Anyone who might have been counting their backyard chickens before the city was done hatching its poultry ordinance can stop counting.
A proposal that would have allowed Shawano residents to keep up to four chickens was roasted by a majority of the Common Council on Wednesday, a week after the Plan Commission recommended its approval.
The council rejected the ordinance by a 4-2 vote.
Alderman John Hoeffs said he had not spoken with anyone in the community who supported backyard chickens.
Hoeffs also said he had experience raising chickens commercially, and there were more problems associated with the practice than people might realize, including lice, mites, disease and predators.
“You can put all the chicken wire you want up,” Hoeffs said. “A weasel is going to get in. He’s going to kill them anyway.”
Alderman Woody Davis, who supported the ordinance along with Alderman Bob Kurkiewicz, countered that people wouldn’t be raising chickens in the city.
“They’re having chickens on their property for eggs,” he said.
Davis also said a permit to keep chickens would require approval of that property’s immediate neighbors.
“That’s the safeguard that’s involved in it,” he said.
However, that safeguard would not have been a hard and fast rule, according to City Attorney Tim Schmid.
Schmid said the Plan Commission and Common Council would consider neighbor objections, but the council could still grant a permit for the chickens.
“Your neighbors don’t have veto authority. They just have the right to express their opinion,” Schmid said.
Council members also raised concerns about enforcement of the ordinance’s many restrictions and questioned who would be responsible for that.
Mayor Lorna Marquardt said she supported the ordinance when the Plan Commission she chairs voted 8-1 in favor of it last week.
She said she had not heard much from the community about the issue until after that vote.
“Since that time I have learned more about chickens than I ever wanted to know,” she said.
One of the concerns raised by residents, Marquardt said, is what would happen if a chicken goes stray the way cats and dogs often do.
“What are you going to do when you’ve got a chicken out on the street or on someone’s lawn? Where are you going to take it? Because the humane society does not take in birds,” Marquardt said.