Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Miscellaneous Blogs -> The Pullins Report

Miscellaneous

: The Pullins Report

Standing Up for the Right to Raise Chickens in Your Backyard

By The Pullins Group LLC

My old friend Ann Fisher writes today about a Worthington family's battle to keep their pet chickens in their urban backyard.  Read the article here.

Some of you all know that this is an issue near and dear to my heart.  And while my family and I don't live in the city, we face the same sort of outrageous regulations as this Worthington family.

In our case, we live on a 1 acre property out in rural Knox County, Ohio.  The only problem is that nearly 16 years ago my wife and I were unlucky or stupid enough to build in a local Knox County version of a modern Fascist state.  In other words, a homeowners association.

You have to understand how homeowners associations work.  Mostly, some keystone cop runs around trespassing on your property and those of your neighbors enforcing the stupid regulations and refusing to do anything about the common sense ones. 

We rebels call it selective enforcement.

So when one of my neighbors parked an old broken down van on blocks in his front yard, a broken down truck full of trash in his backyard, and boarded up his windows with plywood, that was alright.  But when another neighbor stored a boat under a cover behind his house and garage where no one could see it, he was in trouble.  Big, big trouble.

So we come back to my problem.  It's perfectly OK under our rules to build a dog kennel and leave man's best friend outside to freeze and howl from thirst and cold all day and night.  That's worse than we treat Gitmo prisoners, BTW.  Bring your dog inside and let him sleep on your bed where he belongs, dammit!

But God forbid that I have a few 5 pound hens for eggs and fertilizer and let them run around my yard eating bugs. 

Of course I am a lawyer.  A lawyer that has successfully sued this very homeowners association time and time again successfully.  Stay tuned and we'll see what happens!

Scott A. Pullins, Esq.
Publisher,
The Pullins Report

Full post as published by The Pullins Report on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).