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Chickens are coming home to roost
Prince William County is poised to follow the growing national trend by allowing chickens in the suburbs.
Last month, the Prince William Planning Commission took up a request to change zoning laws so residents can keep chickens in their yards.
Vic Cole is one of the leaders of the pro-chicken movement in Prince William.
“I had chickens growing up and they were pets and we enjoyed them very much,” he said.
More recently, a coworker from Stafford began bringing him fresh eggs and that started him thinking that he'd like chickens again.
The problem is, Prince William County only allows chickens and other fowl in agricultural areas.
That means if your house sits on five acres, you can't have chickens in your backyard. Chickens are only allowed on five-acre parcels that are zoned agricultural and that don't have houses.
“We're just asking that things be loosened up,” Cole said. “For Pete's sake, New York City allows chickens.”
Keeping chickens is part of a growing trend that has sprung out of the organic and environmental movements. City-dwellers and suburbanites are looking to chickens to help fertilize organic gardens and to provide fresh eggs.
If the county's zoning ordinance is changed, Prince William would allow chickens to be kept on smaller parcels of land -- probably one acre, Cole said.
Residents would still need a permit to keep their chickens but that wouldn't be hard to come by unless neighbors object. And the number of chickens allowed would be limited by the size of the land.
Six chickens per acre seems the likely number Prince William will settle on, said Cole, who was planning to meet this week with the county planner in charge of drawing up the ordinance.
At last month's Planning Commission meeting, commissioners discussed the proposal but got bogged down in some of the details.
The new ordinance would allow not only chickens, but also turkeys, pigeons, doves, geese and ducks.
The original proposal was to allow up to 10 chickens on lots of two to five acres. Different numbers of each type of bird would be allowed.
So a two-acre lot could have 10 chickens but only five ducks.
That raised some questions for commissioners who wondered whether the homeowner could have 10 chickens or five ducks; or whether they'd be allowed 10 chickens and five ducks.
Or what about two chickens and one duck?
“Can you mix and match?” asked Gainesville Commissioner Martha Hendley.
That possibility hadn't been considered.
She also pointed out that the ordinance doesn't include provisions for peacocks, emus, guinea hens, partridges or ostriches.
“I've left out penguins,” she said. “I don't think we have penguins.”
The ordinance does specify that the chickens -- and other birds -- can only be kept as pets on parcels smaller than five acres; they can't be slaughtered.
The other issues, including whether the minimum lot size will be two acres or one acre, are still being hammered out.
And the ordinance will not trump local homeowners association rules so neighborhoods with HOAs will still be able to ban chickens, ostriches and penguins.
But regardless, the word “chicken” will also include roosters.
While some said that a rooster crowing from a neighbor's yard will be no more disturbing than a dog barking, others pointed out that anyone who's ever lived near a rooster would say that isn't true.
Cole argued that the major difference is that people are used to hearing dogs and so they don't notice it. The same will happen with roosters, he said.
No one spoke against the ordinance at the Planning Commission hearing and while the details still need to be worked out, it seems clear that it will be supported by the commissioners.
The Board of County Supervisors will also have to approve the final ordinance but as they were the ones who asked the commission to take it up in the first place, they are likely to support it as well.
A date for the next public hearing has not yet been set.
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