COEUR d'ALENE - The number of chickens you can raise, could rise.

Coeur d'Alene's General Services Committee agreed to revisit the recently-changed animal ordinance to possibly increase the number of chickens city dwellers can have.

Again.

"I joked the other meeting I was pro-chicken, and I think I still am," said Mike Kennedy, city councilman and committee chair. "I think we'll process through it."

The old ordinance allowed for unlimited flock but the recently-changed one allows for three.

Last month, the city updated a number of its animal ordinances and included the three chicken cap. The General Services committee didn't want to ban them outright, as suggested by the city's legal team, on the grounds that more people are raising them as a healthier, more economically friendly way to provide food. It attached the limit of three arbitrarily, focusing more on allowing chickens rather than prohibiting them.

"We didn't know a lot about it," Kennedy said of the number of chickens needed for plenty of production.

Several residents said that was too low to produce eggs enough to make raising chickens worth it, and addressed the committee Monday, which agreed to bring it back up as an agenda item.

"It's based upon how responsible the owner is," said Chris White, a resident with chickens of his own, who described the domesticated fowl as clean and quiet and usually less of a neighborhood nuisance than barking dogs or roaming cats. "And I enjoy them all as pets which is a bummer when one of them passes away."

The committee will put the discussion back on the table July 12 during its noon meeting at the Coeur d'Alene Public Library.

Contact: Warren Wilson, deputy city attorney, at wwilson@cdaid.org.