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Also the Rocky Mtn Pheasant & Waterfowl Association has a poultry swap at Brighton Grain & Feed Sunday July 11. All types of poultry!
am bringing a bantam black mottled cochin cockerel
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My friend will be bringing some of my pet quality silkies and some Dutch bantam cockerels to the swap in Brighton tomorrow if anyone is interested.
 
Does anyone know of anyone locally who may have a female duck on the smaller side? I have a 7 month old mixed breed male who needs a companion. He's been raised with chickens, but he's started trying to mate with my silkie roo who is getting VERY cranky. I think poor confused Willie needs a girlfriend!!
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Thanks, Sonja
 
Hey Everyone!

I thought I would post an update on our situation with fighting to keep poultry at our home in Jeff. County since a few people have asked me about it. It is seeming more and more like we will likely just have to give up the fight since they are threatening us with $1,000 PER DAY fines. So, our neighbors across the street are a huge farm of a couple hundred acres with several horses and various other animals and yet we are not going to be allowed to keep the few hens we have here and some of our ducks (not even roosters). It just seems so nonsensical and we are in an unincorporated part of the county to boot.

Long story short- We hired an attorney. He contacted the local neighborhood organization that is giving us trouble and they never even bothered to respond. Instead, they obviously just sent a zoning officer out to inspect our property. They are "officially" not even an HOA. The HOA had been disbanded about 15 years ago and there are no current covenants on file, but apparently in CO that does not mean much. In getting legal advice, we have been told that basically if this does eventually go to court, the courts here typically side with the neighborhood association if there is one (keep in mind, this is basically just a "club", membership is entirely voluntary, we don't pay dues, nothing).

We found out that unfortunately, our house is the first house in the zone district in question (the last in our subdivision). The property literally across the street is zoned agriculture. So frustrating! So, after our last meeting with the attorney, we opted to go ahead and attempt to get a zoning variance. My husband and the attorney completed all the necessary paperwork, but when my husband went to file the paperwork to get the required sign and put on the agenda, the people at zoning will not even accept the application. Repeated calls and messages from my husband and our attorney to the various people in charge at zoning have gone unanswered for a week now. Meanwhile, the correction date looms closer and closer. If we don't have the birds out by the end of the week, the fines will begin. It really just seem pointless to continue with this, since they apparently are not even going to allow us to file for the variance.

Luckily, we still have my MIL's farm, so it looks like that is where the birds are going (several are there already). It is not the best of news for us since we had hoped to keep the majority of our birds here, but at least we have options. All of this headache has been caused by a neighbor that didn't want to share the cost of a fence that was falling down (the neighbors on our other side has said that in 30 years, he has never shared the cost of anything). This is retaliation for us even asking him to share the cost. In the end, we paid for the fence in its' entirety because it was literally falling down in whole sections. We even gave the guy all the old wood because he insisted he wanted it and this is how we are paid back- he turns around and does something just totally to be malicious. He was angry with us at the time because he wanted the finished side of the fence (the side with just the up and down slats, not the cross supports) to face his yard! Keep in mind, his yard literally looks like Sanford and Sons, he was just being a jerk. My husband was like, no- if we pay for the fence all on our own, we are certainly not having them install the nicest looking side facing YOUR yard. This is our punishment.
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Oh well, life goes on. Maybe this is just an opportunity to eventually get into an even nicer, larger property. I am trying to look at it that way.
 
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Yeah, I would look to move, sorry for you. And, this is not helpful as I do not live near you, Northeastern Part of Colorado, however, my property is zoned AG, and the other side of the street from me was considered "In city limits" "Town of Hillrose" now, they all have had livestock over that side, as our road is just the outskirts of Hillrose, and basically, anyone who ownes livestock on that side was grandfathered in. They are all like 2 acre properties BTW. Anyway, when our neighbor bought the property they had a heck of a time getting allowed to have the horses but they did. After a while the "Town" decided they were going to hook up to the county water system, (which we are on but the other side was not - nor anyone in the actualy town, they all have wells.) Anyway so the city was going to pay for water taps for all if the city, EXCEPT the other side of my road. The city told them that they had to pay for their own. To make a long story short and maybe add some sort of relevance to my rambling, The other side of the road filed a petition to unincorporate themselves from the city and change the zoning. Everyone in the section to be rezone had to sign the petition and agree to it. See if thats a possibility to get the neighbors to do it too, all file together and get a different lawyer, it seems there should be something you can do as if they do not respond which they have to, maybe go to city council meeting etc. I would move the birds but keep fighting so they cannot fine you in the process.

Anyway, they did succeed, and the same day as the zoning was changed (The city could not understand why they would not want to be part of the city- town of like 250 btw) they came and shut off the street light on the corner!
 
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Wow, what a nightmare for them, Smoky. The county basically told my husband something very similar to that. They said that we couldn't try to get a variance because it would be considered too much of a change of allowable property use for that. They said our only recourse was to try to get the whole area re-zoned entirely. That is just not going to happen. There is no way that we could get ALL of our neighbors to agree to it. It is just not going to happen, especially considering one of them started all this. The county will not even return our or our attorney's phone calls so that gives you an idea how willing they are to work with us! I'm just glad we have other options and honestly, we had talked about getting a bigger place anyway so maybe this is a blessing in disguise.
 
I live in JeffCo, if signing a petition or something would help let me know. Or we could always work on ousting the County Commissioners at the next election!!!

There's some EXCELLENT articles on this thread (below) on how other municipalities have changed their laws and ordinances. Maybe you might find something useful to help gain your neighbor's support.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=316045
 
Can't your attorney force them to return calls or what have you with his title? Isn't that what they're hired for is to get down to the nitty gritty for you? I'm sorry you're going through this. What part of Jeffco are you in?
 

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