Do you feed the fat, roaming chickens of Key West? That could be costly under a new law
When you think of Key West, you may have visions of a glorious sunset at Mallory Square or bar-hopping on Duval Street.
Others think about chickens. Roaming, clucking, fat chickens roaming the streets of the Southernmost City, and sometimes making a mess.
The birds make themselves right at home and don’t have any problem finding a meal. Tourists feed them popcorn. Some locals buy big bags of bird feed and scatter the pellets on the ground.
Soon, that may be illegal.
Key West leaders are moving to crack down on people feeding the free-range chickens on the island. A new ordinance would ban freely feeding them, citing health and safety concerns and property damage.
“The fowl have a feast,” said City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, who sponsored the measure. “They can pick and choose better than we can what they eat off their plate.”
The no-feeding ordinance was approved unanimously after a first reading on Wednesday. A second vote is needed to put it into the code of ordinances.
“The casual French fry guy is not our problem,” Lopez said. “There are people who buy 50-pound bags of feed and even dress up as chickens to go around feeding them.”
Code compliance officers would enforce the new rules. Those who don’t comply could face fines of $250 per day for a first violation and $500 per day for repeat offenders.
The chickens of Key West are either a point of cultural pride or a straight-up nuisance, depending on who you ask.
But the focus lately has been on the nuisance side. The ordinance points out the wild birds can “carry and spread diseases, destroy property, and cause copious amounts of fecal deposits on public property.”
Patricia Eables, an assistant Monroe County attorney who lives in Key West, has a neighbor who feeds the chickens several times a day. The result, she said: chicken droppings on the stairs, handrails, cars and other surfaces, along with torn-up flower beds.
She’s even had roosters attack her ankles as she walks up her stairs.
“We have done everything we can as neighbors to try to get her to stop doing it,” Eables said of the neighbor who feeds the birds. “We started reaching out to code and learned there was no ordinance.”
She said one day she counted 43 chickens, blackbirds and pigeons outside her home at one time.
“It’s out of control,” Eables said. “The city’s got to do something about it.”
Key West resident Charles Malta, a contractor, said his New Town street has been invaded by dozens of chickens because of rogue feeding.
“The population has literally exploded,” Malta said. “They’re being fed and when you ask anybody to stop it’s like you’re asking them for their first-born. It’s a heated thing on both sides.”
Eables and Malta have trapped chickens on their own and taken them to the Key West Wildlife Center, which doesn’t trap chickens but relocates them to other places in Florida under an agreement with the city.
No skinny chickens in Key West
The wild chickens in Key West don’t need help with finding food, said Tom Sweets, executive director of the wildlife center. The island is a bug-rich environment for them.
“Nothing is worse for the chickens than feeding them,” Sweets said. “I’ve never seen a skinny chicken in Key West unless it’s sick or injured. There’s really not a need. They’re quite capable of taking care of themselves.”
The feed that people throw on the ground can make chickens sick, Sweets said. It gets wet, goes bad and soaks up bacteria from the ground.
“It’s a big deal,” Sweets said. “That food spoils really quickly.”
Feeding the chickens, which Sweets said tend to be nomadic, keeps them sticking around and reproducing in one spot where they know there is a steady food supply.
The wildlife center doesn’t have an estimate of how many chickens call Key West home. But in 2020, they took in about 1,800 chickens. Overall, about 70 percent of the chickens in the center survived.
The center sees about 1,500 each year. So far in January, they’ve taken in about 180.
The feeding ban doesn’t apply to people who keep chickens in coops or pens, although current law does specify that owners must regularly clean such enclosures, including scooping out the bird waste at least every 24 hours. And droppings can’t be used for fertilizer.
Poultry can’t run on public property or even go off their owners’ premises, according to the new ordinance.
The roaming Key West chickens seem to be fearless when it comes to approaching people, said City Commissioner Mary Lou Hoover.
“They’re becoming more aggressive by the day,” Hoover said. In her district, people have reported that when they go to put dog feces in the trash, chickens come up and attack them, thinking it might be food.
City Commissioner Greg Davila suggested that iguanas could be added to the no-feed ordinance. But that didn’t fly.
“I’m no fan of iguanas either,” Lopez said, laughing. “Pick your battles.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Do you feed the fat, roaming chickens of Key West? That could be costly under a new law."
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