Former Ann Arbor city councilman Stephen Kunselman during Thursday's "Don't Let the Law run Afowl," at the Portage Library. He spoke of an amendment for cities animal control ordinance to allow for 4 hens in the backyard of single/duplex residential zoned properties. (Thomas Doherty/Western Herald)
A local food group wants people to know their legal rights – to own chickens.
Fair Food Matters held “Don’t Run Afowl of the Law,” a presentation on keeping chickens legally, Thursday at the Portage District Library.
Stephen Kunselman, the Ann Arbor city councilman who championed the city’s chicken ordinance in 2008, discussed how a self-described city slicker got interested in chickens.
“I’ve always been interested in the environment,” Kunselman said.
“I did get my first chicken as a gift when I worked in a little rural community near Ann Arbor. It was a little Rhode Island [Red] chick. I didn’t tell anybody I had her because it was sort of illegal for me to have her, and I named her Priscilla.”
Priscilla quickly became a part of Kunselman’s family.
“She’d sit on the couch with our dog and she’d look out the door waiting for us to come back,” Kunselman said. “But eventually I had to send my chicken away to political exile, and I made a promise to bring my chicken back someday.”
Kunselman first brought up the idea for the ordinance at the city council’s annual retreat in December 2007, around the time the localvore (locally grown food) movement started up in Ann Arbor.
By the time Kunselman had researched similar ordinances, he faced opposition from more conservative council members and public opposition when the ordinance went to a public hearing.
“People spoke against it because of concerns over the Avian Bird Flu, noises,” Kunselman said. “There was a lot of misinformation about the topic, it was tabled once or twice and eventually went to council vote.”
Ann Arbor’s chicken ordinance allows citizens to purchase a permit to keep up to four chickens, but also requires them to get waivers for the chickens from their adjacent neighbors.
“The clinchpin was the neighbor waiver,” Kunselman said. “That way chickens wouldn’t show up next to somebody who didn’t want them. The permits are good for five years, but can be revoked if there is an enforcement issue.”
Carrie Maxa, a chicken flock owner from Pavilion Township, discussed the technical aspects of owning chickens.
“I want to keep chickens around because I like fresh eggs,” Maxa said. “They’re higher in beta-carotene, lower in cholesterol and they taste much better. I can’t eat store-bought eggs anymore. They taste too watery.”
That supply of eggs should come on a fairly regular basis.
“Allegedly, if you have three hens, you’ll get one egg a day,” Maxa said. “Sometimes they’ll surprise you with three eggs a day. Sometimes you won’t get any.”
Prospective chicken owners don’t need to drive themselves and their neighbors crazy with roosters, either.
“You absolutely do not need a rooster to get eggs,” Maxa said. “It’s a natural process that birds and fish are going to ovulate. Some people argue that they’ll get the hens excited and give you an egg every day, but I’ve never had one long enough to find out. They always do something to drive you nuts, and I hate being attacked by my own animals.”
Maxa also discussed slaughtering the birds, which she does through a third party.
“I understand that we get attached to these birds, but there’s a point when they don’t lay as much,” Maxa said. “I get kind of tired of feeding them if they aren’t feeding us, so that’s when we eat them.”
Suzanne Klein, an attorney for Howard & Howard, LLC, went over the legal requirements to own chickens.
“There’s no black and white kind of rule,” Klein said. “There weren’t any ordinances exactly the same in Kalamazoo County.”
According to a handout researched by Klein, chickens may be kept in the City of Kalamazoo, Parchment and Oshtemo Township under certain circumstances, while chickens are not allowed in residential areas of Kalamazoo Township and Portage.
Klein suggested citizens looking to own chickens to research zoning ordinances in their city and request a variance if the code doesn’t fit, something very hard to get, Klein said.
“If you know you’re not going to get it, it’ll at least let the zoning commission and planning commission know there is an interest,” Klein said. “None of this is radical stuff, it’s just telling your city commissioners what you want to do.”
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