Cock of the Walk Getting Layed (Off) In Vermont

Monday, October 12, 2009 by Dick.

BARRE TOWN, VERMONT — Kathy Rubacalba lives with about 100 chickens and, now, almost no roosters. Her home and her backyard egg operation sits on a quarter-acre homestead in East Barre. Town officials there say her roosters crow. That must violate something, don’t you think?

Last Wednesday afternoon, three police officers, the town’s animal control officer, and a “representative of the town” — a self-proclaimed town “chicken expert” — raided Rubacalba’s roost without a warrant; they confiscated four roosters (three too small to crow) because they, well, crow.

“Dogs bark, roosters crow, mufflers are loud, you live in a village there’s noise,” Ms. Rubacalba said.

Vermont prides itself on being a little behind the times — we were the last state to get a WalMart for heaven’s sake — but Vermont is right at the top of the list on property rights.

Except at Ms. Rubacalba’s house.

One neighbor noticed that the Town “brought a SWAT team” to take a roosters and a couple of chicks.

Max Sennett couldn’t make this property rights and due process stuff up.

The Vermont Right to Farm Act exempts backyard farms from nuisance claims which means flatlanders can’t complain when the farm next door spreads manure in the fields. It also means the East Barre selectboard should have quashed the complaint before the cops got caught up in a clustercluck.

There’s more. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Michigan that a local zoning officer violated a landowner’s rights by conducting a warrantless search of the landowner’s property. The zoning enforcement officer made several unannounced visits to the property. The Court noted that the unannounced warrantless searches were not routine inspections. Not only that, the Court said it makes no difference that the zoning enforcement officer was not a law-enforcement officer since “it is clearly established that a government official does not have to carry a badge and a gun to be subject to the restrictions on the Fourth Amendment.”

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court in New Mexico similarly rejected a building inspector’s nonconsensual warrantless search of private property.

East Barre didn’t even send a zoning officer. They sent a “chicken expert” and three police officers who prevented Ms. Rubalcaba from accompanying the expert into at least one of the closed-door chicken coops on her property.

Media attempts to reach Town Manager Carl Rogers or Town Attorney Michael Monte for comment have been unsuccessful.

Ms. Rubalcaba says she is “a full-time chicken farmer” since her job at Norwich University was “eliminated” in April. Her backyard farm is called Layed In Vermont.

By the way, the chicken expert apparently did get one rooster but took two or three hen chicks. Cartoonist Jeff Danzigger promised to design a logo for Ms. Rubalcaba. Maybe it could look like this.

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