Well I've been meaning to call the town for a while to find out the specifics of Old Town's ordinances regarding chickens and bees. The bees are still up in the air while the chickens seem out for the moment. Apparently if you live in town you can't raise chickens.
I could have a bunch of great danes...but no chickens. I could have a half a dozen cats...but no chickens. I could have dogs, cats, gerbils, fish and hamsters...and what the heck a snack or two...but no chickens.
Apparently there has been a lot of interest in chicken keeping within Old Town and so I think I'll look into the process of challenging the ordinance. However that may not help. I've read over a few ordinances from other towns, South Portland for example. They're depressing (not all of them) in that they all but require you spend an inordinate amount of money to create fabulous looking coops that you must also keep at the back of your lot, hundreds of feet from neighboring property lines. Make it pretty...then hide it.
Time will tell...
Other resources:
http://www.sailzora.com/Chicken%20Laws.htm
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What about quail? They're quieter than chickens, take up less than half the space, and provide eggs, albeit tiny ones ;).
ReplyDeleteBees are great. If you go the bee route, you might consider keeping a top-bar hive rather than the traditional Langstroth hive. Certainly you'll want to do it all on the up-and-up, but the top-bar hive doesn't look like a hive, and so, unless they're really paying attention, no one would even know you had bees ;).
Bess are something I'm strongly considering as there are no ordinances against them. I've read about a couple roof top setups and that's the way I'd like to go (given my narrow lot and providing a traffic clear flight path for the bees). Do you have bees?
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