Wheat Ridge council discusses animal code changes; agrees limits for roosters, bans swine and clarifies several rules

Wheat Ridge City Council members spent much of the study session reviewing a comprehensive set of proposed changes to Chapter 4 of the municipal code that covers animals, and they reached several consensuses after extended public comment focused on a single nuisance rooster in a Moore Court neighborhood.

The city received repeated public testimony both for and against permitting roosters in residential neighborhoods. Dozens of residents described a specific rooster they said crowed repeatedly and disrupted residents’ sleep and outdoor life; residents provided recordings and counts they said documented crowing 5 times in five minutes and estimated up to 30–35 crowing events per hour in some cases. Other residents, and several backyard-farming advocates, warned that banning roosters would undermine Wheat Ridge’s urban-farming heritage and that hens sometimes crow as well.

Staff summarized a range of proposed changes to the animal code, including allowing reptiles/amphibians with targeted prohibitions for venomous or hazardous species; clarifying endangered-species rules to allow possession by licensed entities (for example, licensed rehabilitators or research institutions); consolidating overlapping definitions for “aggressive,”…