Kathy, I'm sorry you're going through this hassle.
I live in Staten Island, one of the five boros of NYC. Staten Island used to be farm country and we had literally thousands of horses here. In 1980 we still had two thousand head of horses.
Then in came civilization. People moving into homes that were built next to existing stables. And all those people did was complain about horse smell, etc. It always confounded me how someone could knowlingly move next to a barn and then complain that it was.... errrr...... a barn.
Now we have less than a hundred horses here. Probably way less.
You see many of those barns were on rented property. When property values boomed, landowners sold their properties. Usually they sold them to builders who would then try and build a zillion townhouses where one house once stood. Between the rise of property values, and tightening laws and restrictions, the horse community which was once vibrant and healthy faded away.
In the late 1990's I sat on a panel which consisted of two horsepeople, local politicians and Dept. of Health representatives. There, we rewrote Section 161 of the NYC code for the keeping of animals in NYC.
The other horseperson had a commercial stable. I had a private one. The other horseperson tried to have the private barns fall under the criteria of a commercial, public establishment. This would open up the private barns to inspections by the health dept. not by complaint, but by whim. Basically, the constitutional right to search without warrant would be sacrificed. Additonally the commercial code called for bathroom and sewer or septic facilities in the barn itself. This would render the average homeowner unable to fit the financial burden of having to hook up sewer or septic out to their barn when they already had these facilities right in their home a few feet away.
This she did so that the private barns would be forced to close, and so folks would have to move horses to her barn. Nice huh? I would also add that the politician lived on the same block as someone who owned a donkey, a jack, who would heehaw at feeding times. He did not like the donkey (actually it was a Sicilian burro) heehawing at feeding times.
It felt like I was fighting the world. Well, the new code got written, I was able to save private backyard barns, but much to my dismay, when I got the new copy of the code, donkeys, burros and mules were formally listed as "wild animals" despite the fact that NY State listed them as domesticated. This excluded them.
The politician got his way, and the donkey had to go. Karma of course got him in the end when he had to resign due to his fathering an illegitimate child and getting caught. Not exactly very "Republican" of him.
Hens we were able to keep, but roosters and all other poultry were excluded. Rabbits are okay. Ferrets were initially outed as well, but continued efforts by the ferret lobby were able to legalize them again.
I now keep my horse at a lovely boarding facility in New Jersey. It's just easier. I don't have to fight people, and I don't have to attend a thousand meetings and I don't have to be a big, fat phony who has to network and gain political allies just to be able to keep the horse.
This is gonna be a long battle you'll be in for. You will be harassed and abused. The possibility of someone trying to hurt your chickens exists.
When civilization comes in, civilized behavior goes out.
I feel for you. Good luck with this. People sock.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/zoo/zoo-animal-healthcode.pdf
