In the spring Xin Zhang and her 10-year-old daughter Jasmine brought home several chicken hatchlings to raise in their backyard. The family spent a few hundred dollars for a conventional two-tiered chicken coop, with a side door leading to a fenced-in raised bed for roaming. The whole thing takes up fewer than 30 square feet of space on their half-acre property on Hawthorne Drive.
Little did they know that the setup would end up forcing them to have to appear before the township zoning board.
Xin, her husband, Lin, and their two children moved to the subdivision off New Edinburg Road more than a year ago for the additional space. The Zhangs had lived in a Canal Pointe townhouse for seven years.
The previous neighborhood had a strict pet policy. Now in their expanded digs, the family wanted to try raising chickens. Growing up in China, Xin and Lin’s families both had a few pet chickens, but this would be their first time doing so in town.
Lin said both his children are allergic to dander from cats and dogs, and so chickens would be a good alternative. Feeding and cleaning the chickens would be a chore for Jasmine to learn responsibility. She attends Princeton Day School while older brother Jason went to Lawrenceville School and is a rising sophomore at Columbia.
The family settled into a routine, which required collecting eggs, feeding and cleaning.
However, last May staff from the township’s zoning and health department showed up to inspect the chickens. There were no health violations but it was unclear if they were in compliance with the neighborhood’s zoning. Township land use code does not have a specific definition for what kind of animal counts as a pet.
Who dropped the dime on the Zhangs? Township Council President Linda Geevers, who lives 12 houses down the road, said she contacted the township and asked if chickens were allowed in the half-acre subdivision.
Zoning officer Sam Surtees determined that the chickens were not pets, but the Zhangs then appealed to Zoning Board to interpret the law and determine if they could keep chickens on the property. (The Zoning Board has previously okayed llamas and pot-bellied pigs as pets.) Lin hired an attorney for legal research and his son Jason prepared a powerpoint and presented the family’s case at the July 7 Zoning Board meeting.
The meeting took more than two hours, and half a dozen residents were allowed to make public comments after the board had made a decision.
Ultimately the board agreed chickens could be considered pets, but only if the number does not exceed three. Board member John Church said his grandchildren in Maryland raise chickens as pets.
Sherbrooke Road resident Matthew Neiditch, a professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, supported raising chickens as pets. The township zoning office previously notified him that chickens were not permitted, but at the zoning board meeting he said he is looking forward to raising chickens in a coop with his young daughter.
“It’s pretty clear in the ordinance that says you can have three animals as pets,” said Zoning Board Chair Susan Abbey. “There’s the question if it would be appropriate for all the residential zones and what the definitions of pets are.”
The board also recommended the Planning Board and council look into clarifying regulations with respect to pet animals. The maximum number of three apparently does not apply to cats and dogs. The figure is derived from the township’s 1979 farming code, which states that the presence of three or fewer animals as pets is not construed as farming.
In other words, it is legally unclear just how many pets are allowed. If a family wishes to raise three chickens and three pot-bellied pigs, does that exceed the three-pet maximum or are they within the “three animals as pets” limit?
Any ordinance from council would need time to be cultivated. Geevers said council was expected to discuss the issue at the July 18 council meeting.
“Chickens as pets, it’s an interesting topic. It needs to be given careful consideration,” said Geevers. “How many chickens, what size property, fencing issues, health issues. There are several issues that need to be discussed. We’d like to hear from the greater community. I’m not taking a position at this point.”
For his part, Lin says he is satisfied with the result. This is the first time he has dealt with the municipal regulatory system, and he appreciates that everybody had a chance to speak.
They began the spring with six chickens, five hens and a rooster. They culled the rooster from their small flock after the neighborhood complaint, and now comes the “difficult choice” of picking which three chickens to keep. Lin says they will probably give away the two extra chickens to friends.
With legal expenses and application fees, Lin estimates the whole ordeal cost roughly $800. He says both his next door neighbors, and two across the street, have no problem with their backyard chickens.
Haydn Brill, a litigation attorney, lives two doors down from the Zhangs, expressed his concern at the meeting.
Brill moved to the neighborhood in the late 1990s, and he is surprised that the Zoning Board decided to “open the floodgates before consideration of the issues.”
“The statutes that existed were really for the purpose of addressing farm land assessments, not whether or not owners of half-acre lots, which is not a big piece of land, can raise chickens,” he said
Even with a cap of three chickens per household, Brill argues this could mean having 12 chickens in a two-acre stretch of half-acre lots.
“Nobody is going to claim that a traditional pet has an impact on the quality of the neighborhood. For example, dogs and cats.,” he said. “A chicken is a livestock. I know people raise them, but this recent phenomenon is just that, recent. When all these statutes were written, they weren’t written with an idea with chicken as pets. There is a big distinction between chickens and domesticated animals that you can keep for companionship.”
When asked why chickens in the neighborhood concern him, he said, “disease, property values, noise, just to name a few examples.”
Brill said that the Zhangs rooster was not a nuisance, but audible. “Now I’m dealing with three hens two yards away,” “I’m neither happy nor upset about it.”
The Zoning Board is expected to adopt a resolution recognizing chickens as pets on Aug. 4. Council can also adopt an ordinance amending the board’s decision.
Jasmine Zhang with one of her pet chickens.,
