Lafayette moves to make backyard chicken ordinance permanent
Lafayette is moving to erase the sunset clause on its backyard chicken rule after issuing 45 permits. The vote would cement the five-hen, no-rooster setup for local keepers.
Lafayette’s city council was preparing to make its backyard chicken ordinance permanent, a move that would turn a trial policy into the long-term rule for residential keepers. The city has already issued 45 permits for backyard chickens, and the ordinance says residential property owners may keep a chicken flock for non-commercial use.
That permanent vote would matter because the original poultry policy was built as a test. A public notice from City Clerk Cindy Murray dated April 20, 2025 scheduled an Ordinance Committee meeting for May 8, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. at Lafayette City Hall, 20 N. 6th Street, to take public input on a proposed chicken ordinance. A public hearing video posted the next day shows the council’s chicken hearing was held May 8. The ordinance later advanced through a split council fight, with one account of the original vote putting the plan at 5-3 and setting a cap of five hens per property, no roosters, a free permit and a one-year sunset clause.
That sunset clock is the reason the current proposal carries real practical weight for keepers. If the council removes it, residents who already invested in coops, fencing, feed storage and flock care will no longer be planning around an expiration date. If it stays in place, hen owners are left wondering whether their setup will have to survive another policy deadline.
The city has also been tracking chicken-related Animal Control calls during the life of the ordinance, which suggests Lafayette is watching the rule for nuisance complaints and enforcement issues as closely as for egg production. Lafayette Animal Control officers are on duty from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and are dispatched through the Lafayette Police Department, the office residents would use to report problems with backyard flocks.
The debate has already shown how divided the issue can be. After the ordinance moved forward to a second reading in September 2025, a tie-breaker vote allowed residents to keep chickens within Lafayette city limits. Now the question is whether that narrow victory becomes a durable right or remains a policy that could have disappeared when the sunset clause ran out.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
