From Pine View Farm

Bad Day for Birds 0

The birds are losing.

The chickens have got to go:

Attorney Wilson said, “This is very clear-cut. Chickens are poultry, and they are not permitted.” She said according to a long-standing interpretation of city code, chickens and pigs are not considered companion animals.

Suppose for a moment chickens were companion animals, Garriott said. How many could you have?

“If she had 22 golden retrievers, would that be allowed?”

Wilson said the limit on dogs is four.

The board voted 4-1 to uphold Gugal-Okroy’s zoning violation.

And the pigeons are already gone:

Pigeons – even specially bred homing pigeons like Kinser’s – are livestock and not allowed in a residentially zoned community. In December, Zoning Administrator John King and his staff ordered Kinser to get rid of the birds.

King said it doesn’t matter that Kinser bought the 1.1-acre lot in 2000 with the intent of raising pigeons or that he built the coops shortly after his family moved into the house.

In Kinser’s neighborhood, and most other residential areas in Chesapeake, city code allows only domesticated birds that are kept indoors.

A pigeon in a coop isn’t indoors, King said. “Also, they are homing pigeons. You let them out to fly.”

He’s given away most of them, but three of them have have already homed. They are, after all, homing pigeons.

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