After some clucking, chickens still OK in village

By BILL SCHANEN IV

Ozaukee Press staff

The Village of Fredonia will remain a chicken-friendly community.

Asked whether to repeal the village’s ordinance allowing residents to keep hens on their property, maintain it as is or change it, the Village Board earlier this month chose not only to continue to allow chickens but make it easier to obtain a permit to do so.

Residents will no longer have to receive written permission from their neighbors before applying for a permit, although the board did increase the annual permit fee from $15 to $25.

In a light-hearted memo to the board, Village Administrator Christophe Jenkins, who noted there has been significant discussion recently about whether to continue allowing chickens in the village, did not make a recommendation.

“From an administration standpoint, we have no feeling one way or another and will be happy to EGGecute either process after a decision is made and no one CHICKENS OUT,” Jenkins wrote. “Thank you for your consideration — I am done YOKING around.”

The ordinance, which has been on the books for about 10 years, allows residents to keep a maximum six hens each on their properties after receiving a permit.

The chickens must be hens that are kept in a coop. While they can be raised on  single-family home lots, they cannot be kept in mobile home parks, on vacant lots unless the owner lives on an abutting property, multifamily residential properties and in nonresidential areas of the village except with special Village Board approval.

Residents cannot sell eggs from their chickens.

The ordinance was the source of a recent complaint, Jenkins said, but the village also received comments and letters supporting the ordinance.

One of those letters came from Milwaukee Street resident Justina Kabanuk, who said she has raised chickens in the past and would like to do so again.

Arguing in favor of continuing to allow village residents to raise chickens and streamlining the permitting process, Kabanuk wrote that six hens kept in a well-maintained coop do not create noxious odors and, because they are not roosters, are not loud.

She noted that dogs create more noise when they bark as well as more waste than chickens.