It seemed like the perfect escape from high egg prices .Get a few chickens of your own and have a built-in supply of free eggs.
Then a local ordinance put up a roadblock for this Aston family, writes Pete Bannan for the Daily Times.
Katie and Brian Madonna began raising chickens in 2024 after Katie’s grandfather passed away and left them with a coop and some chickens.
Katie said the former owner of their property had chickens. So do the neighbors, so they figured they’d have chickens too.
“It felt right,” she said.
Then an unknown neighbor complained to officials and “the hammer came down, hard,” Katie said.
The family got hit with a $700 find for violating a 2013 township ordinance against keeping chickens.
Their neighbors, apparently, were grandfathered in.
She reached out to Aston Commissioners Joe McGinn and Les Berry and they were able to change the ordinance allowing a household to have four chickens after getting a permit.
“I’m thrilled that Katie and her family can bring ‘the girls’ (her hens) back home,” McGinn said.
The chickens, plus her garden has helped the family be a little more food self-sufficient, she said.
Read more about the Madonna family and their chickens in the Daily Times.
