Brittney Hantak wanted one thing for certain when she and her husband bought their bungalow three years ago on Chicago’s Northwest Side: to keep chickens in their backyard and create, as she put it, “a little urban homestead.”
Their coop, made of reclaimed materials, houses 12 chickens, who strut quietly around the grassy lawn when they are let out each afternoon for a few hours before dusk.
Some lay eggs that her family collects to eat, while others are “lap” pets, like Piper the snuggly English game hen. A rooster greets the dawn with a cock-a-doodle-doo and serves as protector of his harem, crowing when he detects a hawk or other possible predator — adding a note of countryside to the symphony of city sounds.
The pastoral tableau has become more common in yards across the city as sustainability-minded residents capitalize on Chicago’s live-and-let-live approach to urban farming.
Now, however, some lawmakers are pushing for tighter regulations — and the pro-chicken community is having none of it.
An ordinance introduced last month would ban roosters from residential areas in Chicago and allow a household to keep no more than six hens and two livestock animals, defined as four-legged farm creatures such as pigs, sheep and goats.
A $25 annual livestock permit from the city’s Health Department would be required of each household keeping farm animals, and only single-family homes and two-flats would be eligible. Applicants would have to inform all neighbors within 500 feet of their plans, and a permit would be rejected if a majority objects.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, who co-sponsored the ordinance with Ald. Anthony Napolitano, 41st, said the proposed law is a response to the “growing presence” of livestock in city neighborhoods.
“This ordinance starts from an affirmative standpoint giving residents (the) ability to have a voice on whether or not they want farm animals in their own communities,” Lopez said in an emailed response to questions.
But to Hantak, 31, who works downtown as a real estate appraiser, such restrictions threaten the balance of urban and rural living that she and her husband, an officer with the Cook County sheriff’s office, sought for their 3-year-old son and infant daughter.
“Honestly, I was just sad,” Hantak said of learning of the proposed restrictions, which would force her to get rid of half her flock and her rooster.
“The reason we moved here was because of the support of urban agriculture in the city and the lack of restriction,” she said. “Will this ordinance make it so that we don’t want to live here anymore? I get upset about it.”
Unlike many suburbs that ban chicken and livestock outright, Chicago has few rules governing backyard farm animals. Chicago residents can’t sell animals for slaughter. If they want to sell the eggs their hens lay, they have to do it from home.
Lawmakers in 2007 tried to ban chickens from Chicago’s residential areas, citing concerns about stench and rodents, but chicken lovers across the city mobilized to defeat the proposal. Meanwhile, other municipalities responded to the rising interest in urban farming by loosening restrictions. Evanston in 2010 lifted its chicken ban to allow up to six hens, but no roosters.
The pro-chicken lobby in Chicago is rallying again, arguing that the city’s general animal welfare and noise and nuisance laws, which include a ban on cockfighting and fines for excessive noise, already address issues that might arise.
“Applying and enforcing existing standards is a far preferable avenue than banning and stigmatizing half of an entire species and the communities that keep them, imposing onerous requirements on keepers, and jeopardizing the good work done by rescuers all over the city every day,” said Julia Magnus, general counsel of The Chicago Roo Crew, a rooster rescue and advocacy group. Illinois’ Humane Care for Animals Act, she said, is among the most protective in the nation.
Chicago Roo Crew in June helped Animal Care and Control find homes for more than 100 roosters rescued from a cockfighting ring in West Englewood, some missing eyes and toes, whose owner has been charged with felony animal torture under the state law. The property was in Lopez’s ward.
Rather than limit urban agriculture, Lopez said he wants the ordinance to be “viewed as a catalyst for a broader conversation on the future growth and sustainability of urban agriculture as a positive growth industry in the city — an industry that needs more than variances and special use privileges from bureaucrats within City Hall.”
The proposed caps on hens and livestock were based on how much room the animals would need for proper care when the average city lot is 25×125 square feet, Lopez said.
In addition to regulating backyard livestock, the ordinance would require an urban farm license for spaces used for the commercial production of produce, eggs, milk and dairy products.
Chicago Animal Care and Control, in a statement, said it views the ordinance as a “starting point for a conversation on this issue.” The city said it doesn’t track nuisance complaints for livestock animals specifically.
The ordinance has been referred to the Committee on License and Consumer Protection. Napolitano did not return calls for comment.
Chicken advocates say problems arise when people don’t take proper care of their animals, and educating backyard farmers is a better solution than telling people they can have six chickens but not seven.
Jennifer Murtoff, owner of Home To Roost Urban Chicken Consulting, advises aspiring urban chicken keepers on how to do so responsibly, including locking up the feed at night so as not to attract rats and keeping the coop dry to prevent smells.
Most of her clients keep four to eight chickens and view them as companions as much as a source of eggs, and the community polices itself, she said. If rats and stench are the main concern, she added, that’s a broader city problem.
“Rather than picking on the urban ag folks, why not address cleaning out the alleys,” said Murtoff, who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and currently keeps Japanese quail at her home in Broadview. Broadview is among the suburbs with a chicken ban, so Murtoff’s work allows her to “live vicariously through other people’s chickens,” she said.
No one keeps track of how many Chicago residents keep chickens or other farm animals. But it has become popular enough that Chicagoland Chicken Enthusiasts, a networking group formed in response to the 2007 proposed ban, holds an annual Windy City Coop Tour. Last month it featured 22 chicken keepers in 17 wards, said Martha Boyd, a member of the networking group and a program director at the nonprofit farm education group Angelic Organics Learning Center.
While most people in the enthusiasts group are eco-conscious types who want to know where their food comes from or teach their kids about animal husbandry, there are also a lot of chicken keepers in Latino and Polish immigrant communities for whom farming is a reminder of home, Boyd said.
Jessica Fong, 36, who at any given time keeps eight to 10 chickens in her backyard in the McKinley Park neighborhood, designed her coop to resemble the architecture of Antigua, Guatemala. Her parents are from Guatemala and she learned to love having chickens around during annual trips to the countryside there as a child.
Fong, who also composts, has a rain barrel and grows much of her own food on six raised garden beds, said the lifestyle has been good for her 9-year-old son, who has chores related to the backyard farm and likes eating vegetables and salads.
Eating the eggs from her flock doesn’t save the family money because she feeds her birds organic feed but for families who spend less on feed it is an economical way to get high-quality eggs, she said.
Fong said she thinks the proposed restrictions are “a very misguided attempt at overregulation of something that doesn’t need regulation.”
When neighbors complained that a rooster she had was too loud, she immediately found a new home for him. “We all help each other out in the chicken community,” she said.
Fong, who does workshops in Little Village to teach people how to keep chickens in Chicago’s climate, said she worries that the proposed law would negatively affect immigrant communities the most because they might not know they have to get a permit and be hit with the fines, which range from $100 to $500 per day.
Opponents of the law say the implication is that backyard livestock has a negative effect on communities, when they have seen the opposite.
Laura McAlpine, 59, started keeping chickens 1 1/2 years ago in her side yard in Lincoln Square, for the enjoyment of taking care of animals as well as the fresh eggs. The coop has since turned into a neighborhood attraction, with people bringing food scraps for the birds and some families bringing their kids over to say good night to the chickens just before bedtime.
“We always knew there would be a benefit to us to get fresh eggs but I didn’t anticipate that it would turn into this community, neighborly thing, which is great,” she said.
McAlpine, who has three hens, talked to all the neighbors on her block before getting her chickens, whose coop she cleans weekly. Most people who get into backyard farming don’t do it on a whim, she said.
The regulations, she worries, “would absolutely have a chilling effect on people. Why would they want to put a chilling effect on something sustainable, that leads people to growing vegetables and being more connected to their neighbors?”
aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @alexiaer
