Virginia Beach Woman Faces Fines, Jail, Over Hens

On Tuesday, July 10, 2012, I had the chance to meet Andy Schneider, the "Chicken Whisperer." Andy hosts a nationally syndicated radio show about chickens. He is also a national spokesperson for the national backyard-chicken movement. He has been featured on CBS, CNN, and in The Economist. He's also the author, along with Brigid McCrea, of a book, The Chicken Whisperer's Guide to Keeping Chickens. The co-host of his radio show is Patricia Foreman, author of City Chicks, one of my favorite books on keeping hens.

As the founder of a local group called 4 Chesapeake Hens, I felt I had to meet Andy as soon as I learned that he was going make an appearance in nearby Virginia Beach, Virginia. Our group is trying to get the zoning laws changed in Chesapeake, Virginia, so that more city residents can keep laying hens on our property. Andy has a reputation for being extremely helpful to groups like ours.

His reputation is well deserved. Andy was down to earth, polite, thoughtful, a wealth of information,  and fun to have around. He was in town to support Tracy Gugal-Okroy, the self-proclaimed "Virginia Beach Chicken Outlaw." Tracy, a hair stylist, keeps between twenty and thirty hens on her 3/4 acre property in Virginia Beach. She claims her "girls" are clean, well housed, and very well kept. But her property is not zoned agricultural, and chickens are considered livestock in Virginia Beach, just as they are in most of Chesapeake. Tracy refuses to get rid of her backyard pets. She now faces a court appearance and possibly fines. She vows that she will not re-home her flock even if it means jail time. This is a real possibility for her if future court appearances go against her.

Tracy and Andy at City Hall

Andy had come all the way from Georgia to speak to the mayor and Virginia Beach City Council as an expert on backyard chickens, but it was not to be. There was a mix-up on the dates that the public is allowed to address the council, and the mayor would not make an exception to the rule.

It's a shame, because the council members of the City of Virginia Beach, just like those of Chesapeake, sorely need education about the potential benefits of backyard hens in our communities and how the benefits clearly outweigh any potential downside.

I did pick up some useful tips from Andy, enjoyed delightful conversation with fellow chicken enthusiasts at Croc's 19th St. Bistro, and came away with fresh appreciation for those who are willing to engage in civil disobedience when the law clearly tramples on our rights. While I have no personal desire to keep twenty-plus hens, until our communities come up with just and reasonable laws regarding the keeping of hens as pets that preserve our property rights, I see civil disobedience as possibly justified. And if Tracy has kept the hens as humanely as she claims, it is abhorrent that she could be facing jail time for her love of her birds.

Will justice prevail? Time will tell.

Responses to "City Chicks Revisited"

I am getting responses on "City Chicks Revisited" by email and from other groups. With permission, I will post a selection of these reactions and responses here. Some are too good not to share. And, if you haven't already, please sign our online petition.

My favorite, so far, is from Kelly McGuire:

In response, I can only say that council can be loud, produce large amounts of waste resulting in obnoxious odors too. Their containment is sometimes difficult as well. I really have a hard time believing the sublime attitudes.

Here is one from  ~: Beth California Sierra foothills:~ via a Yahoo Group called "Breaking New Ground:"

A backyard flock of chickens need NOT be noisy, messy or anything negative. A clean coop/area will not attract flies, rodents. And chickens are actually great at eating ticks and other bugs which means less pesticides being used. Noisy? Bantam breeds are less noisy and many cities simply allow hens but no roosters. Roosters are the one who make the noise. Feed kept in a metal container wont attract rodents etc. Heck dog/cat/bird feeder food outside can attract rodents etc. Is the city/town going to ban those? Heck raccoons are more attracted to garbage cans than anything else. Are they banning garbage cans/pick up? The late actor Jimmy Stewart and his wife Gloria are the ones who got us back having chickens in the early 80's, when he shared how they had chickens in their Roxbury Drive, Beverly Hills home back yard. And if I do say so I think chickens make us better people. And yes you can quote me on that!

From Karen Anne Kirkpatrick  of the Facebook Group, "Backyard Chickens for Chesapeake:"

Can be loud, especially when playing.
Can produce large amounts of waste, resulting in obnoxious odors.
Waste in diapers fill our landfills.
Containment can sometimes be difficult.
Can be targeted as nuisances by other people, such as old people on the front lawn and college students texting on iphones....

  

Time to ban kids.

Another great response from Jack Newfield through the "Breaking New Ground" Yahoo Group:

>Can be loud
Hens are not loud and egg laying hens make no more noise than many automobiles. If egg-laying ducks are allowed, both sexes are very quiet.

>large amount of waste
No, there is far less odor from my 10 chickens than from my 3 dogs.

>Waste can attract rodents
So can an oak tree but that is allowed.

>Containment can be difficult
Containment is extremely simple. I don't contain mine at all and they do not range out of sight of their coop.

>Can be target of dogs
So can children and cats but they are allowed. It's the dog owner's fault if they are out of control. Cats do not attack hens.

So it's obvious they simply do not want to keep *low-status* animals in their neighborhoods. You'll find this with vegetable gardens too. Where flower gardens are permitted, vegetables are often prohibited because food is *low status* compared to flowers. Simple really.

The best way is the camel's-nose- in-the-tent approach, I believe. Get them to permit some eco thing that let's chickens in through the back door or get them to approve expensive show chickens and then buy ordinary hens and claim they are the same animal. It's all about status.

Urban Chicken Activist

A laying hen from our visit to Polyface Farm

I feel like Clark Kent: mild-mannered reporter by day, Superman in his spare time.

I, too, have a secret. I am Mary Lou Burke, mild-mannered Latin teacher by day, Chicken Activist Extraordinaire in my spare moments.

A lot has been happening since I first mentioned my yearnings for a few backyard layers in "Longing for Urban Chickens" back in December.

I am not the type to sit back and whine about laws, policies, and other situations I don't like. If I see any opportunity to change the status quo, look out! So I started a Facebook Page, now called  https://www.facebook.com/4ChesapeakeHens. At first, and for a long time, there were only two or three people in the whole universe who "liked" this page. But I tried to keep the content interesting and fresh by updating it with news and articles about chickens. I also linked my posts to Twitter to expand their reach with the use of hash tags. And the number of "likes" grew. Gradually my page started to get a broader and more active base of fans, folks who posted comments, suggestions, and links of their own, like this great video about "cage free" vs. "free range" vs. "pastured" eggs. It became an interactive forum for what is happening in South Hampton Roads regarding chickens and zoning.

In the meantime I continued to research about chicken-keeping and the urban agriculture movement.  I found out about and began to utilize online resources like Urban Chickens and Backyard Chickens. And I blogged about my frustrations with the current zoning laws here in Chesapeake, VA, in a post called "How Much Space Do Laying Hens Need?" In response to a suggestion on the Facebook Page, I started an online petition at Change.org on April 20. I set a goal of 500 signatures by July 20. My fellow Facebook chicken-activists and I have been promoting this petition online, and we have nearly 275 signatures as of May 12. We are over halfway to our goal!

Next came considerations about who will present our petition to Chesapeake City Council (and how and when). While I am perfectly happy to take a stand all by myself, I have spent enough time around local politicians to know a group of local citizens will make more of an impression than one lonely Latin teacher, even one armed with a petition. I had been suggesting face-to-face meetings through the Facebook page, and eventually got enough interest to set a time, date, and place for our first meetings.

What a nice group of people! A local homeschooling mom who has five children came with two of her daughters, my husband came, of course, and a young mother came with her 4-month-old infant daughter. We have different motivations for our common interests in keeping hens legally, but they are all sound, strong reasons, and we share a commitment for seeing this through. Andrea, the mother of five, has experience in grass-roots activism and great insights into the workings of the local city council. Minutes of our meeting are available online and we plan our next meeting for the afternoon of May 20. Danielle, the young mother, put together a compendium of Chesapeake's chicken-related zoning ordinances to help answer the frequent questions we get about Chesapeake's current laws.

We are now expanding our network of contacts out in the community as well as online. We are planning group T-shirts and putting hard copies of our petitions out at local businesses, flea markets, farmers' markets, and other community events to gather more signatures. I have posted a version of our petition at Google Docs to make it easier for volunteers to print petitions and gather signatures.

**Update on 5/14: The T-shirt has been designed and is adorable! Visit our Facebook page to see the design and to place an order.

**Update on 5/17: T-shirts are available for pick-up. We have launched an XtraNormal video that satirizes the local zoning laws and asks for signatures on our petition.

**Update on 6/4/12: We have over 330 signatures on the  petition as well as hard-copy petitions at local fee and seed stores. We have posted our video on Youtube to extend is audience. Youtube allows us to post links to our Facebook page and petition site.

 No, we don't have the X-ray vision, flying abilities, or extraordinary strength of Superman. But, like many others, we have learned to use the powers of the internet, cloud computing, and social networking to improve our community and the world. Clark Kent would be proud!