My coop will be finished next week. My neighbors are OK with it. The distance from my house is abut 40ft. I made sure I was over 50 for my neighbors.

I have a friend who is also raising chickens with less than 50ft and my neighbor has chickens closer than 50ft. Wasatch Community Gardens sponsors a "tour d'coop". If you contact them they can give you names of people with chickens in SLC.

I'm curious. What's the 50' setback? Is that some sort of city ordinance? I'm not considering raising chickens, just curious.

It is a code thing. Poultry keeping is permitted in the city subject to several restrictions. One is the distance from living quarters.

Poultry must be kept 50 feet from habitable buildings and 25 feet from property lines. This is a problem for me because my small sugarhouse lot is .09 acres and the backyard has no point 50 feet form any one of the immediate neighbors' houses. I have discussed this with one of my neighbors and she is fine. I am worried about two others, though. I am wondering if I am best to talk to them or if I am best to go ahead and set up my coop and hope they either are ignorant of the ordinance or do not have a problem. My understanding is that it is only enforced if someone complains and I know there are people in my neighborhood who quietly keep their chickens illegally. Anyone have any experience?

I would like to know more about keeping chickens. Is it hard to do/expensive/etc?

If you keep your coop dry and low under the fence it is likely that no one will ever know. Complaints come in when it smells really bad. I covered mine with a blue tarp and it seems to work fine.

Well, I have gotten approval (reluctant) approval from the two neighbors who are closest. Unfortunately, fencing the yard in the area near the coop is not an option (has to do with a shared driveway). There is one more neighbor I am concerned about, but they are farther away and behind a 6 foot fence. The chicks should be here Oct. 22. I feel like this borders on absurd considering the size of my yard. I dug up my front lawn to plant perennials, dug up my back lawn to plant vegetables, covered my deck with a greenhouse and cut down the shade tree to get more sun for the plants. Nothing really surprises them anymore.

Chickens aren't hard at all if you do a little planning. I have...I'm not going to admit how many, but there are more yet in the incubator! I live in a rural area, and my coop is about 150' from any other house, so no one has complained at all. If you're looking to just keep a few hens for eggs and entertainment value, I'd say it was well worth it. You can use a large dog house and a fenced run (I put a net on top because they fly over even my 6'fence.) Some cities have ordinances that allow a certain number of hens only, and others outlaw it all together. My city has no laws against having as many chickens as I want.

There are lots of ways to be stealthy if you are concerned about neighbors complaining, and strategies to keep the smell way down, and noise acceptable (first and foremost, no roosters if you're trying to be stealthy. I love my roosters, but then, I have three neighbors who also have chickens and roosters, so it's not a big deal here).

A chicken tractor may also be a good plan if you just want a few birds. They have handles and often a set of wheels on one side so you can move it every few days or week, which also can help with smell and yard damage. Do a search for chicken tractors online and you'll see lots of great designs.

Everybody check out my chickens:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickens

Cool. So how many and what kind.

Now there are 15, but I will limit myself to 4. There are some "packing peanut" roosters I have not been able to identify yet. I'll cull those and any other incidental roos and give away the extra hens. They are buff orpington, black austrolorp, "eater egg" and speckled sussex.

So I am laso thinking about getting chicken and found a really cool site. just fill out what oy want and it will do the rest. I live in Kearns on a 1/4 acre and I woke up to a chicken in my back yard the frist year I was here. I like home grown chicken eggs better than the store bought. plus with the way things are going it would do well to have your own. Any ways here is the site.
http://www.mypetchicken.com/breedQuestions.aspx

I don't have chickens but I know a few people who do in the small yards we have here in SLC. My friends say it's great unless you are on the edge of legality and a neighbor gets testy. I'd say make nice with the neighbors as part of chicken maintenance.

Well, the neighbors seem amiable enough, except that one is moving soon so there might be a problem there in the future. I am not on the edge of legality--I am far over it due to the setback. My yard is not even close. I am such a scofflaw.

The chickens are now 6 weeks old. They are not very smart. I gave them the New York times to hopefully provide them with some intellectual stimulus. They pooped on it.