident of Santa Cruz county, I urge you to reject the proposed changes to the county’s rooster-keeping rules, which are on the Board’s calendar for consideration in the next few months. Not only would the proposed changes invite unwanted government intrusion into our homes at a time when many of us are struggling with unemployment, depression, and recovery from the recent, disastrous wildfires, but they are totally unnecessary. 

Why is SCAS trying to ram these regulations past the Board with virtually no input from the public? Virtually none of your constituents, including those in Res-Ag zoned parcels who would be the most impacted by them, even know these proposed changes exist. Your constituents deserve to be given a chance to submit their input on these regulations. They will have a profound impact on our lives and livelihoods, yet there seems to have been no effort at all to seek public opinion or debate on the issue. 

Section 6.08.110, regarding “rooster facility licenses,” is particularly disconcerting. The verbiage of this portion is so radical that it will essentially require any homesteader or backyard chicken hobbyist to apply for this special license, the requirements of which are so extreme that they will make the homesteading/small farming lifestyle that many of us moved here for nearly impossible.

Anyone who has ever raised backyard chickens knows that for every clutch hatched, at least fifty percent (and often more) are roosters.  An average clutch size of 12 eggs will hatch six roosters, which will already exceeds the maximum number of roosters allowed for almost everyone under the new rules. What are people supposed to do with all these roosters if the county makes it illegal for them to exist anywhere in groups larger than just two per acre? Will people be forced to slaughter their backyard pets? How many will be just abandoned on the side of the road?

Even people who order pre-sexed chicks from hatcheries (ostensibly to avoid roosters) will be affected, as they almost always wind up with unforeseen roosters. Hatcheries have a 10 to 20 percent error rate, meaning that one in every 5 to 10 chicks sold as female matures into a rooster. When this happens, where are these roosters supposed to go?

With rescue organizations within the county prohibited from taking in roosters per SCAS’ proposal, people will be forced to get rid of their pets. Turning roosters over to SCAS, which by its own admission has a near 100 percent euthanasia rate on roosters, is not an acceptable or humane solution for many residents. Therefore, the number of roosters dumped on the side of the road to be killed by predators, starvation, or vehicles is bound to skyrocket.  This achieves precisely the opposite of what a responsible animal control agency should be striving for. 

If SCAS claims the anti-rooster ordinances are needed to mitigate the threat of cockfightng, then this claim is belied by the fact that the portions of the county in which cockfighting has been detected --Watsonville, for example -- already have restrictions on the number of roosters allowed.  A countywide ban is unnecessary and targets backyard hobbyists and rescue organizations, not cockfighters.

I also know that only a very specific breed of chicken— the gamecock— is used for cockfighting. So how can this proposal be aimed at cockfighting? You don’t punish people with cocker spaniels and poodles because dogfighting exists, so why would you punish people with backyard chicken breeds just because cockfighting exists somewhere?

Again, I urge you to oppose these unnecessary and oppressive restrictions, or at the very least allow the public to be apprised of them so they may give their input before the Commission puts it to a vote.