For an outlaw, Fernando Schmitz lives a pretty tame life. He wakes up with the sun then spends most of the day hanging out in his backyard with his girlfriends — all six of them. Most days, he hits the hay before the sun sets.
Yet, Fernando is without a doubt living outside of the law. His crime: being a rooster.
Raising roosters is prohibited by city code, and when Animal Control officers found out about Fernando in late May, they gave his owners a choice: get rid of him or kill him.
Ever since, Crystal Schmitz, one of Fernando’s owners, has been fighting to change the poultry prohibition that threatens to separate her family from its pet.
“I’m going to aggressively work until this goes before the Assembly,” she said. “I’m passionate about this, and I have the support of people in the community who are equally passionate about it.”
More than 280 people have signed a petition that Schmitz started, calling the city to revise its fowl regulations. She and her fellow petitioners aren’t just seeking the end of the rooster ban. They want to overhaul the city’s chicken keeping regulations.
[See the Schmitz’s petition here]
Prior to 2010, city laws required people to get conditional use permits in order to raise more than three farm animals, including chickens. Roosters were allowed, but people had to obtain special permits if they wanted to raise them. That changed six years ago.
The Assembly amended city code banning roosters but making it legal for people in most zoning districts to own up to six hens without any special use permits. In addition to Fernando, Schmitz currently owns six hens.
People in more densely populated zones, however, were still required to obtain permits if they lived within 100 feet of another residence or if they wanted to raise more than three chickens. And at about $400 apiece, these permits aren’t cheap.
In her petition, Schmitz, 29, recommended that the city allow people to keep more chickens depending on how much land they own. For instance, a person on one acre could own up to 24 chickens, and a person with more than two acres could own as many chickens as he or she wanted, so long as they weren’t causing problems.
Erich Schaal is a Juneau chicken keeper and founder of the Juneau Chicken Group on Facebook. He signed Schmitz’s petition, but he didn’t do so without hesitation.
Schaal said he isn’t sure whether allowing roosters in every part of town is a good idea, but he thought that a blanket ban on roosters “isn’t wise and it isn’t reasonable.”
What really made him throw his support behind Schmitz, however, was her recommendation that the city allow people to keep more than six chickens.
“I think it’s time to step back and say, ‘We’ve had this rule for a long time, and conflicts between neighbors have been minimal, so we need to see what is reasonable,’” Schaal said. “This rule is unrealistic, and it’s not being truthful to Juneau’s history of agriculture.”
Chicken code
Whether any of Schmitz’s specific recommendations will make it into code probably won’t be determined for quite some time. Schmitz took the matter before the Juneau Commission on Sustainability Wednesday night, but it’ll likely be a while before the Assembly considers the issue.
Still, Planning Manager Beth McKibben said she’s glad that Schmitz is getting people talking. When the Assembly made its chicken-code amendments six years ago, they made it really “messy and cumbersome,” McKibben said, and Schmitz’s petition has the potential to affect necessary regulatory change.
Schmitz, Schaal and several other chicken owners know this from experience. According to Schaal, there are probably more than 200 people in Juneau raising chickens. (He bases this number off of his Facebook group, which has nearly 300 members.)
[Lifestyles of the clucking and feathered: The coops and Chick-Mansions of Juneau]
Many chicken owners are breaking the law for one reason or another — either keeping a rooster or too many hens — often without knowing it, Schaal and Schmitz said. And enforcement and regulation is complicated if it happens at all.
After one of Schmitz’s neighbors began complaining to the city about Fernando’s crows in May, several months after Schmitz got him, Animal Control officers told her she had to kill him or get rid of him. Schmitz wouldn’t identify which of her neighbors complained about Fernando, and Animal Control was unable to grant a public records request regarding the complaint by press time Friday. Schmitz said she has reached out to her afflicted neighbor to try and reach some sort of solution.
But because roosters are illegal everywhere in Juneau — with very few exceptions — the complaints have left Schmitz and her family with very few legal options.
“When I told my sons that Animal Control wanted us to kill Fernando, they all cried,” she said.
As far as McKibben is concerned Fernando doesn’t have to die, but he’ll be an outlaw no matter where he goes.
“From the zoning prospective, we’re not telling her she has to kill her rooster,” McKibben said. “It has to be moved from that location, but it’s important to remember that we enforce zoning on a complaint basis.”
Chicken committee
And not everybody complains about roosters. Most of Schmitz’s neighbors are fine with Fernando, including her next-door neighbor Mike Israelson, who even signed her petition.
“I like him,” he said, referring to Fernando. “He’s not that loud, and he doesn’t start crowing until about 8 (a.m.) anyway, so it’s not like he’s an early riser.”
After she learned of her neighbor’s complaint, Schmitz put a crow collar on Fernando that makes his crowing quieter. She also measured how many decibels the rooster’s crow produces. From her backyard, Fernando’s crows register at about 60 decibels, about as loud as “restaurant conversation,” or put another way, half as loud as a vacuum cleaner, according to a decibel comparison chart from Purdue University.
From 400 feet down the street, roughly where the neighbor who complained lives, the crow is only about 40 decibels, Schmitz said. That’s about as loud as the inside of a library, according to Purdue’s chart.
Ron Travis, who lives across the street from Schmitz and also signed the petition, added that some days Fernando doesn’t make any noise.
“We missed him a couple days ago because he didn’t crow at all,” Travis said.
The Juneau Commission on Sustainability has formed a “Chicken Committee” to begin tackling the matter. Schmitz and Schaal said they’ll be working with the committee to help it form a recommendation for the Assembly.
“I’d like to see the JCOS take on more urban agriculture, but it’s a big animal, so starting with chickens seems like a reasonable thing to do,” Schaal said.
For Schmitz though, she’d just like to be able to keep Fernando as her pet without being an outlaw herself.
“There’s a lot of people in town who are out of compliance,” Schmitz said. “They have too many hens or a rooster, and we don’t want to feel like drug dealers hiding in a corner. We want to be in compliance.”
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
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Kaiser Schmitz, 5, on Friday walks alongside chickens his family raises in their backyard on Dogwood Lane in the Mendenhall Valley. The Schmitz family has added a rooster they named Fernando to protect the hens from neighborhood cats and dogs.
