City Issued a Citation and claims we aren’t allowed to have chickens due to neighbor’s complaint. What are my options?

[All4Eggz]

Just a thought. Are you sure it's this neighbour that complained? I'm just thinking someone called the city on your neighbour to make them get rid of their chickens. Maybe it's that same neighbour who complained about your roosters. The city isn'y allowed to state which neighbour complained, so it could be another neighbour. At any rate, the city can't do anything unless they can prove serious neglect.

The guy from the city made a comment about how he heard my father is a “good plumber”. My father has only done plumbing for that neighbor specifically, and she’s closest to the chickens.
The other neighbors are not very close and I doubt rats would get that far to their garages and they’d blame it on the chickens..

 

[wkyongae]

Some time last year the city came because of a noise complaint, demanding we get rid of almost all the flock and all the roosters. We had almost 10 roosters, had to get rid of all of them.
Had about 60 chickens, they said we can only have 15 so we brought it down to about 20 and the guy let us slide. He’s a nice guy, always is trying to help us and doing everything he can to let us keep the chickens.

That was sometime last year. We’ve had chickens for around a decade so we thought we’re off the hook. City clearly said we are allowed 15 hens because of the size of the coop and property, multiple inspections followed the complaint last year.

Some back story. Fresh eggs are huge in our family. Chickens are a big deal here. We don’t even eat store bought eggs, before they would even make some of our stomachs hurt.
So I am trying to do anything I can to keep these hens. We don’t sell eggs anymore, no profit from them. Just the fresh eggs, and occasionally, meat.

I am just needing help on how I can fight them this time…

It’s the same neighbor complaining this time.
This time there’s rats “coming from the coop and into her garage.” And i don’t deny we have rats, i’ve seen a few here and there. The chickens are close to her property line but we have double fencing to divide both sides.
The guy from the city claimed she provided “evidence” of the rats because she took photos/videos of them in her garage.
HOW is this evidence that they’re coming from our coop, and how is that enough to force us to get rid of all our chickens?

The man mentioned something about other neighbors being involved, so she must’ve got other people on board to fight against us.

I am willing to do what it takes the keep the 15 that we were allowed in the first place.

Thinking of moving the coop to the other side of the property, it would be almost an acre away from the complaining neighbor’s fencing.
I can get an exterminator for the rats if it I find it to be affordable…. I’ll do this if I need to. I’m not going to do it if I have to get rid of the chickens either way.

Please share your experiences if any, and any insight on what to do/how to do it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

I read most all the replies to your post please be aware I'm trying to help you not condemn you.
1. Get one thing in your head right now. You do not need chickens or eggs you only want them.
2. It is your responsibility to get rid of the rats now. If that means getting rid of the chickens to get rid of the rats so be it.
3. After getting rid of the rats take steps to not get rats again.
4. Reintroduce chickens into your life rat free.
Note: The process to rid the rats is not easy you could be told by the city to get rid of your neighborhood rat problem since it seems like it stemmed from you if your neighbors push it.
5. This is what is giving backyard wanna be farmers a bad rap be responsible clean up.

 

[South Dakota Guy]

My unsolicited 2 cents is this: Try to understand your neighbor's point of view. I don't want a neighbor who is noisy, smelly and possibly unsanitary. Do what you can to mitigate your impact on her quality of life. Try to get to know her. Walk over and introduce yourself, bring a carton of your freshest eggs with you. Apologize for the inconvenience you have caused her. Hire a professional pest control contractor and offer his services to your neighbor at your expense, IF you think you are likely the source of her problem. Explain why your home grown eggs and chickens are so important to your family. Stop by and check with her to see if the rodent problem is under control. Show her that you care and perhaps you can stop calls to the city.
Of course, we are dealing with people and she might be one of those people that love to be miserable and make everyone else the same.
Sorry, I had to pause to shudder. Ex wife flashbacks, Yikes!
But if you try to be a good neighbor and she isn't interested then you are no worse off and you can explain to the city guy that you have tried.

 

[wkyongae]

This has been interesting to me. Our farm has always been a quail and guinea farm. But this year we are adding chickens. So, I've been watching alot of YouTube and Google reading about raising heritage chickens. Now as a kid I was born and raised in Ohio on a 100000 starter chicken farm. I listened to my parents deal with all the legalities of such. Now I see people raising chickens in town, near town or in populated areas. Then I noticed that most all these people raise their chickens at the furthest location on their property away from their house. But close to other peoples homes. Gee I wonder why they have problems. Our farm over 100 guineas per year, over 100 quail per year now adding 50 chickens. We might add 25 pheasants to the farm as well. I wouldn't even dream of raising all this near town.

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Get one thing in your head right now. You do not need chickens or eggs you only want them.

I have to disagree with this. While it is their responsibility to control the rat issue, they did state that their family eats a lot of eggs. Anyone who knows how horribly-treated battery hens are can realize that getting fresh eggs is a much better option. The OP could use that to their advantage if possible. Store eggs can be unhealthy if coming from battery hens, who are highly abused and suffer a great deal under the evil of humans. Multiple chickens are stuffed in a cage that is the size of a piece of paper, half of their beak is burned off, they get killed by inhumane ways, etc. All this is evidence that chickens are more than a want—they are a need if you eat a lot of eggs and care about your health.

 

[wkyongae]

I have to disagree with this. While it is their responsibility to control the rat issue, they did state that their family eats a lot of eggs. Anyone who knows how horribly-treated battery hens are can realize that getting fresh eggs is a much better option. The OP could use that to their advantage if possible. Store eggs can be unhealthy if coming from battery hens, who are highly abused and suffer a great deal under the evil of humans. Multiple chickens are stuffed in a cage that is the size of a piece of paper, half of their beak is burned off, they get killed by inhumane ways, etc. All this is evidence that chickens are more than a want—they are a need if you eat a lot of eggs and care about your health.

Well we raise quail for meat and eggs. The quail eggs is mostly for my wife. Helps my wife with extreme grass allergies. The argument is just not there to support a need thought with chicken eggs. I do have a question thou. Is there a humane way to kill anything to include plants. Nope when we're at the top of the food chain in our area we kill everything. Get around large predators they don't concern themselves with humane killing including when they kill us so there you have it 63 years of farm life.

 

[aart]

2. It is your responsibility to get rid of the rats now. If that means getting rid of the chickens to get rid of the rats so be it.

The rats are not only in the OP's yard, but throughout the neighborhood.

 

[wkyongae]

T

The rats are not only in the OP's yard, but throughout the neighborhood.t

The rats are not only in the OP's yard, but throughout the neighborhood.

Sometimes it is just awful to be a farmer and take the blame. I say welcome to farming he had a good run for many years. But now he must pay the price of raising chickens in town. Just plain stupid.

 

[wkyongae]

Look he admitted he has a rat problem and I'm sure there is alot more he is not saying. If I lived in that neighborhood I'd push so hard against him he might as well leave. And this is coming from someone with sixty years of farming and a whole family of farmers. Sometimes to save the tree you gotta prune the limbs that doesn't help the tree. It just took a decade to trim the tree. Looks to me the tree needed trimed years ago.

 

[CHICKENX2005]

Well we raise quail for meat and eggs. The quail eggs is mostly for my wife. Helps my wife with extreme grass allergies. The argument is just not there to support a need thought with chicken eggs. I do have a question thou. Is there a humane way to kill anything to include plants. Nope when we're at the top of the food chain in our area we kill everything. Get around large predators they don't concern themselves with humane killing including when they kill us so there you have it 63 years of farm life.

How would you like to be trapped in a cage by a bunch of giant aliens and live there in your tiny cage with a bunch of other humans suffering and being treated horrible until one day they finally decided that they don't need you anymore and you in up food for their pets or something. Just saying...... but you can think whatever you want to..don't really care..