| 12/22/2009 1:50:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Doing the chicken dance in Maplewood
Derrick Knutson
Review staff
Turn around, flap your wings, shake your tail feathers. . . and get ready to dance the narrow line between chicken fanciers and suburbanites who prefer their fowl to be songbird species.
Maplewood is among metro cities encountering a renewed interest in backyard chicken raising.
New interest
Whether the chicken or the egg came first, Maplewood certainly started out as a semi-rural enclave, situated between the outskirts of St. Paul and the planned community of North St. Paul's Silver Lake district. Many farms dotted the landscape, and, until well into the postwar building boom, chickens probably weren't considered out of place.
Now, however, the Environmental Natural Resources Commission would have to revise current zoning that bans raising chickens in residential areas. The commission is planning to discuss possibile revisions in January.
City Planner Shann Finwall said the discussions arose from several residents asking city staff about the regulations.
One of those interested residents is Jay Jeanetta.
Jeanetta said there is a large upside to being able to raise backyard chickens. He maintains that eggs from free-range chickens are healthier than those produced on industrial chicken farms.
"The end product is much better," he said.
He said raising a few chickens in a small, backyard coop could also be a family-oriented activity, and children could learn about where food actually comes from.
"If you ask a kid where an egg comes from, they'll probably say Rainbow Foods or Cub," he said.
He also said chicken manure is great fertilizer, and he'd use it on his property because he's an avid gardener.
Jeanetta added he has done some research on raising chickens, and he plans to do more before presenting his ideas to the Maplewood ENRC in January.
Jeanetta said a healthy, happy chicken would produce one egg about every 25 hours, as long as they're kept in a coop that has the lights on for enough of the day, and if the temperature is kept at the right degree.
Finwall said some cities in the metro, such as St. Paul and Shoreview, allow limited numbers of hen chickens in residential areas.
St. Paul allows raising chickens as long as 75 percent of residents within 150 feet of where the chickens are housed agree the birds won't have a foul effect on the neighborhood.
Chicken complaints
Jeanetta said he hasn't heard much from city officials he's talked to about residents having complaints about hen chickens, but Finwall said not everyone is a fan of the birds.
Finwall mentioned she had talked to a Maplewood city code enforcement officer who had to corral a chicken found scampering around the Party Time Liquors property just off busy White Bear and Larpenteur avenues last summer, and he wasn't a fan of having great numbers of the birds in the city.
Finwall said the officer told her once a chicken is captured, it has to be impounded so its owners have a chance to reclaim it. If it is not claimed by anyone, then Maplewood has to euthanize it at city expense.
Bob Kessler, the head of St. Paul's Department of Safety and Inspection, told the Review in September that his department can get as many as 2-3 calls a week about chickens escaping from their owners' properties and ambling through yards and city streets.
How many would be allowed?
Maplewood now has limits on the number of pets residents can keep, and would probably place restrictions on the number of chickens if the City Council decides to allow the birds.
For example, Finwall said residents can have two dogs over three months of age on a residentially zoned property, and the same is true for cats.
Jeanetta said he realizes changing the ordinance likely won't be a speedy process, but, for him and others interested in raising a few backyard hens, the pros far outweigh the cons.
"This probably isn't going to be something that's going to go off with any problems whatsoever," he said. "It's going to take a little work."
Derrick Knutson can be reached at dknutson@lillienews.com or at 651-748-7825.
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