County rooster ban may ruffle feathers

There’ll be no roosters crowing at the break of dawn outside homes in unincorporated Cook County if an amendment to the county’s zoning code passes the full Cook County Board of Commissioners on Thursday.

Not wanting to run afoul of a county that’s becoming increasingly less rural, the Zoning and Building Committee of the Cook County Board of Commissioners also sought to limit the total number of fowl county residents can have on their land.

The amendment to the code in Appendix A-Zoning reduces the number of fowls from 12 to 5 for someone living on a plot of land that’s less than an acre large in unincorporated Cook County.

And roosters are banned entirely, though the update to the code adds farms as an exempt group — they were previously left out. Other groups exempt from the rules include veterinary clinics, animal hospitals, kennels, zoos and animal shelters.

Commissioner Peter Silvestri, committee chairman and sponsor of the ordinance, said that now that more rural areas of the county are being built up, a change in the zoning code was fair game.

The Elmwood Park Republican said the updates help “reflect the changes in the demographics.”

“It serves as the local ordinance for all the unincorporated areas of the county and they have the same issues that municipalities have, so we have our own zoning ordinance,” Silvestri said. “The people in the unincorporated area have to have the same protections as people in incorporated areas so we want to make sure they’re protected.”

The matter will come before the full board at its Thursday meeting and will go into effect immediately once passed.