After more than a century as a city, Westbrook is finally banning barnyard animals in residential areas.

Which makes one wonder: If the city has gone this long without banning farm animals, why start now?

Well, to answer that question, we have to go back a few months to a dispute on Chestnut Street, which began when a resident started clucking about the noise coming from her neighbor’s backyard. The neighbor, Bob Ledoux, had been keeping eight or nine chickens as pets in his backyard for about 10 years.

The complaint prompted the city to give Ledoux a violation for disobeying the city’s farming ordinance. Ledoux, however, wasn’t about to give up his chickens without a fight, and it wasn’t long before the dispute wound up in front of the Zoning Board of Appeals.

The board decided Ledoux had not violated the farming ordinance because his chickens were not for commercial use. However, although the city’s ordinances don’t specifically address chickens and other farm animals in residential areas, the board decided Ledoux would have to get rid of his chickens because they weren’t an allowable use in a residential area.

Since the dispute aired on the city’s cable access channel, the code enforcement department has been getting more complaints about other pets that aren’t quite domesticated. In order to be prepared for the next dispute, the city is considering some language in its ordinances that would restrict people in residential areas from owning farm animals.

We hope city councilors and administrators will not go too far in restricting farm animals. It seems reasonable to allow people to own a few farm animals, which in many cases are quite domestic. Several barking dogs can be much louder than a few clucking chickens.

Ledoux said he’s worked hard to make sure his chicken coop isn’t a nuisance. He keeps the chickens in a fenced pen. He doesn’t own roosters because they crow, and he said his chickens usually sleep from sunset until sunrise.

Far from being a nuisance, the chickens actually seem to be quite popular with many of his neighbors. Some of them use the chicken droppings as fertilizer for their gardens.

Donna Leclair, who lives down the street from him, said many of the neighborhood kids visit the chickens in Ledoux’s yard to learn about farm animals, a unique experience for kids from the city or suburbs.

“I don’t think he should have to get rid of them,” said Leclair. “I don’t think they’re hurting anybody.”

The neighbor that complained told the city the chickens were making too much noise during the night. Ledoux believes an animal from his neighbor’s yard might have gotten into his yard, causing a bit of a ruckus with the chickens. It’s difficult to know what might have happened on those nights. It was probably dark. The chickens were no doubt clucking, and the feathers might have been flying.

However, those would seem to be isolated incidents with no other complaints in 10 years. The city could just as easily get a complaint about cats and dogs fighting.

Most farm animals, if cared for in small numbers, are no more of a nuisance than many of the animals we consider to be domesticated. So why should they be treated any differently?

-Brendan Moran, editor