Welcome New Section: Local Chicken Laws & Ordinances! - Page 8  

Would you please post, if you can remember them, some of what seemed to you to be the more ridiculous objections to keeping chickens? I don't want want to bash people who opposed keeping chickens. Their concerns are very real to them. But if we understand where they are coming from we can address their concerns. With some reassurance, they might turn from adversaries to friends or at least neutrals.

And BRAVO to Olivia and you! Not only can people in Portland have chickens but you were so smart to engage her the way you did and teach her, through experience, about democratic government.

Ingrid,

I agree with you. Keeping the neutral line between "Chicken Lovers" & "Non-Chicken Lovers" is a thing we must do. Shorten the gap to why they don't like chickens so much rather than making a concrete remark on why it "should" be this or "should" be that. Nevertheless, I can understand how so from where folks come from too. Its really a lot of work in the end and I hope we can find a good solution for it. Perhaps introduce the greater side of it first then minus out the bad side of it...

This document http://www.scribd.com/doc/16509728/Changing-Your-Citys-Chicken-Laws

answers as many possible concerns and questions about keeping chickens in suburban/urban areas as we could come up with, even some absurd ones.  We tried to think of everything. 

Would you please post, if you can remember them, some of what seemed to you to be the more ridiculous objections to keeping chickens? I don't want want to bash people who opposed keeping chickens. Their concerns are very real to them. But if we understand where they are coming from we can address their concerns. With some reassurance, they might turn from adversaries to friends or at least neutrals.

NiftyChicken, I'm thinking maybe a sticky that won't accept comments.  People could submit such documents, and admins could put them into the sticky?  Maybe several stickies -- one for 'steps in the process,' one each for any step that is particularly complex. 

For your #1, links to amlegal.com, findlaw.com, municode.com, bpcnet.com/codes.htm, and other online code document storage -- a lot of communities do have their codes online.  For those who don't, simple instructions on how to get them without 'outing' yourself (for instance, go to your city hall and ask to see a copy of the code of ordinances and zoning/usage codes, politely but without detailing why, and then see if they'll let you make copies of the pertinent pages.)  Give instructions on how to search to make sure you don't miss something -- search on animals, poultry, chickens, livestock, fowl, structures, enclosures, and accessory usage.
For #2, a. call the police ON THEIR NON-EMERGENCY LINE and ask about the history of chicken complaints
            b. find out when your city outlawed chickens, and what the area was like back then. (for instance, if it was during the 50s/60s and your area was becoming a suburb, it was probably during the period when suburbs were trying to distinguish themselves from rural areas.  If it was earlier and your area was a city already, it was probably due to concerns about disease from inside-the-city newly-large chicken farms.  If it was in 1988, maybe there were one or more citizens raising chickens irresponsibly.  Or maybe -- like my suburb, which recently tried to outlaw chickens -- it was because someone asked if they could raise chickens and the city discovered NO farm animals had ever been outlawed.)
For #3, http://www.scribd.com/doc/16509728/Changing-Your-Citys-Chicken-Laws
Etc. 

Other things to include:
General attitude for the process/Gaining support without creating opposition
Sample 'best case scenario' chicken ordinances to ask for.  Sample 'reasonable' chicken ordinances to go for. 
How not to annoy your neighbors so they won't turn you in/try to get laws changed to disallow chickens

Valereee,

I can't agree with you more that there should be a certain "sticky" page that could be posted to contain all the local ordinances. I would also like to add, its really hard to make a new website, gather all the info, promoting the site, etc. by an individual. Its best to start off with individual posts and folks who seem to be interested and would like to help could all come together to put such thing to work. For example, my site took me almost 1 year before it got anywhere, etc and even until TODAY, its a working process so its really hard to just make something of such extent "overnight" for all the cities and states.

Adding to the suggestion, we could have a sticky post that says something like:

"Local Chicken Laws & Ordinances City and State"

List the lower 48 states along with its major cities and after clicking on it, it will lead to the local law ordinances and folks who would like to contribute may contribute...

I think that is going to be the most effective at the moment since this is just the "gathering resources" stage and find folks who are willing to be a part of the "help group". Once enough resources are found, folks from the same community could meet up and make out plans to build a site together. Yeah?

- Tommy

My only thought is that we've got a database like this up in my local chicken-keeping group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cincinnatibackyardchickens/database ) just for our area (Hamilton County OH -- which has probably 40 different sets of ordinances/codes) and while it's helpful, only one or two people are doing all the work.  Like, mostly me.    I don't know what kind of cooperation we'll get for a nationwide effort.  And then such databases need updating, but it couldn't hurt to try!

In our town, what they did was CRIMINALIZE the keeping of chickens.  Since it was a new crime rather than a zoning code change, no one was grandfathered in.  I suspect they did this because they thought no one had chickens, and this would keep people who got caught from being able to claim they'd had them before the zoning codes were changed. 

We got the law changed back this week, but in the meantime (about five months) the families who had been keeping chickens completely legally were at risk of being charged with a misdemeanor.  The city didn't follow up on it because we'd already started the process of getting them to change it back, but if we hadn't been successful I'm not sure how it would have worked out for the brave woman who outed herself to help show that chickens aren't that big a deal. 

Terrific, Nifty!!!  Hope I helped to inspire you!!  **ducks4you bows with GREAT humility**

Valereee,

Wow. Its hard to understand why the city would rule such thing. That really is such a bummer! Yes...I can see how its hard to gather such information from cities, like the one you are in, if such regulations apply...

- Tommy