Residents urge Collingswood to allow backyard hens; experts recommend resident advisory board and rules

Several residents and local business owners urged the Collingswood Borough Commission to permit backyard hens (explicitly excluding roosters) and to adopt a resident-run advisory board model to manage applications, education and low-level enforcement.

Grant Patterson (262 Harvard Avenue) opened the public comment group and said several neighbors and prospective advisory-board members attended to show broad interest. An unnamed longtime attendee described benefits of hens: "Hens are quiet ... they build soil, they provide high quality manure for compost," and said the group supports a no-rooster rule.

Cara Guerreri (325 Park Avenue), a local small-business owner, recounted running a large backyard flock in Texas and said chickens encourage gardeners to track weather and food production; she also cautioned that backyard poultry can attract wild birds and bring disease risks if feeders congregate wild birds near flocks.

Dan Devito (136 New Jersey Avenue), owner of Frontyard Food, framed backyard hens as a food-security tool and endorsed a resident advisory-board approach that would encourage responsible stewardship and reduce enforcement burdens on borough staff.

Gwen Bailey (introduced earlier as a principal advisor and later identifying herself as chair and founder of Camp Chickens) gave the most detailed description of an advisory-board model Collingswood could adopt. She outlined an eight-member resident board that would: require applicants to take a three-hour class and pass a quiz; perform a pre-permit site visit to verify coop placement and predator-proofing; sign off on applications for borough licensing; provide on-call neighborhood support for new keepers; require corrections within a two-week window and escalate to municipal enforcement only if problems persist. Bailey said a neighboring pilot program began in 2015 and has operated about 11 years with very few enforcement actions; she said she counted 19 Camden County municipalities that allow backyard chickens.

Bailey described operational details the commission asked about: typical coop setbacks, the use of hardware cloth rather than chicken wire for predator protection, a guideline of roughly 10 square feet of coop space per bird, and a rule against free-ranging unless the keeper supervises the birds.

Commissioners asked staff for more comparative materials and said they would review the written proposals and community examples; a commissioner said the commission would "chew on it" and expected a fuller discussion at an upcoming work meeting or possibly in July. No ordinance vote was taken at this meeting.

The public-comment speakers, their materials and the advisory-board model are expected to inform staff drafting of an ordinance or pilot program for future consideration.