Back in mid-December, Nathan Graham and Natala Covert feared a certain speckled Sussex hen would put the kibosh on the agricultural enterprise they had hatched for their Mount Rainier back yard.

The suspect chicken was evidently the diva of the quartet of hens adapting to their new life in the couple's Community Forklift-inspired coop. Alarmingly, she felt compelled to regularly serenade the neighbors.

"She was always singing," Covert said. "And we thought, oh no, everyone in the neighborhood will hear her. We'd told everybody we wouldn't be getting a rooster, so we didn't want this to be a nuisance."

Fortunately, the neighbors became enamored with the fowl's powerful, persistent yet pleasing set of pipes.

"They made a point of telling us that they enjoy hearing the sounds of the farm in Mount Rainier," Graham interjected.

Naming the speckled Sussex soloist, of course, was a no-brainer. She was christened Miss Franklin as a tribute to the soulful Aretha. And she is evidently content to have set up housekeeping with her sister hens - a golden comet called Goldilocks for obvious reasons and a white leghorn named The Machine for her assembly-line like egg production-in suburban Washington, D.C. The fourth hen was the unfortunate victim of a run-in with the family dog several months ago.

Small-scale, urban backyard chicken farming is all the rage in metropolitan regions nationwide but it's a bit of a dicey proposition in Mount Rainier and other developed parts of Prince George's County where zoning regulations are somewhat ambiguous and contradictory. Graham, 28, and Covert, 25, are among those who want the Prince George's Council to follow the lead of a report on urban agriculture issued by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission last fall. It specifically recommends that the county legalize small flocks of hens as a trigger to spur mini-farms in its cities.

Brentwood resident Bradley Kennedy has carefully tracked the ins and outs of backyard chicken farming since 2010 when she helped to spearhead a petition drive as a representative of an advocacy group called Prince George's Hens.

The organization has collected at least 1,000 signatures since the summer of 2010 from locals in favor of allowing county residents in single-family homes to raise up to half a dozen hens. But Kennedy and her cohorts are still waiting for a council member to sponsor legislation at the county level so chicken farming can gain momentum instead of being a slightly stealth operation.

Prince George's Hens makes it clear that cock-a-doodle-doing roosters would not be part of the mix. One, roosters are too loud to mingle in residential neighborhoods. And two, the males are only necessary for farmers needing more chickens. Hobbyists such as Graham and Covert want to harvest only eggs.

"Every other major metropolitan area in the country allows backyard chickens," Kennedy noted. "We're a little behind the curve. This would be an opportunity for Prince George's County to take the lead."

She pointed out that chickens are representative of the modern green sustainable movement because not only are their eggs a local food source, but they also provide natural pest control, eat food scraps and are antibiotic-free.

"I happen to like pets that live outside," said Kennedy, who has experience with small-scale chicken farming. "Some people are cat people, some people are dog people and some people are chicken people."