Will Clovis allow you to raise chickens in your backyard? Here’s what’s happening
Holding her knees as she leans into her chicken, Bernadette Planting sings a favorite song for the chickens through her face mask.
“You’ll know who I am by the songs that I sing / I’ll feast at your table / I’ll sleep in your clover / who cares what tomorrow shall bring.”
Senator Elizabeth Orpington, one of her chickens, is attentive and slowly wades inside a large chicken coop with her wings barely spread out. Soft “clucks” are heard from her sisters. The relationship between her and her chickens is special, Planting says.
They feed each other and keep each other company. More residents in the Fresno area may soon be able to experience similar moments since nearby City of Clovis is weighing becoming one of a few central San Joaquin Valley cities to allow backyard chickens.
Backyard chickens in Clovis isn’t a new idea. It’s been a topic for some time. Clovis Police Services Manager George Rodriguez, who presented the Clovis council with a report on the potential ordinance, said the idea first came up in Clovis about 10 years ago.
But noise and odor concerns have kept the chickens banned in many central San Joaquin Valley communities, except for a few cities like Madera and Lindsay.
A breakthrough could come July 20, when Clovis council members vote on whether to allow the chickens.
Lynn Ashbeck, a councilmember, said she was against the idea from the start. Namely, because it could potentially increase the city’s calls for service. She also said the coronavirus pandemic presented the city with more pressing matters.
Clovis only has two animal control officers. A higher volume of calls could fall on police officers, she said.
“I think given the size of our lots in our community, which have gotten smaller and smaller ... I just can’t see my way through this,” Ashbeck said. “This is nothing I want staff to spend 10 more minutes on because I don’t think (staff) have 10 minutes to invest in this in these times.”
Other councilmembers appeared in favor, however.
Although specifics on the rule still need to be hatched, councilmembers signaled they’d support a limit on the number of chickens allowed per household when combined with others, like dogs and cats.
Chickens as family
Residents who are used to raising backyard chickens say the agricultural region is ripe for raising chickens as pets. And some view them as extended family members who have much to contribute, especially during a time when staying home is the new going out.
After her 95-year-old mother died a few years ago, Planting says she grieved heavily. Her husband’s earlier death had finally also hit at once. She fell into a deep depression.
“That was sort of like a pandemic for me. I didn’t want to leave the house. I didn’t want to do anything. I tried. I faked it. I went to church on Sunday. I didn’t even get dressed half the time,” Planting says.
But then she was given a chicken.
She now raises six and has given them all fancy names and treats them like her own children. And the chickens, unbeknownst to them, help her grow a garden of tomatoes and squash and peaches. As she deals with lupus and problems with her blood sugar — which keep her from visiting stores during the coronavirus pandemic — she’s managed to not go hungry at home.
“I’m very low income. But I always have food,” Planting says. “I think that everybody should have chickens ... I had a dog and I loved him and I miss him, but he never made my breakfast.”
But raising chickens isn’t as easy as it sounds, says Steven Hood, of Fresno. He raises five, including Buffy, a 4-year-old Polish show chicken he got from a cousin’s wife.
Besides Buffy, Hood said the ones he’s raised since they were chicks needed constant attention and a tub with warm light and water. Now that the chickens are older, he bought them a large kennel where they can walk freely, away from his garden. The chickens also needed a safe place to lay their eggs.
Hood says he gets three to four eggs a day from his chickens.
Chickens are technically not allowed in homes in Fresno, according to city ordinance. Municipal code allows for chickens only on lots of 36,000 square feet or larger and in residential-agricultural zones. Many residential lots in the city aren’t that large.
But residents say they manage by making sure they have proper enclosures. They say there is rarely trouble. On some streets, roosters and chickens can be heard from different homes.
“The neighbors don’t complain, especially when I give them fresh eggs,” Hood says. “It’s awesome to be able to go up to my own backyard and get fresh eggs.”
Brief chicken fight
While the future of backyard chicken in Clovis remains uncertain, the fact the city is putting the issue to a vote is more than Rachel Carpenter won in Fresno when she and others made a similar push about a decade ago.
Carpenter, 61, manages the Central California Local Urban Chicken Keepers (CCLUCK) Facebook page. She says the group isn’t as active as it was eight years ago. That’s when the group tried to convince the city to permit backyard chickens. The campaign had quickly turned into a battle between chicken owners and the city.
Carpenter believes the movement got too much publicity, and the city eventually wasn’t willing to hear them out. She said there were around 200 people in the group, of which about 190 had chickens, Carpenter recalls. She only became an outspoken member of the group because she never owned any chickens herself, and had no chickens to lose if the city started confiscating the birds.
The group was eager to grow the backyard chicken movement in Fresno, and even sought advice from a group member who helped get pot-bellied pigs approved in Clovis, but plans never materialized.
Carpenter said she would have liked to have seen a chicken festival in the Fresno area as well as “chicken coop tours” like those held in places like Seattle. She said the members of her group also wanted to eventually push for other farm-style animals to be allowed as pets.
“It’s not that we didn’t have plans,” Carpenter says. “We were going to go beyond chickens.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 8:48 AM.
