New Bill Could Bring Chickens To Backyards Statewide

This story originally aired in the March 30, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.

A few nights ago, I swung by my neighborhood grocery store to pick up some eggs. I couldn’t quite believe what I saw.

One dozen eggs cost $10.69 at the Big Chimney Market. A half dozen was $4.99.

The experience left me shell shocked, you might say. 

It got me thinking: Would it just be cheaper to raise chickens and get my eggs that way?

“No you will not,” says Jon Novak of Novak Farms in Weston. “You’re going to have the money in the infrastructure, protecting them from the predators, the feed costs and all that fun stuff. But I’ll tell you what. You will have a better product in the end.”

Homegrown eggs aren’t pasteurized like store bought ones. But as long as they’re handled safely and the chickens are kept clean and healthy, the resulting eggs taste better. Some studies have even found they contain more nutrients and minerals than store bought eggs. 

That’s one reason Susan Casdorph of South Charleston is interested in chickens.

“You know what’s going into your chickens. And if you know what goes into your chickens, you know what’s coming out of your chickens,” Casdorph says. “You know what’s not going to be in those eggs.’

While Susan really wants chickens, her city government really doesn’t. She applied for a permit over a decade ago and was denied. She tried again in 2023. 

“This time I went down ready. I had a 30 page application,” Casdorph says.

But she got the same answer. She says city officials told her, “Ms. Casdorph, if we were going to give anybody a permit, it would be you.” 

“That tells me it wasn’t that I was not up to snuff,” she says. “They just don’t want anybody to have chickens.”

Casdorph took the city to court. The suit is still working its way through the justice system. In the meantime, she’s trying a different approach to get her chickens. She’s working with state delegate Mike Hornby to get a bill passed that would allow anyone in the state to raise their own backyard chickens.

“I think the ability to farm and make your own food is a fundamental right,” Horby says. “If you can do it and you’re not harming anybody, why should we restrict it?”

Some municipalities in the state like Charleston, Wheeling and Clarksburg have ordinances that allow residents to keep a small backyard flock. Others have ordinances forbidding all chicken husbandry within city limits. Or, like South Charleston, they require residents to have a permit before they can raise chickens.

“If this bill is passed, then it means you may have up to six chickens that are not free range, and no roosters,” Casdorph says. “And the city [says] you can’t do it unless it physically harms your neighbors.”

Horby, a Republican from Berkeley County, enters this food fight with a noteworthy win under his belt. Last year, he successfully sponsored a bill to legalize the sale of raw unpasteurized milk in the state. He now says it’s time to focus on a different part of the dairy aisle.

“We had this issue during COVID and recently with the bird flu on the West Coast — eggs are hard to find. And stores are limiting how many you can buy,” he says.

Horby says a world with more backyard chickens is a world where West Virginians have a safer, more robust food system — a world for which we’d all have to thank Susan Casdorph’s passion for poultry.

“I never wanted to be the crazy chicken lady,” she says. “But here we are.”