Lakewood resident April Stoltz happily watched as her two plump chickens, Marigold and Toast, nipped at the ground in her backyard between native honeysuckle and purple echinacea flowers.
Stoltz, a retired postal worker, successfully petitioned Lakewood's city government roughly a decade ago to adopt a pilot project to allow people to keep hens in their backyards. It was soon after adopted as a permanent local ordinance.
After soaring egg prices in the last year, which have since stabilized, and amid a rising interest in sustainability, more Ohio cities and suburbs are considering ordinances allowing backyard chickens.
City officials in Mansfield are currently reviewing a petition from residents to expand who can have chickens in their yards, while Lorain City Council recently discussed a similar ordinance, which ultimately didn't make it out of committee.
Some cities like Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati have allowed backyard hens for years, with a permit.
Interest in urban, suburban chickens takes flight
Tim McDermott, an assistant professor in agriculture and natural resources at The Ohio State University Extension, says city residents' interest in chickens has spiked twice in recent years.
"One happened in COVID, when going to the store was scary and they told you to do stuff outside," McDermott explained. "Food production was deemed essential, so lots of people got into keeping backyard chickens. And then the second was when eggs spiked to, you know, five, six, seven bucks a dozen."
McDermott says technically, it’s still cheaper for people to buy eggs from the grocery store due to the costs of building a coop and feeding chickens. But he doesn’t see eggs as the only benefit.
"Chickens are also really social. They're fun. They are food animals, but they are now the third most common pet behind dogs and cats," he said.
But rules on keeping chickens vary from city to city and county to county, and it's not clear how many cities actually allow backyard chickens.
"The very first thing I stress is, before you go and buy your birds, make sure you are legally allowed to keep them because we don't want you to get them and have to surrender them," McDermott said.
Interest has been so great that McDermott now offers a $25 dollar online course through OSU on backyard chicken keeping to help people prepare. Some cities, like Lakewood, actually require residents seeking a permit to take a course like that.
Mansfield's attempts to allow chickens in backyards
This year, Mansfield resident Kelsey Cunning started a group called Backyard Hens for Mansfield.
She recently bought a farmhouse in Mansfield from her in-laws that had been in her family for generations. That, along with the pandemic revealing the fragility of food systems and her son being diagnosed with a chronic illness, led to a new interest.
"I became really big into, like, how much of our food can we try to self-grow? So I got into things like gardening and preserving and growing native plants to help our environment," she said.
And she wanted to keep chickens on the property. The only problem? She’s .02 acres short of the three-acre requirement currently in Mansfield's local laws.
So, she’s drafted an ordinance similar to Lakewood’s to allow chickens on smaller lots. It includes a limit of six hens, rules for enclosed coops, a required distance from neighbors’ property lines, among other regulations to try to minimize the impact of smell and noise on neighbors.
Another concern? The bird flu that's been hitting birds across the country hard.
"I know a lot of people have been worried about the bird flu, especially post our recent egg inflation and deflation of prices. So with that, the big thing is that looking at (advice from) the USDA, the Ohio Department of Health, small coops have not been a problem," she said. "And making sure there are educational resources so that people understand the proper protocols to keep a coop clean."
Cunning already has some support on Council. Deborah Mount, a Mansfield City Council member, previously tried to get an ordinance approved by Council in 2017, but it ultimately failed.
"They thought, 'If you want hens you should move to the country.' That seems to be the sentiment among some on the city council," Mount explained.
Cunning said opposition mostly seems to be based along generational lines, with older residents concerned about neighbors’ chickens impacting their quality of life.
The city administration is currently reviewing her proposal, along with a petition with more than 500 signatures. The city will need to come up with its own version of an ordinance for Mansfield City Council to take up.
Cindy Marx, a Lakewood City Council member, said she hasn't heard any complaints about Lakewood's chicken-keeping ordinance once passed. The city only allows 50 permits at any given time, and has always been below the maximum number. The city's ordinance also does not allow the eggs to be sold.
Concerns around Lorain's proposed chicken-keeping ordinance revolved around the city's ability to enforce the regulations. The Chronicle reported in mid-July that some council members stated they're already aware of residents flouting the city's current ordinance banning livestock in city limits.
Part of a natural cycle
Back in Lakewood, Stoltz said she also hasn’t heard any complaints from neighbors in her years of backyard chicken keeping; Lakewood's ordinance, and most others, don’t allow roosters, who famously crow when the sun rises.
"We're used to having dogs barking in the backyard and some dogs bark more than others. There's really no difference in terms of having chickens," she said. "Actually they're much quieter than a dog would be, except for those occasional moments when they're frayed and they get really loud, or they're about ready to lay an egg."
Stoltz sees the two hens as part of the ecosystem of her own backyard.
"Besides giving eggs, hens are great foragers," she said. "They'll eat ticks in the yard. If you've got a certain plot of your yard you'd like to be a garden, you can pen them in there for a week. They will have that dug and eaten and fertilized with their excrement."
Cunning, in Mansfield, thinks when done right, these ordinances can connect people rather than divide them.
"We're not going to eat 1,200 eggs a year," Cunning said of the amount six hens can produce annually. "So what does that mean? It means someone could sell them, which could stimulate the local economy or give them away to neighbors and build relationships that way. So if you have a neighbor who hates chickens, give them eggs every other week."
Cunning said she sees local residents owning hens as a way to form connections: with their food, with each other and with their own backyards.