Al,

Try the link below. Maybe they can help.

Eric

Here is a link that might be useful: Urban chicken underground

Best of luck to you. Do you mind sharing where you live? There's a rooster ban where we live (Dallas, TX), but I could easily see them banning hens in the near future. It'd be easier than fixing potholes and catching those pesky carjackers, right?

Al, I don't know if you'd consider us urban enough, but here in Andover, MA you do not need a permit to own chickens. I keep thinking our days are numbered though.....lots of McMansions popping up around here. We are 25 minutes north of Boston.

-Sheila

Andover is more urban than we are. We have 1500 people in town. I'm in Guilford, about 45 miles north of Bangor.

They enacted this ordinance before I got here, or I'd have protested it at the time. It just sort of slid through as part of a larger ordinance. The ordinance starts out saying it wants to "preserve the rural aspect of our town" and then goes on to ban poultry and livestock in the water district. Nothing to do with sanitation, just a convenient boundary. Nobody has been able to explain the rationale behind the ban, it apparently just seemed a good idea to someone. They made an exemption for lots over 5 acres, but even that requires a variance. What bothers me is that it as easily have been the whole town and 10 acres - then it would impact me.

Funny thing, small towns - some things get legs and become the talk of the town, but 95% of stuff just sort of happens in plain sight, yet somehow under the radar.

in one city i lived of 1/2 mil, they banned farm animals and such in a rural area that was becoming more citified. BUT, all the places who already had them were grandfathered in. as long as the property stayed in the family, and you still kept animals on the property, you were legal. if either of those changed, then you were no longer exempt.

i think that where i live in probably twenty years that the town will have reached far enough where i am to make some animals illegal, too. but i have always figured that a similar variance will be put into effect.

also, in places i've lived that have made rules regarding housing, it only effected new homes not the ones that were already there. so i would think it's pretty standard for those things to not be retroactive or to get a variance if they are.

I had legal chickens in San Diego. Google "San Diego" and zoning. There was a limit of 25 and they had to be at least 50 ft from any housing structure. I lived at the top of a canyon and the girls lived down in the canyon. I used to give fresh eggs to my next door neighbor, the assistant city D.A.

They were a bit noisier than I would have liked first thing in the morning although noise later in the day was usually an indication that someone with nefarious intention was visiting them. You get to see lots of predators when you have chickens.