Some La Grange residents are pecking away at the Village’s long-standing prohibition of the keeping of chickens.
“There’s been a lot of interest lately around our neighborhood in chickens,” Todd Van Cleave told the Village Board May 8, while urging the Board to amend the ordinance. “We are surrounded by towns that allow residents to keep chickens, like Western Springs, Brookfield, and Countryside.”
Indeed, Brookfield allows up to three hens, but prohibits any “running of the chickens or other livestock.” Western Springs allows up to four, with the same prohibition against running; Countryside also allows up to four.
All three municipalities prohibit roosters.
Van Cleave told the Board that with so many surrounding municipalities allowing backyard chickens, many residents thought they were also allowed in La Grange.
He addressed concerns many might have about the practice, specifically relating to foul odors and noise.
“With proper maintenance, backyard chicken coops do not have an odor,” he said before going on to address the noise issue. “Some hens will cluck on occasion, typically after they have laid an egg. This clucking lasts for a minute or two and once they’re done, they’re usually quit for the rest of the day.”
Van Cleave, a La Grange native who graduated from Lyons Township High School, kept his own hens for three years after he had moved back from Arizona, but then learned it violated Village code, so he gave the hens away.
“We never had any complaints from the neighbors,” he said. “Nobody cared at all.”
He prepared a sample ordinance that he presented to the Board, which he suggested as one to replace the 1982 ordinance prohibiting chickens, section 92.06, which reads “No cattle, goats, sheep, swine, chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, or other live poultry or fowl shall be kept within the Village.”
Van Cleave’s proposal would allow up to 5 hens on properties less that 20,000 square feet, and up to 9 for properties larger than that.
It would require no fewer than 3 for each owner, and mandate that coops would be in the backyard, no closer than 30 feet from a neighboring residence. Like the other municipalities Van Cleave cited, no roaming or flying off the host property would be permitted.
And no roosters would be allowed.
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La Grange resident Jeff Cogelja brought the issue before the Board twice, once in 2012, and again in 2019, but nothing ever came of his effort.
“They just didn’t feel it was worth the time,” he said in telephone interview, although he expressed some hope because several new Board members had joined the Board recently.
For further information on the effort to allow backyard chickens in the Village, visit the Facebook page of the La Grange Chicken Initiative, which has 132 members.
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.