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Keeping chickens in New York City has become a popular hobby, especially in precincts of Brooklyn where foodies and do-it-yourselfers prize locally grown food. Ms. Saye, 48, bought a dozen heritage chickens last July to provide free-range eggs for her daughter, Scarlett, 5, because she wants to serve foods that are free of hormones.
“I got them for nutritional reasons,” Ms. Saye said. “You can’t buy these eggs in a supermarket.”
Ms. Saye bought a $2,500 coop and had fencing installed to protect the chickens from predators. But a month ago, she learned of a different type of threat to her chickens: the stringent restrictions that homeowners in her neighborhood are supposed to abide by.
Ms. Saye lives in Forest Hills Gardens, a private neighborhood nestled in one of the more pristine sections of New York City. It is renowned for its stately country garden style, multimillion-dollar Tudor and Georgian homes, and for its strict regulations, which forbid the keeping of backyard chickens.
Ms. Saye has been ordered by the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, which manages the neighborhood, to get rid of the chickens. In a recent letter, corporation officials cited the nuisances section of a century-old homeowners’ covenant.
I tried to link this to my local paper, the Daytona Beach News Journal, but their crappy paper won't let people read it w/o paying for a subscription. I'll link to the front page anyway, and also give a link to an article in the Sun Sentinel, a newspaper that doesn't mind us looking at their online furniture ads and the like.
Talk about nuts. Imagine....look at your next door neighbor. Then, imagine him and his buddies, beers in one hand and guns in the other (hey, it's his backyard), shooting round after round just feet from your bedroom or living room. All perfectly legal too. And of course, this being Florida (whose motto seems to be "We're Not Texas, But We're Just As Nuts"), if any local elected official objects to such a scenario and tries to enact their own laws, "They can be removed from office and fined $5,000. The same goes for police officers who try to enforce such laws".
Jeez, I should have read the fine print before we moved here.
I can see how allowing chickens would be a slippery slope. If you allow chickens, then the next person is going to want a goat or a pig. Maybe even a cow.
Well, this one is easy. If she wants eggs that are free of hormones, she can just go to the supermarket and purchase any eggs she sees.
Quote:
Do egg laying hens receive hormones?
Egg laying hens are not given hormones. Some egg cartons say that the eggs are hormone free; however, this is true for all eggs in commercial egg production in the United States.
If you think this is restrictive, I read a story not that long ago that a homeowners association doesn't allow trucks to be parked in sight overnight. This restriction isn't about commercial trucks that are big and could cause a visual disturbance... but any trucks, just like your run of the mill f-150 isn't allowed.
I can understand why someone who lives in an urban/suburban area shouldn't be allowed to raise farm animals. There would be sanitation issues, possibly food safety issues (if she started selling the eggs) and as Kefir King mentioned the roosters would be a huge noise issue.
If she wants to own a farm she needs to move to the countryside where she can raise all the chickens she wants.
I agree with the above. We do not live on farmland. Sanitation and noise issues ensue that have no place in a crowded city. There is a lot of "ecotone" type culture being forced with bee keeping, chickens, urban farming etc where it is not a result of natural means-And not meant to be.
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