Township Resident Wants To Keep Chickens As Pets

South Whitehall Township’s Zoning Hearing Board will address the chicken-and-egg question tonight, Aug. 24, when it meets at 7:30 in the township building.

Township resident Julie B. Fogt is seeking variances to township zoning ordinances so she can keep a couple of chickens at her property at 2108 Scherer Road, which has a fenced-in backyard.

The Fogt property is designated R-H (rural holding). The R-H designation permits up to 100 chickens if the property is five or more acres and if the fowl are kept 150 feet away from property lines and 300 feet back from roadways. 

Fogt’s irregular lot is 18,497 square feet, which is less than half an acre, and measures 123 feet wide and 153 feet long. She is seeking variances to the setback requirements, and asking permission to keep two hens as pets.

Zoning Officer Keith Zehner says he remembers no previous appeals from would-be township chicken keepers in the past 10 years.

In seeking to get permission to keep two hens in a wooden coop, Fogt listed several conditions as the basis for her appeal, including:

* It’s a mixed use neighborhood. Adjoining properties are a vacant lot and a hay field, and across the road, there is a distribution business; in back of the business is a barn where a horse was kept.

Keeping two chickens, Fogt stated, is very similar to keeping rabbits, “in that both are generally kept outdoors in small pens. There are no setback requirements for the keeping of less than four pets.”

The keeping of chickens as pets or to producs eggs has become increasingly popular in the past decade or so, even in cities.

"In the last three years there’s been a real surge in small scale backyard poultry,” says Robert Leiby, director of Penn State’s Cooperative Extension office for Lehigh County. “It corresponds to people wanting to be more involved with their food, and maybe the economic situation as well.”

Publications such as “Backyard Poultry” and websites such as www.mypetchicken.com, www.backyardchickens.com and www.thecitychicken.com provide how-to information, and report on zoning issues.

In the Lehigh Valley, zoning ordinances on keeping chickens vary, depending on the make-up of municipalities.