MCLEAN COUNTY, Ill. (WMBD) — Owning chickens in residential areas will become more accessible if a text amendment is adopted at Tuesday night’s McLean County Zoning meeting.
Right now, people who want to own chickens at their residential home have to follow a property line rule. All coops must be 150 feet away from the property line in order to have it.
Most residences do not have that much land to follow the rule, completely omitting any chance of having a coop.
“In our existing ordinance, they need to be 150 feet from the property line. That was making it difficult for some residents to have chickens on their properties since their properties were not merely big enough,” said Phil Dick, director of zoning and planning for McLean County.
With the new text amendment, chicken coops would only need to be 30 feet away from the property lines, allowing more access for more people to have chickens on their property.
“There’s a text amendment going on at the meeting tonight regarding allowing him to keep chickens in the residential district. That would allow the chicken coops to be closer to the property line than what our current ordinance allows,” Dick said.
There may be some concern now for neighbors, seeing that coops will be closer to other property lines, but Phil has no concern.
“The important thing is that these chicken coops would still be 30 feet from a property line and they would have to keep the chickens clean, too. It shouldn’t be a really negative effect on neighboring properties,” he said.
To have a coop on your property, you’ll need to get a permit from the county and follow the chicken-to-acreage guidelines. You can have four chickens for more than one quarter of an acre of land, six for more than a half acre, eight for more than three-quarters of an acre and ten for an acre or more.
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