Orlando City Council approves Urban Chickens Pilot Program

At yesterday's meeting of the Orlando City Council, commissioners from districts 3, 4 and 5 approved the creation of a permitting program for residents who would like to keep chickens. If you love fresh eggs and live in Audubon Park, Baldwin Park, College Park, Colonialtown, Lake Eola Heights or Parramore, you may be able to get one of the 25 initial permits to keep up to three hens (no roosters for now, but who needs 'em anyway) in a fenced-in, covered coop in your back yard. (View meeting minutes or watch the meeting on YouTube to learn more about the specific code requirements.)

We wrote about the trend almost two years ago (see "Clucking around," July 28, 2010). Many of the chicken owners we interviewed spoke only on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from neighbors or code enforcement crackdown on their backyard hatchery operations; perhaps now they can emerge from the shadowy egg underworld. If there's anyone who should be hiding, it's factory farming companies who do things like this.