Des Moines could ban roosters and reduce the number of chickens in backyards

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Several dozen community members, plus some chickens and roosters, gathered outside Des Moines City Hall on Monday to protest a proposal to ban roosters in the Iowa capital and drastically reduce the number of chickens people can keep in their yards.

Des Moines City Council members have tentatively approved the change in city policy due to complaints from residents about noise and cleanliness, a council member said. The proposal, which would also reduce the number of poultry — larger domestic birds including chickens, turkeys and ducks — to 12 per yard, was presented to council members during a special meeting July 22, where leaders approved the first reading by a vote of 6-1.

Councilman Josh Mandelbaum voted against the changes. The council must vote again for the changes to take effect if they are passed.

Community members gathered on the steps of City Hall around 7:30 a.m. Monday morning and walked once around the building holding signs that read, “No tailing of our cattle” and “Take our FLOCK, take our FOOD.”

Des Moines resident and former state Rep. Ed Fallon and his wife, Kathy Byrnes, who led the “chicken parade” around Des Moines City Hall Monday morning, said it was a call for the council to reject the proposal. Fallon said chickens are vital to the community ― their eggs and meat are an important source of protein.

Fallon and his wife have 11 chicks, who will replace their old flock, and seven laying hens. They occasionally bring in a rooster when the hens have outlived their useful lives and they want to fertilize eggs to make the chicks that will replace them. He and Byrnes also run Birds & Bees Urban Farm in Sherman Hill, which has a mission to teach people how to turn their gardens into food.

Fallon said complaints about roosters and chickens should be treated the same way a noise ordinance about a barking dog or a noisy vehicle would be treated.

“We don’t ban motorcycles because they’re noisy and a nuisance,” Fallon said.

He said he thinks this problem arose because “one council member doesn’t like roosters, and therefore doesn’t like chickens either,” referring to council member Linda Westergaard.

“She had nothing but bad things to say about them. And our chickens are very quiet. I mean, they do cluck every now and then … but it’s clean. They’re a lot quieter than the (garbage truck) that came by our neighbor’s house at 5:15 this morning,” Fallon said.

During the special council meeting, Westergaard said the proposed changes to the ordinance were “long overdue” due to repeated concerns she has heard from residents who are bothered by the “incessant crowing of roosters year-round.”

Westergaard said she also supports the proposal to reduce the number of chickens allowed from 25 to 12. For example, someone with 10 chickens could lay five eggs a day.

“That’s quite a high number of eggs, I think, for a farm that only keeps chickens and hens,” she said.

Westergaard acknowledged that there are many people in Des Moines who have chickens, but “there are also a lot of people who live next to the chickens and roosters, and their peace and quiet is disturbed. They are disturbed by the smell. They are disturbed by the pollution of everything in these backyards.”

She also said that in some Des Moines suburbs where chickens are allowed, the number of chickens is typically limited to six.

More: Ankeny City Council Approves Permission for Residents to Keep Chickens in Their Backyards

“We’re at a much higher number,” Westergaard said. “None of our suburbs allow roosters. And you don’t need a rooster for eggs.”

Wayde Stover, a Des Moines resident who attended Monday’s parade, said he doesn’t have chickens or roosters on his property, but he’s moving to a neighborhood where his neighbors do. He said he plans to buy eggs from them.

“I think limiting it to 12 chickens is too restrictive, especially for larger families,” said Stover, 41. “So, my neighbors that I’m going to rent from have six kids and that’s a lot of kids to feed. You want to be able to feed your family and sell some to your neighbors. It’s really hard to do that with only 12 chickens, I think.”

Stover added that he believes it’s important to be “close to food production.”

“A lot of times we’re so disconnected from it that we don’t know what goes into making our food,” he said. “But we need it every day to live. So I guess it’s really valuable to be close to that and understand that sometimes it can be a little messy and sometimes it can be a little noisy when there’s a rooster. But that’s what it takes to produce more chickens. And that’s what it takes to produce food.”

Stover said he has lived in neighborhoods where roosters are common and has never found them to be “overly a nuisance.”

“For me, there are a lot more nuisances in the neighborhood than chickens,” he said. “I’ve never had any problems with them myself.”

Fallon’s neighbor Kevin Culver, who also attended the parade, said he thinks having chickens in the neighborhood makes the neighborhood “charming” and creates a sense of community.

“It’s nice to have that relationship with my neighbors, so I can buy eggs over my fence, let alone clean, organic. It’s a small business too,” Culver said.

He praised Des Moines’ growth and urbanization mindset, but said it has created a lot of bureaucracy over “everything,” which creates more headaches for small business owners. He said it also strips away the character of Iowa, a place that “feeds the world.”

“Our character is agriculture and we need to let that define the unique nature of our capital city and embrace it as a personality, rather than suppressing it in the midst of growth,” Culver said.

Before last week’s vote, Mandelbaum asked for further discussion on the proposed ordinance, noting that there had been no work session. He also asked the council to consider taking a narrower approach to the changes.

“I think there are a lot of residents who have chickens. There are fewer who have roosters, but there are also some who have roosters based on this ordinance,” he said. “I’m not in favor of reducing the number of chickens. I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t know why that’s in this ordinance.”

Mandelbaum said he understood that roosters can be annoying, but so can dogs and other pets.

“If we want to give our residents the ability to address that, I’m open to working on ways that we can do that,” he said. “I also think there are people who can own roosters without disturbing their neighbors and without creating a problem. And I’d like to preserve that for the people who don’t have concerns about their neighbors.”

Westergaard initially asked to speed up the vote by eliminating a second and third reading. That was not adopted and the council will discuss the changes again at its August 5 meeting.

In the council chamber last week, several community members tried in vain to comment on the issue. But Mayor Connie Boesen told a community member who walked up to the podium that the council was not accepting comments from the public.

Following public outcry, Boesen and Councilman Chris Coleman proposed giving people time to comment on August 5.

Virginia Barreda is the Des Moines city government reporter for the Register. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @vbarreda2.

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