McHenry Illinois 2014

[b11bravi]

It looks like many of the threads are dating back to 2011. I'm just starting to look into this law for McHenry County and City. McHenry City only missed its last vote by one. Is anyone interested in persistence and rekindling this subject?

 

[LP04]

Hello. I am in Crystal Lake and am having a hard time finding the laws on backyard chickens. Would just like to have a few hens.

 

[b11bravi]

Do you live in city limits?

 

[Coop hopeful]

I'm in Crystal Lake as well and attended the council meetings for the backyard hen initiative back in the summer of 2011. Sadly, the measure was voted down. It was not unanimous, so maybe it's something that can be revisited. I'm hopeful!

 

[newchick2]

I'm glad to have found others in the area near me. We would like to have BYC's but I am having a hard time finding out if this is allowed. We are moving to unicorporated Wauconda, BUT it is a McHenry address IN McHenry county... How is that for confusing?

Anyway, I did a little research on the McHenry ordinance website and saw that BYC's are allowed if certain rules are followed (i.e. 6 hens, no roosters, caged/well ventilated, etc.). So can someone please clear this up for me? Thank you!!

 

[eracerx46]

I thought I might chime in as this might help out. I am also in unincorporated Wauconda, but on the Lake county side. In the village of Wauconda, they don't allow chickens unless zoned as agriculture. Since your unincorporated you go with McHenry County ordinances. In Lake county they recently amended the rules so you have to register your coop. Was a 25 dollar fee, they wanted to know where the coop would be and what it would look like. So he went online and printed off a picture of something similar to what mine will look like. He asked how many chickens I'd like to have, I said I'd like more than 12 but I didn't have my AG exemption yet. Since I have over 200,000 sq Ft of property I don't have a limit to how many I can have and can also have roosters. In Lake county you can't have roosters unless AG exempt and there are limits of how many chickens depending on lot size. I believe you could have 10 hens if you had a lot of 80,000 sq ft or more.


I'd go on McHenry county's website and type in chickens and see way pops up. That's what I did for Lake county. Being unincorporated you go with county ordinances.