Carrboro Considering More Chicken-Friendly Ordinance

If you live in Carrboro, and you’d like to keep your own chickens for non-commercial purposes, you can rest assured that the Board of Aldermen is considering ways to make that easier for you.

“I mean, a lot of people do not live on 10,000-square-foot lots in this town,” said Carrboro Alderperson Damon Seils at Tuesday night’s Board of Aldermen work session, “but can very humanely and safely keep chickens.”

For several years, 10.000 square feet has been the required lot size for keeping chickens within Carrboro town limits.

Recently, the Animal Control Board of Appeals considered two requests for keeping chickens on residential property.

The applicants learned that their lots are not big enough. So the Board of Appeals brought the matter to Town Hall Tuesday night.

One thing the Alderpersons and Mayor Lydia Lavelle seemed to agree on early in the discussion is that the 10,000-square-foot lot requirement seemed arbitrary, and Town Attorney Michael Brough later confirmed that.

So the question was: How to re-regulate the housing of chickens on residential lots.

“One of the concepts that’s used in other local governments is that there is actually some square-footage requirement per chicken, and that’s one of the things that the Animal Control Board of Appeals discussed,” said Carrboro Planning Director Trish McGuire.

Alderperson Sammy Slade said he’d done some research into the humane care and keeping of chickens, and found that 10 square feet per chicken for the run, and four square feet of space per chicken in the coop are considered reasonable.

Alderperson Michelle Johnson said that during a recent meeting on the subject, Police Chief Walter Horton had recommended a cap on the number of chickens allowed on a lot.

“I know Chapel Hill’s maximum is 10,” said Johnson, “but they don’t have a square footage requirement.”

Alderperson Jacquie Gist warned against possible unintended consequences for setting caps. She spoke up for a large local property that is home to many chickens. The owners, she said, even rescue fowl.

So Slade offered that a revised ordinance should simply ensure that each space is appropriate for the number of fowl a property owner wishes to keep.

Seils said he favors regulated setbacks over lot-size requirements. He added that he also liked the idea of only requiring permits for people who want to keep more than three-or-four chickens.

“I’m kind of for not having a lot of rules here,” he said.

While other alderpersons concurred, there were also concerns expressed about neighborhood chicken farming, Chickens could attract unwanted attention from predators – domestic outdoor cats, and, even worse, rabid foxes, or coyotes.

Alderperson Bethany Chaney said that it would probably be wise for the town to keep track of how many chickens were living in Carrboro. And she cracked herself up by the way she phrased that:

“I think we want to be able to gauge, you know – is there some kind of critical mass of chickens in town?”

Despite those concerns, the Board voted unanimously to direct town staff to draft a new version of the ordinance that would strike the requirement on lot size. Instead, they want to come up with a square-footage-per-chicken requirement. The Board will also seek advice from the Planning Department on setbacks.

An old requirement that eggs laid by chickens on a lot within town limits could only be consumed by people living on that lot will also be tweaked, to allow chicken owners to give away eggs for free, if they wish.

Carrboro Considering More Chicken-Friendly Ordinance

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