News- Clucking Chickens in Hollywood Yard Prompt Lawsuit

I just thought this was interesting and wanted to share it! I'm all for having chickens in a neighborhood but this is taking it alittle far. 15 chickens in that small space? He probably should of only had 2-3.....

And $146,000 in fines!!! ahhh!

http://www.local10.com/family/27343528/detail.html?source=mia

i cant get the link to work!

ugh, what did I do! LOL hang on, let me try to figure it out..






Okay, I fixed it...works now!

"They cluck starting in the morning it is on and off throughout the day"
I mean, really? Clucking? That's what they are complaining about? At least they don't have rooster!
Though I agree that 15 may be pushing it... and if they are free ranging and getting into the neighbor's yards, that should be stopped. I would think that the owner's would realize that they need to keep their animals contained, especially if they are illegal.

I couldn't believe he had goats in his backyard at one point! lol

I lived in Hollywood, Fl. there are many people who have chickens!...& goats in the city, im hoping everything goes ok for him so he can keep them.

The chicken owners live in an UPSCALE community, which usually means HOA regulations or -- at the very least -- unwritten rules of conformity in choice of landscaping, house color, RV parking, home businesses, PETS, etc. to maintain status and property values.

I can understand why the neighbors are upset. I'm sure they don't consider piles of chicken poop on their beautiful green grass appropriate or fair for their children playing outside or for their ritzy pool parties.

It's unbelievable that the chickens were allowed to free-range and create this unnecessary escalation of yet another "chicken war" between neighbors, when common sense and courtesy would have prevented most of the problems.

I own the chickens. They are kept behind a 6 ft privacy fence and they sleep in a 21 sq ft coop. Our other neighbors do not even know that we have them and they have been here for 2 1/2 years. We moved from Miami where 15 chickens are allowed to be kept on a 7500 sq ft urban lot and that is why we have 15 hens.

We did check before we moved and City of Hollywood 92.02 permits chickens as "dogs and other small domestic animals shall be permitted to be kept as pets".

Another resident in Hollywood Hills keeps 40 and the city knew about it, cited him for the poop which he cleaned up and they permitted it.

The problem here is that I am North African and our neighbors believe that the presence of a minority in their formerly upscale neighborhood ruins it. I have been cited for my garden, chickens, garbage, plastic storage box and harassed for painting my door blue.

Emerald Hills WAS an upscale neighborhood. Now that houses are selling in the $200s it is a middle class or lower neighborhood and some of our neighbors just can't cope with that.

They have called the Board of Health who found no nuisance, the police 40 times who also found no nuisance and have even called CPS to try to have our children taken away after a false report of abuse. The case was closed almost immediately but it terrified us.

I would move back to the mixed race neighborhood in Miami where I came from if I could but my house is worth 100k less than its mortgage so that would mean letting it foreclose.

I wish that redlining were still legal. The realtor should have told us that mixed race people would not be welcome in Emerald Hills, instead as I was unloading my moving truck, the Code Officer came over to "warn us" that we would not be tolerated in this neighborhood.

What could I have done then??

If I were you I would try and move somewhere else. So you can live your life the way you want and no one would be bother you and try to ruin your life. If your unable to move, and stay in that neighborhood, its going to keep happening. After watching the lady in the video...I can tell that she is NOT going to give up! lol Some people, like all of us, LOVE chickens...But some people hate them. I personally think a barking dog is more of a nuisance than a few chickens clucking.

I also have chickens in my backyard. I only have 3 and they are kept in a 4x5 coop and have a large run. 15 might be pushing it in a neighborhood. I know when it rains here the run becomes a muddy/poopy mess, and in warm weather, it does stink! We just recently covered our run to help keep it dry. I don't really have the problem you have with neighbors acting like that. our neighbors love our hens and love getting fresh eggs.

It seemed like the lady had a big problem with them getting onto her property. You could try clipping their wings to prevent them from flying. It might help to keep the peace for a while.

I'm sorry your going through this and I wasn't posting this video on here to bash you or anything negative like that. I just though it would be interesting for everyone on here to see, since we'er all on here b/c we love our feathered friends.

I did clip that hen's wings and what wasn't shown is that the neighbor puts out food for them and then takes pictures of them in her yard, she also messed up the sound in the videos and we have proof of that.

Thank you for the PM and I understand that based on what the news story says it appears that we are being inconsiderate backwards people who are violating the law, but that is not the case at all!

The fines are so huge because we appealed and lost, and then they racked up the fines for the year that we were appealing, and at that point it was $90,000 in fines and we just can't pay it so there was no point in getting rid of the chickens.

My other 4 neighbors didn't know about the chickens until they saw the news, and then we asked them how they feel and they said that they like to watch them and it does not bother them.

The goats were Nigerian Dwarf goats, very tiny and again the neighbors didn't know about them until the news came

On Thursday the Judge came to our house to listen to the chickens and decide if they are a nuisance, and when she didn't hear anything she asked us to let them out of the coop (they had been out for 30 minutes at that point) she then sat in our house and theirs for an hour and was going to dismiss the case when their lawyer insisted that we must have drugged or manipulated the chickens so that they would be quite, since neither of them know anything about chickens, she decided that it was possible and decided to do some research, we have not heard back yet.

We later heard the lawyer yelling at our neighbors about how stupid he looked telling the judge that we drugged the chickens!

Also the news story says that all of our neighbors are upset, that it not true, that neighbor is upset and she tried to get the others to join and non of them would because they are our friends.

We have a large yard (about 1500 sq.) with a 6 ft privacy fence around it and buried wire on the bottom, the chickens cannot get out except by flying and the ones that can fly have clipped wings (like the leghorns, anconas, and that Wyandotte) also when they are smaller and can fly we have them in a run so that they cannot escape.

15 is the number for Broward county and I clean up the yard often and put down hay so that it doesn't smell.

Also she is claiming that there are feathers in her pool from them, she sent the video to prove it to the court and we could easily see that they were craft feathers because they were all white and at the time we only had one white chicken and she was bare (a Wyandotte so she feathered out slow and at 14 weeks was still some down with a few pins)

I understand that you are not bashing and had no way of knowing what is true what is just a story, and if I could move I would, I hate this place I have a film of her calling us derogatory racist names, and the shocking part is, is that she doesn't see what is wrong with it and sent it to the judge to show what she has to live near.
She said in court that she thought she was moving to a nice neighborhood and now her guests have to see us and it embarrasses her! We lived here when she moved in and we told her about the chickens and she said that she loved it and wanted to buy some from us!!

Anyway I am getting into a rant here, sorry.