Chicken wars continue in Cobb County, Peachtree City

In Cobb County, bureaucrats have voted against the first application under the “pathway to chicken ownership”

The Cobb Board of Zoning Appeals has unanimously denied chicken advocate Joseph Pond’s request to keep four hens on his east Cobb property.

Wednesday was the first chance for the board to test out a new poultry ordinance recently adopted by the Cobb Board of Commissioners, which provides a pathway for residents who live on fewer than 2 acres but who want to have hens.

Commissioner JoAnn Birrell’s appointment to the appeals board, David Poteet, made the recommendation to deny Pond’s request, referencing an April 29 email from Robyn Funderburg, who lives across the street from Pond. In that email, Funderburg writes that she has reported Pond to the county in the past over having chickens.

City Council members could have hired a chicken consultant but they threw it in your lap. Although hen house research is a really “chicken” assignment, I am confident you will scratch up enough relevant information for the council to consider as it deliberates this highly critical issue.

Proponents of changing the ordinance to permit chickens in Peachtree City argue that a back yard hen program with chicken coops and the increased presence of chicken manure will improve the quality of life, beautify neighborhoods and increase the value of homes in Peachtree City. They contend that chickens in back yards will create jobs and attract new businesses. They say the economic impact of chickens in Peachtree City could rival the highly touted Pinewood Atlanta Studio project in Fayetteville.

Chicken supporters vehemently deny that chicken manure has a bad smell. Shorty Horton, my high school friend from Carrollton, learned in 1959 that they are flat wrong. Shorty was the grass cutter for several prominent families in Carrollton until he got a job washing cars at Curly Munroe’s Shell station near Bremen. During his grass cutting days Shorty supplemented his income by cleaning Digger Lumsden’s chicken coops and hauling the manure to Old Man Brown’s farm off the Newnan highway.

Shorty soon discovered that instead of hauling manure to the farm he could spread it on the yards of his customers and make the grass greener and healthier. This worked fine until the homeowners and their neighbors began to complain about the bad smell. Police Chief Radar Threadgill talked to Shorty in a nice way and told him to discontinue his fertilization program and haul the manure out of town. Shorty learned his lesson and told everybody in town that “chicken manure stinks and pouring perfume on it makes it worse.”

Unfortunately, a handful of mean-spirited troublemakers in Peachtree City agree with Shorty and deny the aesthetic benefits of chicken coops. They flat oppose turning Peachtree City into chicken utopia. The anti-chicken group expresses fear that our chicken-friendly town will be highlighted nationally as part of Jay Leno’s monologue.