Chickens in The News- Backyard Chickens a hot topic!

http://andreareimer.typepad.com/in_the_news/2009/01/courier-playing-chic...

January 21, 2009
COURIER: Playing Chicken
Jeff Nield
Vancouver Courier

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

From curbside on a brisk autumn morning on a quiet Mount Pleasant block just west of Main Street, a neatly kept house gives no hint that illegal activity is taking place out back. But, in a city rife with well concealed grow-ops, local residents know that looks can be deceiving. Mary, the retired owner of the property, is as non-threatening as her house, and on first impression she wouldn't fit anyone's stereotype of a lawbreaker.

With a conspiratorial air, she motions to the backyard and introduces Beatrice and Ophelia, the two heritage chickens she raises in her backyard in clear violation of the City of Vancouver's animal control bylaw. The bylaw reads, in part, that a person must not keep in any area, temporarily or permanently, any horses, donkeys, cattle, swine, sheep, goats, ducks, geese, turkeys, chickens, pheasants, quail, or other poultry or fowl.

"I would prefer to have the chickens legally rather than flying under the radar as I do now," says Mary from her south facing backyard. "I'd miss them terribly if I had to give them up."

Losing her avian companions along with a possible fine of up to $2,000 is reason enough for Mary to insist on anonymity. And while Vancouver neighbourhoods are dotted with people quietly raising chickens without trouble, if a neighbour or passerby were to complain, animal control officers would investigate and enforce the bylaw.

The big fears about allowing chickens on city lots include unpleasant odours and noise, along with pest and predator attraction. Perhaps the easiest claim to debunk is that chickens are noisy. "Even the loudest hen is not going to be audible, when compared to a barking dog," says Andrea Reimer, Vision Vancouver city councillor and urban chicken supporter.

Ensuring odour, pest and predator problems stay under control is a management issue that would be addressed through education and training. The hope is that if someone is willing to take on the responsibility of raising backyard birds, they'd take these management issues seriously.

Mary wanted to keep chickens after house-sitting for her sister in Scotland who has chickens. She wistfully remembers the birds inspiring a desire to move to the country. "But then I thought, 'Oh, don't be so stupid, wrong age to move to the country,' so I thought the country has to come to me," she explains.

After thorough research, she bought a prefab chicken coop called the Eglu made by Omlet in the U.K. "It's fantastic, it's so easy and nothing can get to them," enthuses Mary. "It was a bit of money, but I though if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right." Mary bought the $500 US coop south of the border and hauled it home for her new tenants in 2007. In the 18 months of raising chickens, Mary has had no problems with pests, predators, neighbours or city officials. Plus she has fresh eggs for most of the year.

While the city's animal control office has no current record of any resident being fined with keeping chickens illegally, or any backyard chicken related complaints for that matter, the law is still on the books and action has been taken in living memory. City Farmer, Canada's self-professed office of urban agriculture, reported on Vancouver resident Gabriella Centenary's struggle to keep backyard chickens way back in 1978.

"For over two years Mrs. Centenary has been doing battle with the City. Just recently in provincial court she was given a suspended sentence and put on probation for six months for breaking the bylaw which makes it unlawful for any person in Vancouver to keep horses, cattle, swine, goats, ducks, geese, chickens, turkeys, pigeons or bees," reported City Farmer.

The changing face of our city is reflected in the attitude of city councillors towards urban chickens. "In principal I really like the idea," says NPA Coun. Suzanne Anton. "In practice, there are some challenges, one person's egg layer might become someone else's really annoying neighbour."

Anton's support hinges on public input into the effects of a changed bylaw, noting that "we need to be looking at all options for urban agriculture." Anton goes on to note that her election signs are being recycled into moveable chicken coops by a resourceful "young acquaintance" in Southlands.

Vancouver is not alone in its current prohibition on urban chickens, but Victoria, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond and Surrey all allow the birds in city limits. In most cases, there are limitations on the number of birds, and sometimes on minimum lot size, along with a ban on roosters because of their early morning vocalizing.

But beyond that, chicken-friendly municipalities see the birds as a positive for the community. Victoria spokeswoman Katie Josephson, quoted in a Dec. 29 Ottawa Citizen article, says urban chickens are part of the city's plan to encourage area food production. She also noted in the past year the city has had no complaints about dirty coops or pests.

The U.K. has seen a phenomenal jump in the number of urban chicken keepers with conservative estimates that 500,000 households raise their own birds, and Omlet says coop sales have tripled in the past year. American cities as densely populated as Portland, Seattle, Arlington and New York have very strong provisions for the practice. In the wired world there are dozens, if not hundreds, of websites singing the virtues of raising urban chickens. In just under three years one of the web's leading media outlets dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream, TreeHugger.com, has gone from dubbing urban chicken raising a "weird eco-habit" to declaring it a "movement across North America." The blog UrbanChickens.net reports regularly on continent-wide efforts to change bylaws along with personal stories of city chicken keepers.

In Vancouver, a letter from a chicken-friendly city resident made its way to city hall last summer asking that the animal control bylaw be changed to allow urban chickens. The letter was brought to the attention of the Vancouver Food Policy Council, and it began the research to give recommendations to city council on whether this would be possible.

"We believe that allowing people to house backyard chickens will help make us more food secure," explains council member Trish Kelly by phone from her home. Fresh from a visit to her aunt's chicken-friendly home in Surrey, Kelly sees an amended bylaw as supporting an April 2002 city policy motion to make Vancouver a sustainable city. "This serves policies that have already been enacted," says Kelly. "The goal now is to present recommendations to the new city council."

Reimer sees urban chickens as a significant contribution to improving food security in the city. "There are very few animals that aerate your soil, fertilize your garden and provide food," she says. "And then wake up the next day and do it all over again. There are many paths to sustainability and urban chickens can be one of the stones in that path."

A few blocks due south of Ophelia's and Beatrice's backyard hideout lives Julia Hilton, with her husband and six-month old son. Hilton and a group of her neighbours have started meeting under the banner of the Two Block Diet to develop ways to become more food self-sufficient in the middle of the city. "I want to eat as close to home as possible," explains Hilton from her comfortable living room. "I want to know where my food comes from."

Mistrust of the industrialized food system is one of a handful of reasons city folks are flocking to the idea of keeping chickens at home. Economics, access to high quality nitrogen-rich fertilizer in the form of chicken waste and creating community also rank high. "It's about more than just food, it's about community," says Hilton. To illustrate her point, she explains that the Two Block Diet group includes 15 core households and numerous supportive community members ranging from young renting families like her own to a landscape architect and an elderly neighbour who has lived on the street since the 1930s and remembers watching the towering, and currently snow laden, monkey puzzle tree in Hilton's front yard being planted. The community building aspect is something that anonymous Mary echoes.

"The children in this neighbourhood, I'm on their route, they come by and see the chickens, so they know where eggs come from," she says.

For the gardener, chickens offer a host of benefits beyond providing eggs for Sunday brunch. "I used to have lots of slugs and now I have zero slugs," says Mary. "And their droppings go straight into the compost." She goes on to caution that young tender shoots need to be protected from her birds prying beaks and claws, but they happily peck around established plants.

The people gathering in the Hilton's living room also see the broader benefit of urban chickens. "Chickens are a great source of fertilizer," agrees Hilton. "They also eat mosquito larvae and will eat the extra worms from my compost if I have too many."

The Two Block Dieters hope to integrate the birds into a holistic food production plan for their neighbourhood that will provide biodiversity and food access benefits for years to come. Hilton is often questioned why she is willing to put so much work into projects like the Two Block Diet when her family is renting and probably will eventually leave the neighbourhood. "I don't really think that way," she says with a chuckle. "I would rather leave it better than I found it. It's an investment for the community."

After initial start-up costs, the economics of fresh backyard eggs and meat are also attractive. This was true in the '70s when Centenary raised birds, along with growing her own vegetables to supplement her welfare cheque.

Today, a dozen large certified organic eggs costs about $5. A commercial layer chicken can lay up to 300 eggs a year, but after 12 months this productivity goes down and they are generally slaughtered and used in pet food or processed food. A heritage backyard bird will reliably produce eggs for about three years, with a conservative estimate of half of the productivity of a commercial layer. At say, 13 dozen eggs a year, a backyard bird saves the urban chicken keeper $65 a year. A couple of birds would easily provide enough eggs for an average family for the year. Taking into consideration the original cost of the bird and the feed, it would take less than a year for a backyard bird to pay for itself.

Mary wanted the birds mainly as pets than for the eggs and she plans on keeping Beatrice and Ophelia when they no longer produce eggs. That means she could have them for another decade, which is how long a chicken can live.

Not everyone, however, thinks it's a great idea to legalize backyard chickens. "It's a tricky one for us," says B.C. SPCA Farm Animal Welfare coordinator Geoff Urton. "In principal, we really support people seeking out sustainable food options, but people need to realize it's not carrots they're raising."

Speaking from his office by telephone, Urton outlines a number of areas of concern from the perspective of the SPCA, including housing and safety, nutrition and general health. "It's a different level of commitment than growing vegetables," says Urton. "You need to protect those animals from weather and pests and urban predators."

Pests include mites that are controlled by allowing chickens room to roam. "They do need to take dust baths in earth to avoid getting mites," explains Mary. She says it's also important to keep the birds dry. And at the tail end of our blast of snow and cold over the holidays, she reported that, "The chicks survived the cold, just fluffed themselves up like the walking duvets that they are. The main problem was the water freezing so quickly."

As for general health issues, Mary goes on to say that she "keeps an eye on the birds" making sure "their eyes are clear, crop standing up and looking red and healthy."

Urban chickens fall somewhere between pets and farm animals, and since no urban vet in Vancouver currently treats chickens, any health issues would largely need to be diagnosed and treated by the bird owner. "The main message we want to get across to people is that it's not something to take lightly," says Urton. "My recommendation is for people to seek out humanely raised eggs from someone who raises the chickens professionally."

Of more pressing concern for anyone looking to raise chickens is access to appropriate feed-and to the chickens themselves-along with providing protection from urban predators. Local farmer Rod Reid sold Ophelia and Beatrice to Mary for "$8 or something" and also regularly delivers the same organic feed he gives his birds at his Abbotsford farm. He doesn't see access to feed as a problem for urban chickens.

"It would have to be some sort of set-up where local pet shops carry it, and it would have to reformatted to smaller sizes," he says. "It's easily done."

He also acknowledges that people could mix their own chicken feed at home, but it would be unnecessarily expensive since city folk would really only have access to human food grade ingredients. Reid agrees with Urton that raccoons, coyotes and other predators are a concern, but quickly acknowledges, "It's been done in other places so it's not like it's some untried thing."

Most of the research being done by Kelly at the Food Policy Council is focused on the experience from other jurisdictions. "Seattle has some good practices including chicken keeping 101 workshops," says Kelly. She has identified a number of organizations in Vancouver that could offer similar courses once the bylaw is changed.

One of the key issues in the recent debate in allowing urban beekeeping in city limits was around certifying beekeepers. "The process to become a licensed beekeeper is provincial," explains Kelly. "So the city says it's OK because the province certifies the beekeepers." A training course in Vancouver could support itself through registration fees.

"To be honest, I would just do it, but keep it on the [down low]," admits Hilton. The early adopters with any new idea work outside conventional rules and guidelines, and backyard chicken keepers in Vancouver are no different. Much like urban beekeepers before them, there are many who are showing it can be done already without any major issues, and now they're ready to fight for the bylaw to be changed.

"You don't have to walk them or anything, you get the benefits of the food, and they're very companionable," enthuses Mary. "It's stupid not to have chickens in the city."

© Vancouver Courier 2009