If you know of any chicken friendly ordinances for residential properties (vs. agricultural) I would be grateful for any info. If you have link to the language, even better. Maybe this info will also help others who are trying to inspire their communities to be more chicken friendly.
Looking for simple ordinances that welcome or recognize chickens as pets. It's okay if numbers are limited and commercial use is prohibited.
People have all sorts of birds as pets - parrots, cockatoos, etc and more and more folks have chickens as pets (if one, why not the other?). I sit on an advisory board for 3 towns, one of which has been approached by residents asking them to consider allowing chickens as pets - currently the ordinances only recognize them as livestock and for livestock one needs a minimum of 5 acres. The people who would like a few chickens as pets are on much smaller lots. One such person is suggesting very prescribed rules - no roos, minimum setbacks etc. that just happen to meet his desires so he threw it out there and now it is in danger of sticking. My hope is to keep any new ordinance or ordinance amendment really simple as everyone's situation is different (I myself have a roo and a hen on a small residential lot and in all honesty, she and not he, is the one that likes to talk and yet combined, they don't make even the tiniest fraction of the noise many of the neighbor's dogs make).
Simple language that interprets chickens as pets when they are in small numbers (I guess the number could depend on lot size) and when the chickens are not a business.....
I can draft language but odds of success are better if I can point to other places that have done it.
Thank you!
JJ
Looking for simple ordinances that welcome or recognize chickens as pets. It's okay if numbers are limited and commercial use is prohibited.
People have all sorts of birds as pets - parrots, cockatoos, etc and more and more folks have chickens as pets (if one, why not the other?). I sit on an advisory board for 3 towns, one of which has been approached by residents asking them to consider allowing chickens as pets - currently the ordinances only recognize them as livestock and for livestock one needs a minimum of 5 acres. The people who would like a few chickens as pets are on much smaller lots. One such person is suggesting very prescribed rules - no roos, minimum setbacks etc. that just happen to meet his desires so he threw it out there and now it is in danger of sticking. My hope is to keep any new ordinance or ordinance amendment really simple as everyone's situation is different (I myself have a roo and a hen on a small residential lot and in all honesty, she and not he, is the one that likes to talk and yet combined, they don't make even the tiniest fraction of the noise many of the neighbor's dogs make).
Simple language that interprets chickens as pets when they are in small numbers (I guess the number could depend on lot size) and when the chickens are not a business.....
I can draft language but odds of success are better if I can point to other places that have done it.
Thank you!

JJ