Signal Mountain suburbanite lobbies council for right to raise chickens

Patrick Hagan is like many young suburbanites: He works as an accountant, is happily married, lives on Signal Mountain and has two young children.

And, like a growing number of suburbanites nationwide, Mr. Hagan wants to keep chickens.

In September, he approached the Signal Mountain Town Council with a signed petition and a proposal for a new ordinance that would allow residents to keep poultry and fowl in their backyards.

“I started thinking, ‘Well, I’ve got two options: I can do it and try to hide it or I can go to the Town Council and address the council and make a proposal.’ So that’s what I did.”

As interest in sustainable agriculture has grown in recent years, it has spread from organic farms and supermarkets to backyards across America, where office workers such as Mr. Hagan are planting gardens and growing more of their own food.

The push to keep chickens is part of the movement and has given birth to urban chicken blogs, stylish chicken coops, lots of debate and poultry ordinances in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Wake Forest, N.C.

After researching the laws in other cities, Mr. Hagan, 29, drew up possible provisions for the new ordinance that would prohibit roosters, limit the number of birds to four, prevent poultry from running at large and require owners to keep their flocks at least 100 feet from all neighboring borders.

Signal Mountain Mayor Bill Lusk, who initially was skeptical about how chickens would fit in with the town’s subdivisions, said he had a change of heart after reviewing the research. He said the council still might ban geese and ducks, which he said are more likely to cause a nuisance.

“I’m not a proponent of that,” he said. “They seem to make a little more noise than do hens.”

URBAN CHICKENS

For urban farmers such as Thomas Kriese, a manager at a financial investment firm in Redwood City, Calif., whose blog www.urbanchickens.net gets about 140 visitors a day, keeping chickens offers a host of benefits for their owners, not the least of which are the eggs.

“If you’ve ever had a fresh egg, you’ll know the difference between what we buy in the store and what you get out of the bird. It’s far superior,” said Mr. Kriese, who keeps two chickens on his 6,000-square-foot lot in the suburbs.

Chickens also are great at killing insects and keeping backyard weeds under control, Mr. Kriese said. More important, though, is the education they provide his daughters, 6 and 4, about where food comes from, he said.

“The chickens eat the table scraps, and they give us eggs and manure, and the manure goes on the garden, the garden gives us the vegetables that go onto the table and (form the table scraps),” he said.

Mr. Hagan said online resources such as Mr. Kriese’s blog helped him learn more about the issue and inspired him to advocate for a similar ordinance at home.

Many cities in Tennessee allow poultry, according to Signal Mountain Town Manager Honna Rogers, but require that they be kept at least 1,000 feet from any home, place of business or public street.

In Chattanooga, poultry are allowed only on agricultural land or on property larger than five acres, according to city code. In 2005, the city revised its code to limit livestock within residential areas after council members said they received complaints about Hispanic immigrants keeping chickens, rabbits and other animals in their backyards, according to City Councilman Jack Benson.

“They became a nuisance, especially the rooster crowing at all hours of the morning and waking the neighbors up,” said Mr. Benson, whose district includes East Brainerd. “You have the right to use your property as you wish and as it’s zoned, but your actions on it, if it diminishes the value of the adjacent property in lifestyle or value, then you have to look to see what you can do to keep that from happening.”

Since the code was revised, Mr. Benson said, the complaints have stopped.

POULTRY POSITIVES

Mr. Kriese said his experiment in California has been a learning experience for his neighbors as well — a positive one, he thinks.

“I think most people associate chicken smells with the big chicken farms they drive next to in the summertime with the windows down,” he said. “But if you’ve ever been to a kennel with a lot of dogs and cats, it just smells bad because there are a whole lot of them in one place. But when you only have two, it doesn’t smell bad at all.”

The urban chicken issue also sparked a recent debate in Sewanee, Tenn., where resident Katherine Alvarez led a campaign last summer to “Save the Sewanee Chickens.” Ms. Alvarez argued, successfully, that her backyard chickens were pets and therefore did not fall under the town’s ban on “livestock.”

On Signal Mountain, all five members of the Town Council said they support the premise of the ordinance, but they need to hammer out the details before making a decision. Animal control, noise and enforcement are among the issues the council will discuss at its next work session Jan. 27 at 9 a.m., according to Ms. Rogers.

“I have no doubt Mr. Hagan is going to take excellent care of his animals and that he would be a good steward of this,” Ms. Rogers said. “But any time we do an ordinance, we need to write it for everyone in the town, and what if someone were on an acre and didn’t take care of their animals? Or it got out of control? Are we going to be able to enforce that?”

The council members also said they need to hear from residents such as Carol Coleman, who furrowed her brow at the thought of chickens living next door.

“Wouldn’t they be noisy?” she said. “I think it’s more of a rural thing, not (something that belongs) in suburbia.”

Mr. Hagan, who lives on a 1.5-acre lot in the Timberlinks subdivision, disagreed, pointing out that most neighborhood covenants would preclude chickens anyway.

“Talking about the noise is just crazy,” he said. “They make this muffled little chirping noise, and they’re two feet off the ground. I mean, how far is that going to carry?”