Chicken advocates say animals aren’t a nuisance

Whether chickens are allowed or not in New Prague, may be decided on Tuesday, Feb. 16, by the New Prague City Council.

The council will consider an amendment to the city’s ordinance that would ban farm animals, including chickens, from residential properties. The current ordinance is considered vague and does not specifically state either way about the keeping of chickens.

There are supporters on both sides of whether residents should or should not be allowed to raise chickens.

The Planning Commission is in support of allowing chickens, although there would be guidelines, ranging from the number of the birds that would be kept to how they would be kept to a resident needing a permit and other rules. The majority of the council is in favor of the ban. At past meetings, the council has cited residents’ concerns about the smell from the birds and their droppings, that New Prague is not the rural community it once was and the possibility of avian flu.

Among those residents who support the keeping of chickens are Dan and Keri Smith Metzdorff. In a letter to the city they noted they checked the city’s ordinance several times. They have kept chickens on their property, which abuts a farm, for 8 and-a-half years. In that time they have had one complaint from the city, which was more about ducks they had. They took the letter to heart and found a new home for the ducks.

Keri Smith Metzdorff is the daughter of Larry and Diane (Bruzek) Smith and granddaughter of Raymond and Ludmilla (Hadac) Bruzek. Growing up she would visit with her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in New Prague, who had chickens. She learned as a girl the positives of chickens.

"I learned early on from family how much fun chickens are as pets and how much better their homegrown eggs taste than store bought. I learned how great chickens are for recycling food scraps from the kitchen, how good their composted manure is on your garden. I learned how quiet and inobtrusive they are and how much less of a burden they are to have than even a dog," she said.

That and other reasons, especially that the community still celebrates its agricultural roots with Dozinky, a Czech Harvest Festival, in September, is why she and her family moved to New Prague.

Their chickens and garden have been great educational.....

To see more on this story pick up the February 11, 2016 print edition of The New Prague Times.