**For Chaska residents only please**

We, the undersigned citizens of Chaska, MN, believe that small-scale chicken keeping is a healthy, economic, and sustainable way to feed and enrich our families and our community. Besides making great pets, hens provide us with fresh eggs and encourage local sustainable living. The ability to raise chickens offers educational opportunities for our children. Chickens serve as a natural alternative to pesticides by eating bugs and insects, including fleas and disease-spreading ticks. Chickens also eat weeds, and chicken manure serves as an excellent fertilizer for lawns and gardens. Backyard chickens provide many benefits, which is why many towns and cities across the country now permit their residents to raise backyard chickens.  

The backyard chicken movement has been gaining support across the nation in recent years, with over 500 cities and towns changing their ordinances to allow small numbers of chickens in residential areas. This has been motivated by a number of factors, including the public's interest in healthier, locally-sourced food, increased control over and knowledge of food sources, and a growing concern for the humane treatment of animals raised for food. Environmental factors also are a consideration for many. Other benefits for those raising a small flock include an excellent source of natural fertilizer, chemical-free pest control and low-maintenance, charming pets. 

Many of the fears that people have regarding allowing chickens in residential areas stem from experience with or knowledge of large-scale chicken farming, which in no way reflects small-scale chicken keeping. Hens are no more disruptive to residential tranquility than a dog that barks occasionally, and often are even less so. Just as living next door to someone with a dog is not comparable to living next door to a dog kennel, backyard chicken flocks do not pose the same nuisances as the infamous chicken farms, and on the contrary, would offer many benefits to Chaska residents.

We respectfully request our leaders to act now to allow up to 5 hens (no roosters) in the backyards of residential homes, with certain restrictions as deemed necessary by the Council.