Which animals can you keep in Kane County?

Among the critters that Vicki Weiland of Kane Area Rehabilitation and Education is taking care of these days at her St. Charles Township home is a opossum that was recently confiscated from a Cook County woman who was illegally keeping it as a pet.

"It was healthy, but they didn't follow through on the legal end," Weiland said. "People need to do their homework. It is your responsibility to find out what your local laws are."

Municipalities and government bodies have rules on what one can and cannot raise. Weiland herself had to obtain state and federal permits before she could keep wildlife on her property.

Jeanne and Rich Lyon of St. Charles checked with city officials two years ago before they brought home chickens they had purchased at Garfield Farm Museum for $2 each. To their surprise, they found out that St. Charles allows chickens.

St. Charles is one of the few suburbs that allows residents to keep chickens in their backyards. Batavia, Geneva, Elburn and Sugar Grove all ban backyard chickens.

The Lyons have four chickens, including a rooster. The couple and their three sons treat them like their pets.

"They are good company," Jeanne Lyon said. "They will sit on your lap. They are more sociable than a cat."

Lyon, who lives on Indiana Avenue, said she is mindful of her neighbors.

"Our rooster hardly crows," she said. "We insulated his coop and made sure our neighbors were OK with it. If I had a rooster that was bothering someone, I wouldn't have a rooster."

Although St. Charles allows residents to raise chickens, they cannot have pigs, swine, sheep, cattle or goats.

Tammy Caltagirone did not even realize St. Charles allowed chickens until she saw the Lyons were raising them. She lives a few blocks from the couple at the corner of 9th and Madison Avenues.

"I had always wanted chickens, but I didn't think St. Charles would allow them," she said. "We're moving toward a more healthy eating environment and wanted fresh eggs."

Caltagirone and her husband, Nick, bought their four hens a month ago from a business in West Chicago. But she checked with her neighbors first.

Fritz Epperly, who lives across the street from the couple, doesn't mind having feathered friends as new neighbors.

"I had no problem as long as I got a couple of eggs," Epperly said. "It's wonderful. It's more of a self-sufficiency thing."

St. Charles Mayor Don DeWitte said when he grew up on Dean Street in the '50s and '60s, neighbors who lived across the street from him raised chickens for food.

"Back then, that was considered almost the rural edge of the community," DeWitte said.

The city is aware of two families in St. Charles who are raising chickens for personal use, he said.

"We have had no complaints and would not intervene unless we were to find out the chickens are being used for commercial purposes," DeWitte said. "As long as they do not create a nuisance for neighbors, they are allowed."

Batavia code compliance officer Rhonda Klecz, in the past few months, has had to respond to three separate complaints of residents who were illegally raising chickens. They had to get rid of them.

"People were raising them for eggs," Klecz said. "I think people are looking for other ways to supplement their food bill."

Along with chickens, Batavia bans such animals as horses, ponies, mules, cattle, sheep and swine, along with non-domesticated animals like lions, coyotes or poisonous reptiles.

Over the years, Geneva building commissioner Chuck Lencioni has had to tell residents they had to get rid of illegal animals such as pot-bellied pigs, which became a pet craze in the 1990s. It is illegal to raise pigs, sheep, cattle, horses, goats, fowl or any naturally wild animals other than birds and fish within the city limits of Geneva.

And even though the backyard chicken movement is taking hold across the nation, Lencioni doesn't foresee Geneva ever allowing them.

"When you have a whole bunch of chickens, it's not a real pleasant aroma," Lencioni said. "We are in an urban setting, not a rural setting."

In Elburn, horses, cattle, swine, sheep, goats, chickens and rabbits cannot be raised within the village limits.

"The ordinance has been in place since 1974," said Jim Stran, Elburn's building and zoning enforcement officer. "We don't get many pet complaints."

Sugar Grove village officials recently made a resident in the Mallard Point subdivision get rid of his bee hives after a neighbor who was worried that the bees were a hazard to people with allergies filed a complaint.

The village does not allow beekeeping in a residential district. Residents also can only have domestic animals.

Sugar Grove Community Development Director Richard Young said chickens would be allowed if the property was zoned agricultural, but that there a limited number of properties zoned that way in the village.

Jeanne Lyon said the stereotype that chickens are dirty, disease-carrying farm animals is just not true.

"Chickens preen and clean themselves and others frequently," she said. "They prefer cleanliness."