Montgomery Farmers' Market will operate Saturdays 9a - 12:30p June 5th - October 30th at Shelly Lane between Remington and Cooper in downtown Montgomery's historic district. Updates on Twitter and Facebook.
Madeira Farmers' Market will operate Thursdays 3:30 - 7:30p June - October on Dawson Road in downtown Madeira.
Montgomery's City Council last night voted unanimously (7-0) to re-legalize the keeping of chickens in the city, after criminalizing it in July. Residents had objected to criminalizing an activity that was currently legal and had been causing no problems and provided City Council with extensive research showing that chicken-keeping was not a problem in suburban backyards, and City Council listened. Re-legalizing the practice required a public hearing and three readings of the amended ordinance.
Chickens currently being kept illegally in Montgomery will once again be legal starting January 1st, under the following conditions:
Last night, the City of Montgomery's Planning Commission considered what possible exemptions to Montgomery's proposed new "Ordinance Prohibiting Farm Animals" they would recommend to City Council.
We'd done quite a bit of research to try to demonstrate to the Planning Commission that it was absolutely possible to allow chickens without causing a nuisance. Last week, we finished work on a document called "Chickens for Montgomery" and gave copies of it to City Hall to distribute to the Planning Commission and City Council.
I am happy to report that the Planning Commission voted 5 - 1 (one member of the 7-member commission was not in attendance) to recommend the zoning/land use codes be revised to allow up to 6 chickens, no roosters, with chickens required to be contained and enclosures required to be no closer than 15 feet to property lines. We feel this is a very fair outcome, and provides an excellent basis for allowing Montgomery residents to keep chickens while still addressing possible concerns from the rest of the community.
We aren't sure how likely City Council is to accept this recommendation. They have no requirement to do so, I don't think, so we do still need to show them there's support for this. But I am feeling very positive, and very grateful to the Planning Commission for taking what I think is an extremely open-minded approach to the question. I'm sure most of them probably originally thought, when City Council first asked them to consider this issue, that of course Montgomery wouldn't want to allow chickens. But they really listened to us, and last night spent a very long time discussing what additional restrictions might be needed and which possible issues could be addressed by current ordinances regarding noise, odors, setbacks, etc. They asked questions, and they were very fair in considering our responses. For instance, their initial idea for limiting the number of chickens was 4, but when we told them that most day-old chicks could only be sold in quantities of six, they changed their motion to allow up to 6 chickens.
The document -- which my husband is calling my 'Chicken Manifesto' -- is unfortunately at 12MB too large to be uploaded to any free file-sharing sites, but I've got it in both a .pdf file and a Word 2008 file, so if anyone wants a copy, please email me and tell me which version you'd like me to email you. (If you don't have Word 2008, I'd recommend asking for the .pdf file, as converting it to Word 2004 causes significant formatting changes which make the document much less usable.)
And if anyone has server space and would like to host this document so that it can be downloaded and used as a template by other chicken-keeping groups trying to change their town's laws, let me know! Anyone interested in using it for their own efforts on behalf of chicken-keepers should feel free to do so with my blessing. My sincere thanks to Chickens In The Yard, whose own similar document provided a template from which to work.
I've been doing a lot of research on chicken-keeping in Greater Cincinnati over the past few weeks since the City of Montgomery proposed an ordinance prohibiting 'farm animals' (including a few backyard chickens) on lots of less than three acres. As I'm hard pressed to think of even a single noncommercial property of three acres that isn't city-owned, this effectively will prohibit residents from keeping backyard chickens.
As one of the key issues for a lot of folks seems to be whether or not chicken-keeping will hurt property values, I started there. Here's what I've found:
Communities which allow chicken-keeping tend to have HIGHER property values than those that prohibit it.Here's the data (please do call any mistakes to my attention -- this is the best I could determine from various communities' ordinances as posted online):
| Suburb | Chicken-Keeping Ordinances* | 2007 Average Home Sales Price** |
| Indian Hill | Permit | $1019K |
| Terrace Park | Generally Permit | $ 400K |
| Mariemont | Permit | $ 345K |
| Wyoming | Generally Permit | $ 326K |
| Symmes Township | Permit | $ 313K |
| Montgomery | Generally Permit (currently) | $ 297K |
| Evendale | Generally Permit | $ 288K |
| Glendale | Generally Permit | $ 274K |
| Mason | Essentially Prohibit | $ 213K |
| Madeira | Generally Permit | $ 212K |
| Blue Ash | Case by Case*** | $ 202K |
| Loveland | Generally Permit | $ 174K |
| Fairfield | Essentially Prohibit | $ 166K |
| Sycamore Township | Essentially Prohibit | $ 165K |
| Sharonville | Restricted | $ 157K |
| Milford | Generally Permit | $ 152K |
| Springdale | Essentially Prohibit | $ 144K |
| Reading | Restricted | $ 131K |
| Deer Park | Generally Permit | $ 130K |
| Silverton | Essentially Prohibit | $ 127K |
| St Bernard | Generally Permit | $ 124K |
| Norwood | Prohibit | $ 119K |
| Mt Healthy | Essentially Prohibit | $ 116K |
All over the country more and more of us are interested in keeping backyard chickens, and many cities are adjusting their zoning laws to allow it. The City of Montgomery is doing the opposite. Current law doesn't outlaw chickens, so Montgomery is planning on changing that.
There are so many reasons to find a way to allow rather than forbid backyard chickens. Fresh, pastured organic eggs sustainably raised should be within everyone's grasp, but for many of us -- especially now -- they're unfortunately out of reach. But not if you raise them yourself. Chickens eat bugs, improve the soil, help prevent thatch, and produce organic fertilizer and compost. They have personalities and make easy-care and even affectionate pets. They require very little space: a chicken needs a run smaller than the top of the average kitchen table. They make less mess, smell, and noise than most dogs. If cared for properly they cause no smell or mess at all, and the normal cluck of a laying hen isn't audible from 25 feet -- about the same as normal conversation.
Require that there be no smell. Require that there be no mess. Require that there be no noise -- even require that there be no roosters. Require that they be confined, just like dogs and cats. Require that coops and runs be attractive and well-maintained, just like the requirements for fences. But why require that there be no chickens? This isn't a herd of goats or pigs we're talking about. Most families interested in raising backyard chickens want a couple of 8-pound birds.
I'll be down at Montgomery's City Hall (10101 Montgomery Rd) next Wednesday, May 6th, at 7pm for the Council Business Session if anyone wants to join me. Or send the members of council an email, especially if you're in Montgomery. I'm hoping they'll reconsider.
