Build Coop or Ask Town Permission First?

[thebruiser500]

I need chickens for my house and we have space here according to the town laws. They say it should be 25 feet away from any building which is fine. Though they also ask you get a permit first.

Should I just go ahead and build the chicken coop and get going here which would be very nice, or would you recommend actually getting a permit and asking the town for permission first and paying their $150 fee, before doing anything? It's annoying on principle that a person has to ask permission from the government. Not sure which route will work out best in the long term? Maybe getting government involved will just complicate things when they wouldn't have even noticed.

Thanks for sharing any personal experiences people have had with doing the permit process or just building the coop and figuring out any issues as you go along!

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Our city has an incredibly vague (although much cheaper) permitting process. I'm a reasonably law-abiding person, so I asked everyone I knew who had chickens how the process had gone, including five of my professors, and not a single one had gotten a permit, and nothing had ever happened.

I took care to stay within the wonderfully contradictory rules. If anyone ever makes a stink of it, I guess I'll go ahead and do it then.

- This is not terribly surprising about my city.