Ordinances

Antoinette cleans the kitchen floor. Murphy the "outdoor cat" does nothing - ever.

SO many cities all over the country allow residents to have backyard chickens. Just a FEW examples of MAJOR CITIES are: NYC, LA, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta, Baltimore, Hartford, Indianapolis, Oakland, Boston, Houston, St Louis, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Asheville, Mobile, New Orleans, Chapel Hill, San Francisco, Madison, Honolulu, San Antonio, Charlotte, Seattle, Phoenix, Tampa, San Jose, Portland...

So if all those large cities with small yards can figure out a way to regulate the residence of a few chickens, common sense would dictate that it shouldn't have to be a big deal in our small town of 1 acre+/- yards with protected old growth trees and extensive vegetation.

Common factors of many Chicken Ordinances include:

• a limit on total number of chickens allowed per residence and/or maximum number of chickens allowed without a permit (generally 3 -6). Some cities determine number of chickens by size of lot
  
• no roosters
  
• chickens must be enclosed and not allowed to run free (from yard to yard)
  
• coops must be situated (generally 20 - 25 feet) away from neighbor's residence.
  
• enclosures must be kept in neat and sanitary condition and must be cleaned on a regular basis to prevent offensive odors.
  
• coops and feed must be secured to prevent problems with pests and predators.
  
• no slaughtering
  

There are, of course, many variations to the above. The point is - it's going on all over the country and there is WAY more information on the benefits of back yard chickens than the detriments - because, well, there are no detriments...

"They're so productive for the garden," said Owen Taylor, training and livestock coordinator of Just Food, a New York-based non-profit group. http://www.justfood.org/jf/ "They aerate the soil, eat bugs and they look like little tractors, tilling the soil."

"You hear the same argument (that) they're loud, they smell ... that there would be wild chickens running amok in Seattle, but that hasn't been the case,' said Angelina Shell, of Seattle Tilth, a non-profit organic gardening and urban ecology group. http://www.seattletilth.org/events/citychickenstour

May 3rd of this year, Georgia Organics http://www.georgiaorganics.org/events/event.php?id=535 hosted a tour of chickens coops in Atlanta and Decatur, GA called "Chicks in the City".

The Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting/frightening article on wealthy chicken owners and their stylish backyards http://homes.wsj.com/homegarden/20020603-bhatia.html and the New York Times has an article that I found pretty honest and realistic about families in Darien, CT with chickens. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/17ctchickens.html.

There are plenty more articles, but for now - I recommend watching this breif, cute documentury from Missoula, MT about the legalization of their backyard chickens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJJm3fz0w9I