No defenders show up to crow about roosters
By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer
No one showed up at City Hall yesterday to defend their right to raise roosters in residential neighborhoods as a bill that would essentially ban the practice moved through a City Council committee.
However, five people came to testify in favor of the bill, which would reclassify chickens as farm animals and require their enclosures to be set back at least 300 feet from any adjoining residential, resort apartment or apartment mixed-use zoning district.
While the bill does not specifically ban chickens from residential areas, as Councilmember Jon Yoshimura pointed out, "There is absolutely no residential lot in Honolulu that would be that big."
Under the current law, a residential household can have up to two chickens.
"No one can seriously claim that chickens are pets, that they are being used to feed their family, and that they make no more noise than a barking dog," said 'Ewa resident Garry Smith. "Roosters are not domestic animals; they are farm animals. We don't allow any other farm animals in residential neighborhoods."
Keith Williams of Kapolei, who has five neighbors with two chickens apiece, said the noise from the two roosters that live 10 feet away from his window is unbearable. He said the chickens begin crowing at about 3 a.m. and continue long past daylight.
Yoshimura, chairman of the Parks and Public Safety committee that approved the measure, said the bill would be amended to ensure that the chickens would have to be kept in an enclosure that was no less than 300 feet from the property line. "That way, if chickens are not in an enclosure, then they are illegal," he said.
That language would ensure that chickens could not roam around a fenced-in yard, since the existing law on farm animals defines an enclosure as a kennel, coop, cage, hutch, hive or other structure used to breed, house or keep animals.
Yoshimura suggested that the bill may later be amended to restrict only roosters, rather than all chickens, since hens do not crow.
