Report: Park Slope Neighbors Want Chicken Coop Gone
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Neighbors in Park Slope, Brooklyn, have launched a petition to evict a chicken coop that recently added eight more birds to its community garden.
The coop in the Warren Street St. Marks Community Garden added eight more chickens, which neighbors said will mean more noise and more rodents, according to the New York Daily News.
More than 160 neighbors signed a petition to have the chicken coop shut down, the newspaper reported.
Neighbors were also expected to turn out Sunday at a meeting, in which they were promised an opportunity to "meet the hens" and speak to an expert who would discuss whether they attract rats, the Daily News reported. A representative from the office of City Councilman Steve Levin (D-33rd) was expected to act as a facilitator, the newspaper reported.
Rebecca Lax, who lived on Sixth Avenue in Park Slope as of last year, began raising chickens in 2008, and they've since become a part of the family — even getting their own names. Her neighbor, Anna Klinger, was also raising chickens.
But it has been a bit difficult to populate the coop nature's way because it's illegal to keep a rooster in New York City.
"They crow at 5 o'clock in the morning, just when the sun rises," Lax said last year. "They're very loud, so New York City won't allow it."
Over in Bedford-Stuyvesant, chicken enthusiast Noah Leff had three chickens of his own as of last year, and has even started a company, Victory Chicken, to help others across the borough start up their own coops.
Leff hopes to establish 1,000 coops in New York City by 2015 – in gardens, schoolyards, at restaurants, and in the yards of private homes, according to the company's Facebook page.
