Hello. I have been working with my city for the last couple months trying to get my chickens. I am pretty sure it's going to happen...YAY!!! Currently the code is that you have to have signatures from the neighbors that you share a fence line with and you can only have 3. I have one neighbor who is refusing to sign, which stops me from getting the city permit. At the last City Commission meeting they all agreed that the neighbor signature stipulation needed to be removed. The number of hens was another issue. I asked to have it raised to 6, at the meeting they were split 50/50 between raising to 4 and raising to 6. I'm looking for some feedback/information that i could use to help encourage them to raise the number of hens to 6. Any information would be great. Thank you and I look forward to your comments and learning more on backyardchickens.com
and Welcome To BYC! A lot will depend if you are keeping them mostly as pets or mostly for eggs and if you are willing to cull birds that aren't laying, many of the pet breeds don't lay well so it would be nice to have a couple of pet birds and a couple of laying birds. Even if you have good layer breeds, if you are keeping the hens as pets and don't intend to rotate your flock, they will slow down on laying as they get older, so while a year year old hen may lay you 5-6 eggs a week, a five year old hen will probably only lay 2-3 eggs a week...so you would need a bigger flock to get the same number of eggs as the birds age. Also when adding to a flock it is easier to add more than one at a time, so if you have 6 rather than 4 total you have a better chance of being able to add more than one at a time ... if you intend to rotate your flock, just add/ cull two birds every year (most people who rotate seem to do it on a three year cycle).
