As Council is aware, in 2014 the City relinquished animal control services to Pasco County. As a result, the prohibition on chickens within the city limits was repealed when the City adopted the Pasco County ordinance. On February 18, 2020 City Council was presented with an ordinance to reinstate the prohibition on allowing chickens within the city limits. It was the consensus of Council to not prohibit them but rather to institute regulations that would need to be abided by. The proposed regulations are as follows:

• No roosters shall be allowed on any property within the City at any time.

• Any property having live chickens thereon shall have chicken coops or pens on said property, in the rear yard only, constructed in a manner to keep the chickens housed therein at all times.  Each chicken coop or pen must have at least two (2) square feet of space per chicken kept on the property. Chickens shall be allowed outside the coops or pens periodically between sunrise and sunset, only, so long as the same are properly confined on the property with an impenetrable fence. No chicken pen shall exceed fifty (50) square feet in area.

• Any property on which live chickens are allowed must be properly maintained to properly remove waste products and to ensure proper vegetative ground covers are maintained at all times.  Any property on which a live chicken is kept that has more than one hundred (100) square feet of defoliated ground, outside a chicken pen or chicken coop area, shall be in violation of this Section.

• No property shall have more than five (5) live chickens thereon at any time.

• Live chickens shall not be slaughtered or processed for consumption on any property within the City at any time.