Thread: Sorry invaders, Chicago may soon ban raising chickens

chicagotribune.com
City may soon be no place for chickens
Proposed fowl ban up for council vote; health issues cited
By Gary Washburn, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Whitney Woodward contributed to this report
November 21, 2007

For that small, but apparently growing segment of Chicago homeowners who raise chickens in the back yard, the news Tuesday decidedly was not good: your goose is just about cooked.

The City Council's Health Committee advanced a proposal to outlaw the keeping of hens and roosters in residential areas, and the measure is expected to become law at next month's council meeting.

Ald. Lona Lane (18th), lead sponsor of the proposed prohibition, said she knows of three recent cases of chicken-keeping in her Southwest Side ward, none of them pleasant.

People "are leaving them in their back yards and feeding them in the back yards," Lane said. "The stench and the smell from their feathers and their bodies - and they are not clean ... Their debris and their waste are creating more rodents than there already are in neighborhoods."

Not only that, Lane said. A woman in her ward told her about what went on in a house, now boarded up, on West 83rd Street.

"They were doing this ritual where they would take the chicken and cut the head off. The chicken was running around without a head in their home, and they would smear the blood."

Ald. Joann Thompson (16th) said she was driving down the street in her ward a few months ago when she was surprised to spot a rooster, which she found out was someone's pet.

"I said, 'If it's your pet, get it and take it in the house,'" Thompson said. "They couldn't even catch the rooster. They were scared to take it back to the house."

Chicken-keeping "is more common than you would think," said Ald. George Cardenas (12th). In parts of his ward, immigrants from rural areas of Mexico keep the birds, he said.

Maria Rolon used to keep two chickens and two roosters in her Little Village back yard because they reminded her of Puerto Rico. "The chickens sang," Rolon said through a translator. "It made you feel like you were in the countryside."

But Rolon said she gave her chickens away months ago after the garbage collectors threatened to report her. A pair of the birds went to her uncle - who ate them.

Chicken reports have come in from all areas of the city, not just those where new arrivals live, according to the city's Animal Care and Control Commission.

So far this year, the commission has gotten 717 gripes about roosters and their loud crowing and an additional 65 general "nuisance complaints about chickens," reported Anne Kent, the commission's executive director.

Ellen Clark, an animal control officer, said she "got 10 [calls] last night."

She had a one-word theory about the flurry: "Thanksgiving."

Until now, it's been legal to keep chicken as pets, as long as there was no intent to slaughter them for food.

The new measure would close that loophole in the law, Kent said.

"We would lose cases in court because who could tell what the truth was?" she said.

Web sites tout the organic benefits of raising chickens free of chemicals.

But Jennifer Lennert, lead keeper of the children's zoo at Brookfield Zoo, backed Lane on the nuisance issue.

"I don't know there have ever been any studies done, but I would tend to concur that any kind of animal chow left out would attract different kinds of pests," she said. Besides rats, we're talking raccoons and even coyotes, she said.
http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?p=5167
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... &cset=true

I find it very hard to believe that Chicago and all these other cities don't already have a ordinance that says that you cannot raise farm animals in your backyard. They just aren't enforcing it.

I'm sending a copy of this to my council! We have livestock issues in Waukegan...


Our town board is great! I no sooner posted this article and someone came back to say we do have this ordinance.

City ordinance bans livestock within city limits.

http://www.municode.com/resources/gatew ... 165&sid=13

Sec. 4-2. Livestock and fowl running at large or kept within the city declared nuisance.
(a) No person shall keep any cattle, sheep, goat, horse, mule, swine, fowl or wild animals at any place or upon any premises in the city, nor shall any such animals or fowl be permitted to run at large within the city.
(b) The animals and fowl prohibited by subsection (a) from being kept in the city or running at large in the city are hereby declared to be a nuisance.
(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed as prohibiting the city from keeping or using horses in connection with police business.
(Code 1974, § 6-2; Ord. No. 04-O-148, § 1, 11-15-04)

Originally Posted by sawdust

I find it very hard to believe that Chicago and all these other cities don't already have a ordinance that says that you cannot raise farm animals in your backyard. They just aren't enforcing it.

OMG . . . I thought they were only permitted to import their poverty because we all know that otherwise they assimilate so well. I cannot imagine chickens running around in the yards of people living in Chicago.

Illinois: high taxes, 2 a day murders, gangs, graffiti, failing schools, hospitals are closing, public transportation on the verge of shutting down, they have no budget, they are feuding at every level politically and yet Mayor Daley delusional believes its still a world class city fit for the Olympics.

Years ago, some illegals rented the house next door to my Mother. They had a backyard full of chickens. I mean there was not a blade of grass in the yard. They scratched the yard so much, it literally blew away and was inches lower than my Mother's yard.

My Mother always had a yard full of flowers, nice grass and a few veggies in season. She began to see chickens in her yard and she would tell the people to keep them home. More and more came and were damaging her yard. She finally found where the people had cut a whole in the fence for the chickens to come through.

This was a small town, and a few chickens would not have bothered her at all, or if they had feed them and cared for them, and kept them in their own yard. She was older and very ill at the time, and they just laughed at her when she asked them to keep them out of her yard.

She borrowed my sister's dog --------

She borrowed my sister's dog --------

No doubt the more influx of Illegals Aliens the more they bring their "culture living" to the US. I believe in Los Angeles, even American Africans were complaining also that illegals were bringing in chickens and were loose.

I love raising Chickens because as a child we did raise them in our property. However the difference we were not in a city nor rural area. The area I lived in had wildlife from the mountains and creeks. It was more inbetween a suburb and rural. Many of the houses were hugh lots so some had horses, ducks, and even chickens. So no one complain. My mother even asked our neighbor if the rooster who crows at exactly 5 am bothers him. He said no because he loved it that the rooster crows exactly the time he should wake up lol. When he hears the rooster he knows it is time to get up.

Now the a law has passed limiting the number of chickens per property and rightly so.


However, many of these illegals think they can bring their ranch living to a crowded city and that is just plain stupid.

Maria Rolon used to keep two chickens and two roosters in her Little Village back yard because they reminded her of Puerto Rico.

How in the hell does chickens remind her of Puerto Rico? I can only think of her filling her bathtub with water and placing plants around the tub and having the chicken roam around in the bathroom.


Also I remember hearing a story about a man in San Jose, CA trying to kill dog because it was their culture. EWWWWW {Vomit Icon}.


I'm sorry the illegals need to be stopped. I don't want that kind of crap in my country.

This thread brings back some of my darkest memories of San Diego.

The neighborhood where I bought my first house was old (houses were built in the 50's), affordable, and very clean and quiet.

But then the illegals started moving in. And what I remember the most were the chickens. It was so surreal. This was NOT a rural area...this was a highly residential suburb about 15 minutes outside of downtown San Diego.

The roosters crowed 24 hours a day. The chickens would get loose and walk up and down the street. On a breezy day, the smell from the chickens living in the backyard next door was awful.

I knew these chickens were being slaughtered in the homes of the illegals, and I had no idea how they were "cleaning up" that mess, and it just grossed me out so much.

I remember lying in bed in the morning and hearing the chickens. It was weird. Between the chickens and the Spanish music, I felt like I was living in a foreign country.

Originally Posted by americangirl

This thread brings back some of my darkest memories of San Diego.

The roosters crowed 24 hours a day. The chickens would get loose and walk up and down the street. On a breezy day, the smell from the chickens living in the backyard next door was awful.

I knew these chickens were being slaughtered in the homes of the illegals, and I had no idea how they were "cleaning up" that mess, and it just grossed me out so much.

I remember lying in bed in the morning and hearing the chickens. It was weird. Between the chickens and the Spanish music, I felt like I was living in a foreign country.

WHAT A NIGHTMARE! It's bad enough hearing spanish music blasting away all day, but having roosters and chickens walking up and down the street all night and day is just plain GRUNDGY.

Originally Posted by butterbean

Originally Posted by americangirl

This thread brings back some of my darkest memories of San Diego.

The roosters crowed 24 hours a day. The chickens would get loose and walk up and down the street. On a breezy day, the smell from the chickens living in the backyard next door was awful.

I knew these chickens were being slaughtered in the homes of the illegals, and I had no idea how they were "cleaning up" that mess, and it just grossed me out so much.

I remember lying in bed in the morning and hearing the chickens. It was weird. Between the chickens and the Spanish music, I felt like I was living in a foreign country.

WHAT A NIGHTMARE! It's bad enough hearing spanish music blasting away all day, but having roosters and chickens walking up and down the street all night and day is just plain GRUNDGY.

Yes, it WAS a nightmare. But it's over now. I'm outta there, to the tune of 2,100 miles away.

It's funny though...how much living amongst 3rd-world poverty has changed me. What started out as compassion and sympathy for their plight, turned into bitterness, resentment, and repulsion at the way they live.

I have no more compassion for these people. They simply don't deserve it. What they deserve is to pay for the devastation they've caused American cities, and the pain and suffering they've cast upon Americans.

They've hurt so many people here. They've done so much damage. I don't pity them anymore. I don't care about them anymore.

I just want them to go back where they came from. I just want my country back.