WILSON — Six-year-old Jonathan Soukup of Wilson helped his parents, Justin and Jocelyn, raise 12 chickens from the time they were chicks in hopes of someday entering them in the Ellsworth County Fair.

Unfortunately, those hopes have been dashed.

“What we had originally gotten the chickens for was to prepare Jonathan to be around chickens, so he could be in 4-H and have something to enter into the fair,” Jocelyn said during a Feb. 5 interview with the Independent Reporter. “Once we moved across the street, our neighbors took it upon themselves to not allow that to happen.”

The Soukups purchased the chickens (two roosters and 10 hens) last March, and raised them in the backyard of their home at 511 23rd St. Jocelyn said the chickens were visible from certain parts of the street.

“They were in a space where they were happy,” she added.

Jocelyn said they had a permit from the City of Wilson to raise their chickens at that address.

“The way I thought the permit read was that they (the chickens) belong to me in my name,” she said. “But apparently, they were residential permits.”

The Soukups and their chickens then moved across the road to 516 23rd St.

“With the stress of moving, not getting a permit for the other address slipped my mind,” Jocelyn said.

After the move, she had planned to house the chickens in the small backyard of the new residence.

“Whenever I went and asked my next door neighbor, he slammed the door in my face after I told him I had chickens,” Jocelyn said. “So to be a courteous neighbor to him, I put them on the side of my yard.”

Jocelyn said she realizes roosters crow and she didn’t want her neighbors to have to deal with that so close to their house.

At the Jan. 6 meeting of the Wilson City Council, another nearby resident, Jack Holloway, voiced concerns about the chickens.

“If you’re going to keep animals like that out in the open, maybe they ought to get somebody to come in and reappraise the houses because they’re certainly going to be worth less money if they’re going to have something like that going on,” Holloway said.

“I’ve had numerous people express complaints to me about it in the last day-and-a-half,” said Wilson Police Chief Joshua Tipton, who also heads the city’s board of health. “I have had some individuals state to me that they’ve seen some of the chickens running loose around, but in all fairness they do scoop them up and put them back in.”

Tipton said his primary concern was whether the chickens getting out will be a frequent issue, because the owners aren’t always home.

Tipton said he understood the concerns, because he could see the chickens from his living room window.

Mayor Michael Peschka directed the city board of health to look into the matter the next day and report back to the council.

City Attorney Theresa Staudinger said the board of health could deny the application’s renewal and the applicant would have the opportunity to appeal it to the city council.

Jocelyn said Holloway lives across the street, all the way to the other end of the corner from her.

“He walks his dog,” she said. “I guess he just doesn’t like seeing chickens on his walk.”

Jocelyn said the day after the city council meeting, she was visited by Chief Tipton.

Tipton told Jocelyn her chickens were getting out, that she was not in compliance with the city ordinance, but he would work with her.

Jocelyn said she repaired the chicken house she was keeping her chickens in because it was damaged.

“A board had came loose,” she said. “And so when the chickens would walk on top of it, they would fall out.”

Jocelyn said her intention was to keep her chickens penned up.

“I got it all fixed up, it was tight, and the chickens were happy and not getting out again and they weren’t a hazard,” she said.

A day later, Tipton showed up on Jocelyn’s doorstep again.

“(He) told us we needed to get rid of the chickens because we didn’t have a permit for the present address,” she said. “That’s where I was confused, because whenever I submitted it to the City of Wilson, they didn’t give me a copy to go on, so that’s probably why.”

Jocelyn said the option she has to appeal the decision was not explained to her.

“I was told to get the chickens out of the city limits,” she said. “That is what Officer Tipton and the mayor both told me. He (Peschka) came over to my house the second day as well. They told me to get them out of the city limits, and there was nothing they could do, and to just wait until they redo the city ordinance to reapply.”

Jocelyn said Peschka also told her “that on a busy street, he didn’t want to see chickens, hear chickens or smell chickens.”

Jocelyn said she was never told to take the chickens back to her former residence (511 23rd Street), where she had the permit.

By the time Jocelyn had given her chickens to somebody else until she could find out what the new guidelines were for keeping chickens (the city council approved updated guidelines at the Jan. 21 meeting) it was too late.

Jocelyn said she can’t get the chickens back and redo the permit process for her new home.

“They (the city council) have done everything in their power to make sure that I do not have chickens,” she said. “The way my property is set up, it (the new guidelines) doesn’t allow me to have chickens.”

Jocelyn said there is so much more Peschka could be doing, rather than dealing with her chickens.

Now that she has had time to reflect on what took place, Jocelyn said she wished her neighbors would have talked to her first, instead of going straight to the city council.

“I feel they should have been more welcoming,” she said. “I’ve lived at 511 23rd St. for five years and nobody ever came about my chickens.” Jocelyn said she has

Jocelyn said she has spent a lot of time being angry, because none of her neighbors had to tell Jonathan that his chickens had to go. “No one was willing to

“No one was willing to do that,” she said. “I had to do that. And that’s just not fair to my 6-year-old. The look on his face broke my heart. There were many nights that he spent crying because he had them since they were just little chicks in his hands. He couldn’t understand why people wanted him to get rid of his pets.”

Jocelyn said she doesn’t think appealing her case to the city council would be worth it.

“It really feels like I don’t have a voice,” she said.