Backyard Hens vs. the State Depredation Law

4 Chesapeake Hens and other regional chicken groups are calling for action on the state level to change the  state depredation law. The reasons will be clear when you read below. Click this link to find the name of your state delegate or senator.

Dear (State Senator and/or Delegate):

I am contacting you because I support backyard hens in residential areas of Virginia. Please amend Virginia Code 3.2-6552 to exclude residential areas. The code was written to protect farmers and their livestock, but it is written in a way that is causing concern among Animal Control Officers in my own community and elsewhere. It is also preventing communities like nearby Virginia Beach from changing their laws to allow residential hens. As the state law is currently written, it is the "duty of" an Animal Control Officer who witnesses a dog killing a chicken to kill the dog immediately. Also, property owners or other witnesses who see a dog killing chickens also have the right to kill the dog. While this law makes sense in areas zoned agricultural, it makes little sense in residential areas where the use of firearms is prohibited. The state law also conflicts with animal cruelty laws. The law has become outdated; many urban areas, including Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Richmond, and many others, allow backyard hens.

Delegate DeSteph is the delegate who is most familiar with this issue. Please, act immediately to change this outdated ordinance in a way that protects the interests of our farmers while protecting dogs and their owners in residential areas. By doing this, you will open the door to allowing backyard hens in residential areas of Virginia Beach and elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

**Update on 1/15/14: Here is a response I just received from our district's state senator. Unfortunately, we do not have a delegate at the moment because of recent elections (ours got elected for another office and the spot has not yet been filled).

Dear Mrs. Burke,

Thank you for contacting me to express support for legislation that would allow backyard hens in residential areas.  Your feedback is greatly appreciated. If presented with the opportunity to vote on amendments to Virginia Code 3.2-6552 during the 2014 General Assembly, I will most certainly keep your views and recommendations in mind.

Again, thank you for your correspondence. For additional legislative information or to follow the progress of legislation, you may visit the Virginia General Assembly website at http://virginiageneralassembly.gov. If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Cooper Alexander

Member, Senate of Virginia

Update: in February of 2014, both the Virginia House and Senate voted to give ACOs the option to seize the dog instead of killing it.

Dog vs. Hens Again?

I started a group, 4 Chesapeake Hens, that successfully lobbied City Council to allow up to six hens on all single-family residential lots with certain restrictions. But Council passed the ordinance with a sunset clause. This means that Council must vote by December 20, 2013, to continue the law, or our rights to keep the hens will lapse. On Tuesday, November 19, Council held a work session regarding the hen ordinance. They met with the Zoning Administrator, the Head of the Department of Development and Permits, and the Chief of Police. The meeting is summarized in a previous post. Here are my comments emailed to City Council regarding Councilman Rick West's raising of the issue of the state depredation law, which states that animal control officers must kill dogs caught in the act of killing chickens.

Dear City Council Members:

I  write to express the dismay I felt when the subject of the state depredation law was raised at Tuesday's City Council work session. Nothing about this law should seem new or surprising. The law was raised in the Staff Report provided to City Council prior to its vote on November 20. The concern was also rebutted by our group, 4 Chesapeake Hens, in a report entitled, "Further Information Regarding Chesapeake's Staff Report,"  provided prior to the vote. This report may be viewed at https://docs.google.com/document/d/14nq03jzBkl762nI5u2RA_PnMae5hpSe30e6HgWl4nos/edit.

Please be reminded that loose dogs are illegal in residential areas for a reason. The owners are responsible for keeping them leashed or on the owners' property, just as it is the chicken owners' responsibility to keep their birds on their property and in a secure enclosure.

Please note that this state law has not prevented cities around Virginia, such as Richmond, Norfolk, Hampton, Portsmouth, and Fredericksburg, from legalizing backyard hens. Nor has there been, to our knowledge, a single instance of a dog being summarily killed for chicken predation in a residential area anywhere in Virginia or anywhere in the United States where there are similar laws. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the discharge of firearms is illegal in residential areas, perhaps due to the use of fences and leash laws, or perhaps due to common sense on the part of animal control officers and people in general.

It disturbs me that Councilman West mentioned this point after a conversation with a councilman from a neighboring community. A grass-roots group, "4 Virginia Beach Hens," has found the state depredation law a major stumbling block in getting the ordinances changed in its community. The Virginia Beach group feels that raising the depredation law is a form of emotionalism and an excuse. It has asked its own Council why this law is such a concern in Virginia Beach when it has not stopped changes in ordinances elsewhere.

Furthermore, the Virginia Beach and Norfolk groups have  brought to our attention that a Virginia Beach City Council Member, James L. Wood, has allegedly been contacting City Council members in Norfolk and possibly other communities, raising the hue and cry about this depredation law. We are not sure of his reasons for doing this, but I can assure you that, if this is true, residents of these communities resent Councilman Wood's efforts to interfere with our rights and to meddle in our local affairs. Councilman Wood neither lives nor votes nor pays taxes in Chesapeake; we residents do! Let's hope that, if his alleged efforts have reached Chesapeake, our Council Members see his machinations in this light.

Finally, the depredation law has become a concern because it is out of date. It was developed to protect farmers in agricultural areas. But it has not kept up with the modern sustainability movement, where gardening and backyard hens have become highly welcome and desirable in residential areas. It is my understanding that cities have a process where they can ask the State Legislature to modernize outdated ordinances. We also realize that citizens have the power to contact our delegates directly and ask for changes in the state law. It is our understanding that "4 Virginia Beach Hens" plans to take this concern to the state level in January or February, and our group has pledged to help. If the depredation law as it currently stands is an issue, which we doubt, we invite Chesapeake to address this concern to the state rather than undo the progress we have made. There must be a way to adjust the law's wording in a way that protects farmers' livelihoods while allowing backyard flock-keepers their property rights.

Sincerely,

Mary Lou Burke

Update: On November 26, 2013, Chesapeake City Council voted to make the "hen ordinance" permanent. The meeting may be viewed online:  fast forward to 1:19 to see some great pro-chicken speeches and the City Council's reaction.

Update: Both the Virginia House and Senate voted to modify the state law to give animal control officers the option to seize a dog caught in the act of preying on poultry. The previous mandated been to kill it outright. Votes occurred in February of 2014.

Chicks at the Beach? Why Not?

These children gave us a warm welcome!

Virginia Beach residents have been involved in an ongoing struggle to get backyard laying hens legalized in residential areas. 4 Virginia Beach Hens has organized this effort. Our grassroots community group, 4 Chesapeake Hens, got up to six laying hens legalized on all single-family lots in our community. The Virginia Beach group asked me to speak in front of its city council regarding my personal experiences since our laws here were changed. Here is the text of my speech:

Mayor Sessoms and Members of Council:

My name is Mary Lou Burke. I live at on about ⅓ of an acre in the Greenbrier section of Chesapeake. Backyard chickens have been legal in my neighborhood since November 20.  I am speaking here today at the invitation of Virginia Beach residents who wish me to share with you some first-person experiences with *legal* residential laying hens.

I am an avid gardener. We have a secure yet portable chicken tractor for our flock, rather like a rabbit hutch. We move it to a new location every other day. This gives our hens fresh pasture to graze. Our lawn gets the benefit of their valuable manure. Between seasons, the hens clear out unwanted vegetation from our garden beds, and they weed, till, and fertilize for us, all without the use of chemicals or noisy machines. We compost the manure from their coop year round. Our hens convert organic layer pellets, kitchen scraps, caterpillars and other pests, yard and garden waste, weeds, and weed seeds, into valuable fertilizer and the tastiest, freshest, most nutritious eggs we have ever eaten. None of it goes to the landfill. I repeat: the city has to *pay* for none of this to go to the landfill. And if the city loses power due to a natural disaster, our hens’ daily eggs will still be available to us. We will never go hungry so long as our hens are alive and laying.

I cannot express how much pleasure or satisfaction we have derived from our new pets. Our birds are quiet, clean, and inconspicuous. My husband built our chicken tractor in our front driveway. We have a chain-link fence for our backyard but no privacy fence. Despite this, we had to point out our new flock to the neighbors on either side of us. They were shocked. They said they had noticed the building project out front, but they had no idea we had chickens until we actually pointed them out. And they are thrilled with the fresh eggs we share with them. We even entered our chickens in a local coop tour in April. We had a steady stream of families come visit us, including many who had never seen an urban micro-flock. Visitors consistently told us our birds were odorless, extremely quiet, and beautiful animals. Everyone told us that they would have no objections to hens next door even if they didn’t currently want a flock for themselves.

Backyard hens are a growing movement both nationally and regionally. Besides Chesapeake, Portsmouth is extremely close to legalizing them. My friend, Wendy Camacho, recently made a presentation about backyard chickens for the Hampton Roads Realtors’ Association. Her presentation was very well received by the Realtors, who seem to understand hens will do no harm to our region’s  property values. The motto of “4 Virginia Beach Hens” is, “chicks at the beach,” and our response to that slogan is, “why not?”

**Update 8/25/13: After this original post, Portsmouth legalized backyard laying hens with a permit and certain restrictions. So did Hampton, Virginia.

Dogs vs. Chickens in Chesapeake? A Rational Answer...

Catherine M. White on April 28, 2013, stated on the Pilot Online: "There is a VA state law that states that any dog who chases a chicken must be put to death. Does that mean that their dog that killed one of their chickens should be put to death? We can't pick & choose the areas of the law that we like." Mrs. White has been posting similar posts on other media-related websites. Forgive me for paraphrasing "Chicken Little," but her theme from these and other comments seems to be that if Chesapeake's City Council does not rescind a new ordinance allowing up to six laying hens on single-family residential lots, the sky will somehow fall.

But is any there truth to what Mrs. White is claiming? The issue has certainly been in the news, particularly in regard to efforts by Virginia Beach residents to get backyard hens legalized there. The law has come up both on television and in the newspaper.

I am the founder and one of the leaders of 4 Chesapeake Hens, the community group that has convinced Chesapeake City Council to allow up to six "female chickens" in single-family residential backyards with certain restrictions. Here is my response to Mrs. White's post, posted Thursday, May 2:

"Most urban chicken keepers also love other animals. Many of us keep dogs. There are leash laws and chickens must be kept in a pen on the owners' own property.


"There is some wording in the Virginia State codes that it is a 'duty' of animal control or other officers to kill a dog that they catch *in the act of* killing livestock or poultry. The same law allows the owners of the livestock to kill the dog if they catch it in the act on their property. The intent of the law is to protect the rights of farmers in agricultural areas. The livestock are, after all, farmers' livelihood. Unless the dog is caught in the act, the 'duty' clause does not apply. There are similar laws in other states in other areas of the country.
Despite that, our group has not been able to find a single instance in Virginia or anywhere else in the country where a dog has been killed by an officer of the law or by a property owner because it was attacking an urban micro-flock. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the discharge of firearms is illegal in residential areas, perhaps due to the use of fences and to leash laws, or perhaps due to plain old common sense on the part of officers and of people in general."

Readers may actually scrutinize the wording of the state law for themselves by clicking here. It is clear that, except for dogs caught in the actual act of killing the livestock or poultry, there is plenty of opportunity for careful investigation and for protecting dogs through the courts. A dog is not a confirmed poultry killer until its third act of killing poultry. Even then, the owner can save the dog's life by moving it out of state. 4 Virginia Beach Hens believes the concerns about dogs' lives is an excuse or a stalling tactic by their City Council, and we suspect they might be right. Despite this, the law does cause some concern among animal control officers who have contacted us, and it has been a real roadblock to chickens in Virginia Beach. Our group intends to address this law at the state level to try to amend the language to accommodate the needs of both urban and rural flock-keepers. In the meantime, we ask the public to keep concerns about danger to dogs in perspective.

Update: On November 26, 2013, Chesapeake City Council voted to make the "hen ordinance" permanent. The meeting may be viewed online:  fast forward to 1:19 to see some great pro-chicken speeches and the City Council's reaction.

Update: in February of 2014 the Virginia legislature voted to amend this law to allow Animal Control Officers the option to seize the predatory dog instead of killing it outright. The amendment had broad support.