Community Corner

Planners Say Residents Should be Allowed to Keep Chickens

City Council to get revised ordinance that reduces coop distance restriction.

Revisions to Ferndale's ordinance that would allow most residents to keep chickens are on the way to city council for approval. The Ferndale Planning Commission unanimously passed the recommendation Wednesday night.

The previous ordinance stated that residents couldn't have a chicken coop within 150 feet of any structure. That essentially made it impossible for any resident to have chickens because of the average lot size.

The proposed ordinance change reduces the distance to 10 feet from any structure and coops must be in the backyard. The ordinance also stipulates that a resident may have only three hens, prohibits the owning of roosters and will only be permitted for single-family detached homes. The chicken permits will be valid for a year and can be renewed.

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The public comment

Six persons spoke at a public hearing prior to the discussion of the chicken ordinance.

Former mayor and current 43rd District Court Judge Chuck Goedert was the first to speak, telling a story about his childhood neighbors raising chickens. He said the chickens were smelly, they were loud and the neighbors were not responsible chicken owners.

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Goedert said he is concerned about enforcement.

"It doesn't work in an urban setting," Goedert said. "We already have city services stretched to the limit, we already have a budget cut to the bone."

Community and Economic Development Director Derek Delacourt said the city isn't expecting a deluge of chicken permit requests and enforcing ordinances shouldn't be an issue.

"We have two, 40-hour a week code enforcement officers. They travel sections of the city every day. They know the homes, they know the property owners. I don't see this being a huge additional burden. That is, of course, if we don't get 500 permits in the city," Delacourt said.

Is it too noisy?

Resident and self-proclaimed chicken lady Laura Mikulski said chickens are not overly noisy.

"Hens never crow and are generally quiet animals. The sound is short lived and never occurs at night. Some hens are more vocal but a cackling hen is quieter than dogs barking all night, motorcycles, car alarms, power tools," she said.

Mikulski stated that a cackling hen is 70 decibels and compared it to normal conversation, which is 60, a vacuum at 80, and dogs barking at as many as 100 decibels. Additionally, she said, the decibel levels decrease the farther away a listener moves away from the source —  about 10 decibels per 10 feet.

Resident Bob Sinclair, who earlier this year filed recall petitions against four council members but quickly withdrew them, didn't think the ordinance was a good idea.

"Ferndale already has a bad rat problem and a bad feral cat problem that doesn't take care of the bad rat problem," he said. "If you want to have chickens, move out of Ferndale and live in the country. This is an urban area, this is not a farm. I believe in urban farming but not livestock."

Resident Ido Meron didn't agree.

"This is an opportunity for a good pet and healthy, natural foods," he said.

Chicken proponents tout fresh eggs and fresh chicken meat as benefits of raising chickens. According to the Oakland County 4-H Poultry Club, a healthy hen can produce four to seven eggs a week.

Cut your grass, then raise chickens?

Resident Tom Gagne said that if the city wanted to permit residents to raise chickens, he requested that they find a way to require that resident to be in compliance with all other city codes — for example, having the grass cut.

"If their yards are a mess, that they have these other things taken care of before they have hens," he said. "I've seen lawns that have gone nuts, front porches are like storage rooms or garage, weeds out of control — these do not lend to the quality of our community."

Delacourt said that he wasn't sure if that would be possible and would check with the city attorney.

Other cities have adopted chicken ordinances including Ypsilanti and Madison Heights.

"Both communities have stated that 20 or less permits have been pulled and zero to very few complaints came from it," Delacourt said.

The next step for the revisions to the chicken ordinance will be for the council to discuss and decide whether to approve or deny what the planning commission has recommended. The next Council meeting is Sept. 26.

Correction: In a previous version of this story Chuck Goedert name was misspelled. It has been corrected.


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