Chickens, a rooster and a quarter-acre lot: the zoning board takes up the hamlet henhouse question October 1

The application the zoning board took in back in August has a hearing date. The Town of Schaghticoke Zoning Board of Appeals will hold two public hearings on Thursday, October 1 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 290 Northline Drive, and one of them asks a question a lot of hamlet residents have quietly wondered about: can you keep chickens on a village-sized lot?

Update, October 14. The board’s September 3 minutes are posted, and they fill in the applications. Mr. Dolan told the board he has seven chickens and one rooster, that the coop is 41 feet from one neighbor and 27 feet from 7 Bickford Lane, and that he needs a variance of about 4.73 acres from the five-acre rule. A couple who live nearby came to that meeting to object to the rooster crowing at all hours. Mr. Whitney’s addition would leave a 3-foot-4-inch side yard, a variance of 10 feet 8 inches. Our summary of that meeting is here. The October 1 minutes, with the outcome of both hearings, are not yet posted.

5 Bickford Lane: chickens and one rooster

Matthew Dolan is asking for a use variance and area variances to keep chickens and a single rooster at 5 Bickford Lane, a lot of about 0.27 acres in the Hamlet zoning district. The town’s zoning law treats poultry as an agricultural use, and Section V(N) requires a 5.0-acre lot and specific setbacks for a coop. A quarter-acre lot is nowhere near that, which is why this needs a use variance from the Hamlet district’s table of permitted uses, not just a setback adjustment.

That distinction matters. Under state law a use variance is the hardest kind to get: the applicant has to show the property cannot yield a reasonable return under the rules as written, that the hardship is unique to the property, that the variance will not change the neighborhood’s character, and that the hardship was not self-created. Area variances, by contrast, are weighed on a balancing test of benefit to the applicant against detriment to the neighbors. The board’s decision on Bickford Lane will say something about how the town reads its own rules for backyard flocks, and neighbors on either side of the question should expect the board to ask about noise (the rooster), odor, setbacks from adjoining houses, and how many birds.

The notice is dated September 23 and signed by ZBA chair Edward McDonough.

853 Master Street: a garage addition close to the line

The second hearing is a more routine area variance. Franklin Whitney wants to add onto an existing garage at 853 Master Street, a 7.23-acre parcel in the Residential Agriculture district. The addition would sit 3.33 feet from the side property line where Section IV(F)(2)(c) of the zoning law requires 14 feet. The notice is dated September 24.

How to weigh in

Both hearings take public comment in person on October 1. Written comment is also accepted now, by mail to the Town Clerk at 290 Northline Drive, Melrose, NY 12121, or by email to townclerk@townofschaghticoke.org. Both notices are on our notices board and the meeting is on the community calendar.

One loose end from the summer: the board’s August minutes pointed to a formal ratification of its determination on the Eastover Road dog-grooming business, which it accepted tentatively in August. Whether that happened at the September 3 meeting will be in those minutes, which the town has not posted yet. We will report both that and the October 1 outcomes when the minutes appear.

Sources: the two public hearing notices posted on the Town of Schaghticoke website September 23 and 24, 2026 (text only, no PDFs published); the August 6 ZBA minutes, where the Dolan application was first received; New York Town Law section 267-b for the use and area variance standards.