Why should backyard chickens be allowed in residential neighborhoods?

[New2Chicks97]

We don’t live in town anymore as we chose to buy a home with acreage but here is what our city has adopted. Maybe this will help you.....
https://my.spokanecity.org/news/stories/2014/04/03/urban-farming-approved-in-city-of-spokane/

 

[New2Chicks97]

Some chickens can be quite loud. We adopted a Favaucana from a family that lives in a residential neighborhood. They were finding her a new home because she was so loud the neighbors were complaining. She is still loud but on 10.5 acres she doesn’t bother any one here.

 

[HenOpausal]

If the plan goes ahead there should be restrictions so that everyone is happy, say maximum of 2 chickens per property and coop must be 6 meters away from neighboring fences, any noise complaints and the chooks must go type of thing. Happy neighbours are most important. Chooks also need to have a certain amount of space to be happy

 

[HenOpausal]

Not sure why there would be a 9 meter rule; rationale? It’s on the books here, but doesn’t make sense. My 2 hens free range and only sleep in coop at night. Noise is not a problem. Animal control visited and my coop is clean, no smell. Neighbor on other side of fence decided, after a year, to complain that she didn’t like the coop so close to the fence. My yard is well manicured and my gardener comes weekly. (Currently 7’ from fence and coop height is a foot lower than fence so not visible. I guess she doesn’t have enough to worry about on her side of fence.) Oh well, animal control has been very nice but still I have to move my coop. It doesn’t seem right to me.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Not sure why there would be a 9 meter rule; rationale? It’s on the books here, but doesn’t make sense. Oh well, animal control has been very nice but still I have to move my coop. It doesn’t seem right to me.

Most zoning codes require setbacks for any structure, so a coop wouldn't be exempt - reasons being everything from noise mitigation to maintenance access around the structure or beyond it. Some areas do allow coops to be placed up against buildings, or right up against a property fence, but others require as much as hundreds of feet in setback from buildings and property lines.

Sorry you have to move your coop but at least it sounds like there's no issue with you having chickens, at least as far as animal control is concerned.

 

[New2Chicks97]

Not sure why there would be a 9 meter rule; rationale? It’s on the books here, but doesn’t make sense. My 2 hens free range and only sleep in coop at night. Noise is not a problem. Animal control visited and my coop is clean, no smell. Neighbor on other side of fence decided, after a year, to complain that she didn’t like the coop so close to the fence. My yard is well manicured and my gardener comes weekly. (Currently 7’ from fence and coop height is a foot lower than fence so not visible. I guess she doesn’t have enough to worry about on her side of fence.) Oh well, animal control has been very nice but still I have to move my coop. It doesn’t seem right to me.

Some neighbors can be awesome and some a serious pain in the @**

Sorry you have to move your coop.

That is one of the reasons I was glad to move out of town and onto acreage. The last place we lived was on 2 acres but still on a cul de sac type neighborhood. One neighbor was crazy and threatened to shoot our dogs because they would bark at the dogs next door.

 

[ralw125]

I am just starting to work on this with my city council as well, I am looking reduce the amount of land required for chickens from 3 acres to 1/2 to 1 (depending on what they are willing to give). I will keep you updated on on our progress and what works vs what doesn't!

 

[CannedMonster]

Our property is just under 1/2 acre and it’s a lot of space IMO. We live in the county outside city limits. There’s no restrictions on us in terms of keeping chickens.
Within the city limits of my rural town in SW Idaho, people can have 6 hens and no roosters.
The coop must be 25 feet from any structures (houses) and 10 feet from the property lines.
There’s no restrictions on size of your lot.
The ordinance also states that if your birds range off of your property and are found “at large”, anyone can take them without prosecution.
A good incentive to keep them on your property lol.

 

[DMSelena]

Oof, this is why I moved to the county and bought an unrestricted deed. But I am grateful to people like you who are bringing wisdom into the public forum. Also, I work with city Councils all over the country when they are doing new development, so I have some experience here.

It's all going to come down to politics, in the end. Here's some advice:

1. Use what others have. Someone upthread posted what worked for their council. Don't reinvent the wheel. Also, it's good to have some numbers on other similarly situated communities that have already done this.
2. Find a list of communities that have small flock ordinances in place. Of those, select two or three that are the most similar to your community, in terms of home values, demographics, income, whether they are gated, geographic location, climate, types of tourism (if any), etc.
3. Find the date when they passed the ordinance. Look up any minutes they have on meetings about this ordinance. All of this is usually available online, but you can call the City and ask for help finding it. These kinds of things are definitely public record. What you want are the minutes for the Council meetings that show successful arguments and useful quotes you can re-use. You will also see the kinds of questions you can anticipate.
4. Do some research on the five years prior to the ordinance and five years after to see if there has been any impact on the following issues in those communities:
   1. Property values - this is going to be most important, because property taxes. If chickens effed with property values in similar communities, that's bad for your prospects.
   2. Incidents of animal control calls related to poultry and predators attracted to poultry, such as raccoons, opossum, and foxes - You can ask the local animal control agency for this information. Sometimes its available online. Was there any impact after the ordinance?
   3. Incidents of bird-related zoonotic disease in the area. The CDC probably has this information by county and municipality.
   4. Incidents of noise complaints - Make sure you're not including data from communities that have ordinances that don't exclude roosters specifically in the language. If they do exclude roos, did the noise complaints go up?
5. If there is no correlation between the ordinance and increased negative impact on similarly situated communities within the five year window, that information will do 75% of the work of arguing in your favor. I don't know if there is a way to track vermin populations. NYC does, but I'm not sure about other municipalities.
6. Gather supporters. Bring warm bodies with you to the meeting. Most of these things are attended by people who care, and whoever has the most bodies in support of the issue has a pretty good chance of winning. It helps if they are doing stuff like wearing a t-shirt, button, or whatever that identifies them as a chicken supporter. Seeing a bloc of 30 people walk into the meeting wearing "I <3 Backyard Chickens" t-shirts will make the Council pay more attention, because now you're a special interest group with enough people involved who care enough that they may not want to annoy you, especially if elections are close.
7. If you know anyone who knows someone who sits on the Council, or who has influence in your community, contact them and pitch it to them. You want people who own important businesses, own a lot of real estate, sit on the Chamber of Commerce, Elks/Rotary Club, or otherwise hold sway over whatever is important in your community. Explain your pitch and ask for their support.
8. Look up who donated to your elected officials on the Council. Find out who held fundraisers for your mayor's election campaign (just Google this). Once you have a list of those people, start doing some background on them until you find someone who looks like they might show you some sympathy. Look at their social media accounts and see if any of them share interests that coincide with organic local food (hunters, foodies, preppers, progressives, etc.). Then call them and ask for them to help you on this issue.
9. Getting signatures of support on a petition helps, too, but don't waste a lot of time with electronic signatures. I mean, you can do an online petition, but it's much better to have physical signatures collected via clipboard so the Councilmembers know that people in your community support the idea.

What you want to do is create an environment where supporting this seems like what everyone else is doing. Make it seem like a foregone conclusion. You do this by making as much noise as possible with the people you can get to speak up in support of this. Make the Council think that doing it is not only easy, but if they don't do it, they'll be punished politically.

Take away the option of "no" so that "yes" is all they have left by addressing all the reasons they'd have to say no, and making the "no" seem painful by having a loud group of people create the expectation of a yes. You want to drown out those few chicken-hating busybodies that are going to show up with their pinched faces and talk about how roosters are akin to welcoming pedophiles in the neighborhood. Make them seem like outsiders. Make your opinion seem like the one that is normal, and pinch-faced naysayers will find it psychologically more difficult to muster up the courage to show up and make their arguments in public, because people don't like to be on the outside.

I know that's a lot to do by next week, but do as much as you can, and remember that you can bring this issue back if you are initially rejected.

 

[DMSelena]

Sorry to filibuster here, but more hopefully-useful thoughts:

Think about how chickens can add value to the community, or are at least value-neutral.

Many municipalities are strapped for cash these days, and even if they aren't, City Councils love new revenue sources and they really don't like things that cost money.

I point this out because that's why I listed the things I did in my prior post for you to address. All of these things are ways chickens could cost the community money.

With this in mind, crafting an ordinance that includes permitting fees and fines is a good way to offset costs.

Say, there's a $50 permitting fee for keeping no more than 6 mature hens, 8 pullets, or 12 sexed female chicks at a time. Describe the necessary housing facilities per mature hen. I'd say a free-range ban isn't necessary, since rooster-less flocks that wander around freely aren't going to last long anyway, what with predators. However, you can include it so that people aren't given nightmares of chickens pooping on their Lexus.

Example: fines might be $75 for first-time infractions, $150 for second time, and a $500 fine for third infractions plus a lifetime ban on owning chickens. I'm just making up these numbers, but you want to make it so that it stings enough to prevent people from doing it, but not so high that the municipality might be tempted to use it as a source of tasty income by over-policing chicken owners.

Keeping a rooster incurs a fine and the mandatory confiscation and destruction of the rooster.

While you might shrink from the "mandatory destruction" bit, the trouble with more humane options, like just surrendering the bird to animal control, is that this tends to result in the local animal shelter filling up with unwanted roosters, especially around three months after easter. That's a cost to the public. We don't want costs associated with resolving ordinance infractions, so unless the fine is steep enough to include the costs of caring for a rooster for the course of its natural life, it's probably easiest to just have the roos euthanized upon confiscation.

Recommend the definition of "rooster" for the ordinance, otherwise it will be invented by the City, and that can get weird. We know that different breeds can be sexed by certain ages, and that some take longer than others to crow, but a Council left to their own devices might define a rooster as "a male chicken that has reached 8 weeks of age" or something equally not useful. An easy definition is a male chicken that crows.

I'd consider including a ban on caponization, too. Not that backyard chickeneers do much of that in the US, but it's an easy giveaway that shows goodwill and humane concern for the critters.

If it were me, I'd throw in a ban on gamefowl breeds. Another easy giveaway that prevents questions about cock fighting. Otherwise, there's not much cause to get into breed-specific bans/allowances.

If people are concerned with diseases, you might propose that permitting includes mandatory testing for Pullorum-Typhoid, like the USDA requires for people who will sell birds for food: https://agr.wa.gov/foodanimal/avianhealth/pullorumtyphoid.aspx In this case, the permitting fee should include the cost of having the birds tested, otherwise people probably won't comply. Think of it like having your dog vaccinated for rabies.

Changing gears here: when I suggested making a list of communities with these ordinances and tracking property values, I forgot to suggest that you compare the property values post-chicken-allowance to the average increase in property values for similarly situated communities. Without a "control group" to compare it to, you can't really tell if the chickens had an effect. City councils love this kind of data. Especially charts and graphs.

Okay, that's all I have for real this time.

Good luck!