Where hens rule the roost

Though the city could allow backyard chickens by fall, one woman says the proposal doesn’t go far enough

By Angela Webber

The Beaverton Valley Times, Jul 15, 2010, Updated Jul 15, 2010 (5 Reader comments)

Every chicken Sue Wagoner owns is illegal, but she hopes an ordinance before city council will lift the long-standing ban.

Jaime Valdez / The Beaverton Valley Times

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Sue Wagoner loves her chickens.

The 62-year-old Beaverton resident has kept hens in her backyard for 17 years. Now Beaverton is drafting a proposal that would — at least partially — legalize a practice that Wagoner, and possibly others, have been doing for years.

While the language of the ordinance is still being finalized, the hearing before council is scheduled for the Aug. 9 council meeting. If the ordinance is approved, changes could be implemented as early as October.

The proposal in its current state would allow Beaverton residents to keep up to four hens in their back yards, as long as the hens were kept in a secure enclosure at least five feet from property lines and 20 feet from any neighboring building.

Wagoner is an advocate for urban poultry, but the proposal’s details don’t mesh with her views on chickens.

Wagoner says that the four-hen limit could cause problems. When those hens stop primary egg production after two years, she said, people will be likely to cast them aside. There is a type of person who raises chickens just for eggs who would kill them after main production, she said. That is not the way Wagoner raises her hens.

“I run a no-kill operation,” she said. “When they finish producing, they look pretty in my back yard.”

Her hens live for an average of eight years. Some have lived to be 11.

Wagoner’s hens aren’t just a source of eggs and fertilizer. They are part of her family.

When the a draft of the urban poultry bill came before council at a study session Monday, it contained a clause banning home slaughter of hens. It is not yet decided whether that clause will remain in the final version; Wagoner hopes it will.

Wagoner believes that she is far from the only Beaverton resident with a back yard flock. She has even helped others start their own hen operations.

“If they meet my standards, I love to get people started up.”

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