- Residents seek OK to keep backyard chickens
- By Pete Wicklund
- Journal Times
- Saturday, January 3, 2009 11:59 PM CST
- CALEDONIA — Chickens have a place in the backyard as well as the barnyard, promoters of a proposal to allow hen raising in the village say.
- A group of residents, who operate the Web site Caledonia Chickens, have asked the village government to change rules to allow residents to keep a limited amount of chickens in an enclosure to provide “a more sustainable lifestyle as they take care of our kitchen waste and provide compost for our garden and eggs for our table.”
- Patrick Flynn, one of the chicken advocates, said he and fellow fowl supporters want a village ordinance that would allow for keeping up to six hens and a clutch of chicks for up to eight weeks at single-family properties as long as: no roosters are kept; that no slaughtering of chickens takes place; that the hens are kept in a covered enclosure or a fenced enclosure at all times; and that the enclosure be no closer than 25 feet from a residence or adjoining property.
- Current village ordinances require that a property owner have at least 5 acres before they can be allowed to raise chickens. But Flynn, who lives at 4124 Mona Park Road, said that doesn’t make sense as property owners only need 2 acres to keep a horse. Gregory Shaver Journal Times Mike and Tracy Bernhardt are seen with their chickens on Saturday at their home in Caledonia. The Bernhardts, along with other Caledonia residents, are pushing to change the village’s ordinances on chickens.
- The proposal is tentatively scheduled to come before the Village Board’s Legislative and Licensing Committee some time this month. Kevin Wanggaard, a village trustee and the committee chairman, said he did not yet have a date yet for the meeting when the issue will be brought up for discussion. Wanggaard said he has a lot of questions and concerns about the proposal, but said he is not dismissing the idea. “It’s always been my practice that we don’t rush trough things,” Wanggaard said. “When we take a look at something, we try to take a look at all the angles.”
- Still, Wanggaard predicted there was bound to be some opposition among residents to the proposal. For his part, Wanggaard said he had questions about things like what happens to the chicken waste, noise and what the liability would be if a dog got loose into a yard where chickens are kept. Mike and Tracy Bernhardt are already illegally keeping chickens at their 1-acre property at 1807 4 Mile Road. They have kept seven chickens for a little more than a year since they were chicks, and Tracy said they consider the birds their pets. “Amelia, Francesca, Daisy, Ginger, Lavender, Sara and Clara are wonderfully entertaining,” Tracy Bernhardt said. “Our friends and relatives all enjoy coming to see them and they don’t mind the fresh eggs we offer them either.“Our girls provide eggs for our table, they eat our kitchen scraps and their litter goes into our compost pile and then onto our garden. It’s the ultimate in recycling!”
- Bernhardt said that by keeping the hens in uncluttered conditions “you can see and taste the difference in the eggs.”
- Flynn said that by limiting the number of hens and prohibiting roosters, noise should not be an issue. Bernhardt said that the hens lay eggs without roosters, although the eggs cannot produce chicks unless they are fertilized by a rooster.
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Flynn said raccoons would be more of a threat than dogs, but said that properly constructed enclosures should protect hens from predators domestic and wild alike.
- The chicken backers say other communities have adopted rules for keeping chickens, including Madison, Green Bay and even Chicago and Minneapolis.
- As they await to make their case to village officials, Bernhardt said the chicken backers are collecting signatures in favor of the proposal at
- http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/allow-chickens-in-caledonia-wi
- Raising chickens is consistent with Caledonia's identity
- By The Journal Times Editorial Board
- Thursday, January 8, 2009 7:51 PM CST
- Next stop for the do-it-yourself movement: the chicken coop.
- For decades, conventional wisdom has been that people should buy their eggs in cartons at the grocery store. Processors wouldn’t cut any corners to compromise safety, right?
- It’s hard for consumers to say that with confidence these days, reading about one food scare after another. Tainted beef causes mad cow disease. Pet food from China contains melamine. Salmonella is found in tomatoes across the country.
- It isn’t surprising, then, that a group of Caledonia residents are clucking for the right to keep a few hens in their backyards. And why not? Unlike at the store, they know where their food originates. Not to mention they won’t mark up the price on something that’s destined for their own tables.
- Backers tout more than just the nutritional benefits. They swear by poultry as living compost machines that gulp down waste.
- The local residents have indicated they’re willing to accept conditions limiting how many birds they can have, how far they should be from property lines and more. No slaughtering would be allowed, and only hens could be kept.
- Roosters would be chicken non grata. That’s a smart move to fend off the non-morning people of the village.
- This might be less acceptable in a more densely populated urban area, but it seems to dovetail with Caledonia’s direction. Residents there have consistently expressed a desire to maintain a country flavor even as the village finds more development opportunities. Nothing could be more country than a miniature egg farm.
- To protect homeowners and renters in the more tightly compacted parts of the village, the ordinance should have a minimum acreage requirement for those who want to keep chickens. Also, there should be plenty of leeway under existing ordinances to cite owners who let the stench at their coops get out of control.
- This might be a perfect time for Caledonia officials to anticipate other requests and set a comprehensive ordinance laying out which animals will be allowed. It’s only a matter of time before someone looks to expand to a backyard milking parlor.
- That way, the law won’t have to be taken down every few years and rebuilt with chicken wire.
12/17/2008 11:15:00 AM
Jefferson council OKs ordinance allowing chickens in city limits
By Ryan Whisner - Regional Editor
JEFFERSON, WI - A debate labeled as "nonsensical" by one Jefferson alderman Tuesday led to passage of a new ordinance regulating the keeping of chickens within the city limits.
As approved by the Jefferson Common Council in a 4-3 vote, city residents will be allowed to keep up to four chickens, provided multiple conditions are met, including that the principal use of the parcel or lot is a single-family dwelling.
No roosters or noisy fowl, or the slaughtering of chickens, are permitted within the city limits.
Also, the chickens are expected to be provided with a covered enclosure and must be kept in it at all times.
Lastly, as approved by the council Tuesday, the ordinance states that no coop or enclosure will be placed within 15 feet of any lot line.
Joan Donnellan of Jefferson recently brought the matter to the council's attention when she asked that the city allow poultry - laying hens - to be kept within the city for personal use.
The municipal code had prohibited keeping poultry and other livestock within the city limits. Additional sections of the code prohibited the commercial raising of chickens within industrial or agricultural districts.
"I believe you will find when you poll the residents of the city that most would not raise livestock and would not want livestock raised by a neighboring property owner," Alderperson Bill Brandel said. "The argument might be made, although I'm in personal disagreement, that chickens are good pets and provide eggs for personal consumption and therefore should be allowed to be raised within the city."
He expressed concern that the same argument could be made for other poultry - turkeys, ducks, geese or ostriches.
"Some people think of goats or cows as pets," Brandel said, adding that both provide milk for personal consumption.
"Discussion of this proposed ordinance is the result of a request of a single Jefferson resident who happens to enjoy raising chickens," he said.
Brandel questioned how many other Wisconsin cities allow the raising of poultry or other livestock within residential areas and what penalties will be assessed under the new ordinance.
"If passed, could a single resident request an ordinance to raise other livestock, geese, cows or emus within the city's residential areas? If not, on what basis would they be fairly denied?" he asked.
Brandel said he considered it a nonsense ordinance and generally a waste of time. He recalled when he was young that chickens were permitted in residential areas.
"I remember the problems that were caused by the raising of chickens in town and how neighbors hated having chickens next door to them," Brandel said. "All you've got to do is think for yourself if you want the person next to you raising chickens and its an easy item to vote for."
- Regulatory Committee Chairperson and Alderperson Dale Oppermann said other residents have come forward since the issue has been raised, saying that they also are interested in raising chickens. In fact, some acknowledged that they already do.
It takes a village...
MadCity Chickens political movement works to get a poultry ordinance passed
By Cherrie Nolden
Wisconsin
Mad City Chickens is a group of pro-poultry folks in Madison, Wisconsin who worked to make keeping chickens in their city legal and who now strive to educate and encourage homeowners to keep feathered friends in their backyards.
Prior to May 2004, chickens were not forbidden in Madison, but construction of a coop to house them was illegal. Yet there were enlightened people living in Madison, keeping chickens hidden on their properties, reveling in the self-sufficiency and pleasure chicken-keeping brought and frustrated that these innocuous creatures could not be legally kept. They were the Chicken Underground and initiated the political movement that brought the right of chicken ownership to residents of Madison.
They petitioned (then) Alderperson Matt Sloan to change the Madison Ordinance to allow a few chickens in backyards. The political climate was right and Matt drew up a set of rules based on those of other cities like Seattle and Portland that had allowed backyard chickens for years.
In the meantime, two (of the many) key people in the movement, Alicia Rheal and Bryan Whiting, spearheaded a campaign to gather public views and support for a pro-chicken and coop policy for Madison. They wrote articles for the neighborhood newspaper. Soon other articles were written about the chicken movement in Madison and Milwaukee papers, and they were interviewed on a local television station. Doctor Mark Cook of the UW-Madison Poultry Science Department wrote Matt Sloan a letter of support for the idea and neighbors wrote letters to their representatives. It was six months of non-stop chicken awareness, education and promotion, until the final passing of the Ordinance on May 5, 2004.
The particulars of the Ordinance are:
* Up to four domestic fowl allowed per single-family dwelling,
* No roosters,
* No slaughtering,
* Poultry shall be kept within a secure enclosure and not allowed to run free,
* Enclosures shall be located no closer than 25' from nearest neighbor's residence and
* A $6 permit is required (per household), to be renewed annually.
The group renamed itself Mad City Chickens, put madcitychickens.com on the Internet and, in June 2004, started holding chicken keeping classes: City Chickens 101 and Chicken Coops 102. There have since been eight CC101 courses and one CC102 taught, with between 8-12 people in each class. The interest is very high, with people being turned away for a Willy Street Coop chicken class after 60 people registered. The first Mad City Chickens potluck was held in January 2005 and a coop tour was organized for June.
I advertise for the group every Sunday at the Northside Farmers Market and at the Food For Thought Festival on the Square. The number of Madisonians now keeping chickens is growing in leaps and bounds.
But who can resist? A small, inexpensive, easy-keeping pet that lives outside all year long, produces food, is very personable, aesthetically unique and comes in so many varieties that you don't have to have just what your neighbor has. I don't know how it can get much better than this
Backyard-Chicken Movement "Greening" Cities
by Allie Comeau on June 3, 2008
Fort Collins, CO may soon become the latest city to adopt an ordinance that would allow people to keep hens in their backyards.
Citing the ability of chickens to "green up" the city while providing a viable food source (eggs), the new chicken ordinance may revolutionize the way we think about our backyards. Your backyard could transition from a place for relaxing into a food-producing and natural recycling center.
Not only do hens produce eggs, but they also eat food waste. Think of them as living compost piles. You feed your highly nutritious food waste to the chickens, they get rid of it for you, and leave you with equally nutritious manure… for fertilizing your garden, lawn, etc. Suddenly you have a lot less garbage to put out at the curb every Wednesday morning. Plus, you have delicious eggs fresh from your backyard. You control what the chickens eat, you control what you eat.
According to an article in The Denver Post, chickens are great for waste management. In Belgium, for instance, the recycling rates jumped 72% after a backyard chicken program was instituted. Other eco-conscious cities in the U.S. have already adopted similar chicken ordinances. Boulder, CO; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; and Madison, WI all have backyard chicken programs in place. Chickens have received a lot of praise in those cities and few complaints.
The program in Fort Collins would include hens only, not noisy roosters. And coops would have to be well-maintained and not be within 15 feet of property lines.
Chickens earn their keep in Chicago as some city dwellers raise them for eggs or as pets
The Windy City's backyards are home to lots of poultry.
By Sara Olkon of the Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Just past a busy intersection in this neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, a flock of hens softly cluck about the yard, seemingly oblivious to the stares of a nearby alley cat.
They are “like pets with eggs,” said Donna Knezek, who along with her partner, Liz Sharp, keeps five hens in a chicken coop outside her home in Chicago's East Garfield Park neighborhood. “It's important to know where your food comes from.”
Odd as it may sound, it's legal to keep chickens and roosters in Chicago (though slaughtering the animals is prohibited.) A year ago, an alderman from the southwest side failed to advance an ordinance banning the barnyard animals from their city roosts.
Since then, the idea of raising chickens has only become more attractive to urbanites, especially “locavores” who like knowing their plate of eggs came from their own backyard. The birds also eat bugs and weeds, they happily devour food scraps like wilted lettuce and carrot tops, and their manure can be composted into garden fertilizer.
Fort Wayne's city code prohibits raising livestock within city limits. It could not be determined Wednesday if that rule included chickens.
Signs of the burgeoning urban chicken movement include a bimonthly magazine called Backyard Poultry, which started publishing in 2006, as well as popular Web sites and blogs including www.BackyardChickens.com and www.urbanchickens.net.
“It's exploding all over the country,” said Martha Boyd, program director for Angelic Organics Learning Center, which offered a workshop in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood on basic backyard chicken care for city residents last month.
Within 48 hours, the 30-spot workshop had sold out. Angelic plans to hold another class March 21.
Tom Rosenfeld, one of the workshop instructors, said he is floored by the amount of interest.
“We've finally gone over the top in this corporate food delivery system,” he said. “It's about connecting much closer to (one's) food.”
An organic apple farmer, Rosenfeld has kept hens at his Rogers Park home for more than three years. But unlike many of the urban chicken enthusiasts he meets, Rosenfeld does not name the birds. For him, the birds are not pets.
“I wanted the eggs,” he said.
He appears to be in the minority. Diane Blaszczyk pets her chickens and lets them jump on her lap. She said her birds “beg like dogs” for scraps.
She and her husband, Mark, keep nine hens and a rooster in the Old Norwood Park neighborhood. In August, once their hens started laying, they stopped buying eggs from the grocery store.
“One of our friends jokes that we are well-prepared for the food riots that are coming,” Mark Blaszczyk said.
Tara Keating and her husband, Frank Geilen, got hooked after visiting a booth at a street festival in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood this summer. Already committed to composting, organic gardening and commuting by bike, the idea of raising chickens just made sense.
They now keep four hens — Kippie, Poekie, Dotty and Pickles — in a coop they installed inside their condominium's garden.
Their hens eat only organic feed, about $22 for a 50-pound-bag, plus the cost of shipping, because the family does not own a car. Baby chickens themselves are cheap — often as little as a dollar and change apiece — and can be ordered online.
Keating estimated that the coop, chicken wire and feeders cost them $500. “You are not going to make money,” she said of the venture.
Non-organic feed is about a third of the price, and chicken coops can be made for less.
Shawn Peek fashioned one out of cupboards her family found in the alley, plus scrap lumber. Her family has three hens and a rooster in the Albany Park community in Chicago. Peek thought she'd bought four hens, but the birds are hard to sex as chicks. So far, Peter, their rooster, hasn't disturbed neighbors with his early-morning crowing, Peek said.
The crowing is something urban chicken advocates caution against. It can be loud and annoying, Boyd said.
The noise is in part is what motivated Chicago Alderman Lona Lane to try to prohibit chicken and roosters in Chicago last November. Lane has other concerns as well. She railed against the ritual slaughtering of chickens, which remains illegal, and she fears the birds might spread disease.
“The stench and the smell from their feathers and their bodies — and they are not clean,” she said a year ago. “Their debris and their waste are creating more rodents than there already are in neighborhoods.”
Lane lost the fight to outlaw the birds in Chicago's residential neighborhoods, but she said she is considering legislation after the holidays to ban the birds just in the slice of Chicago she represents.
“All things considered, I think chickens honestly should be raised on the farm and not in densely populated areas such as the 18th Ward,” Lane said about two weeks ago.
Elsewhere in Illinois, chicken laws vary. Residents in Evanston and Elgin are prohibited from keeping the animals. In Orland Park chickens are not allowed within 100 feet of schools, churches, public streets or other homes. Naperville, Ill., chickens must remain more than 200 feet from other homes.
Bradley counsels owners to keep chickens in secure coops and not to leave feeders out at night. Beyond that, she calls chickens “an inexpensive form of therapy” — peaceful, soothing animals that can even be trained to ride on the handlebars of a bike.
Fort Collins may allow backyard hens
Article Last Updated: 06/03/2008 01:15:59 AM MDT
Todd Simmons hopes chickens like his, raised outside Fort Collins, can be raised inside the city. ( Nathan W. Armes, The Denver Post )
FORT COLLINS - Todd Simmons believes he has seen the future of Fort Collins - and it is filled with chickens.
Rhode Island Reds or Sicilian Buttercups or Egyptian Fayoumis - it doesn't matter to Simmons and other members of the backyard-chicken movement, who say the birds will be the foot soldiers in a growing effort to green up the city.
"Even if I knew our oil supply was indefinite and our transportation system wasn't going to collapse, I would still be convinced this is a better way to live," said Simmons, 32, who raises 35 chickens for his family on 10 acres just outside Fort Collins.
Tonight, the Fort Collins City Council will consider a change in the city land-use code that would allow residents citywide to own up to six chicken hens. Currently, chickens can live in only three designated areas zoned for farm animals.
Under the new code, chickens would be considered pets, just like dogs or cats, and be welcome in backyards and on patios.
There would be restrictions.
Roosters, which make too much noise, would be banned, as would the slaughtering of chickens. And hens would have to be securely enclosed at least 15 feet from property lines.
Two other Front Range cities - Loveland and Boulder - have similar ordinances. Denver allows chickens within city limits only in a case-by-case basis, according to officials.
Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Madison, Wis., have adopted pro-chicken ordinances that have drawn praise and few complaints, said Dan Brown, a proponent of the Fort Collins plan.
Brown, 41, said hens provide a reliable source of food that is tastier and healthier than mass-produced eggs. Chickens also eat all sorts of food scraps that otherwise would go to local landfills.
In the Flanders region of Belgium, chickens were part of a program that raised the region's recycling rate in rural areas by 72 percent.
"I'm a firm believer in sustainability and a secure food source," Brown said. "And this is a great opportunity for children to see where their food comes from."
In action last month, two members of the Fort Collins Planning and Zoning Board voted against recommending allowing chickens into the city. They declined to comment. But Ted Shepard, the city's chief planner, said the two board members - Gino Campana and David Lingle - were worried that residents would want to open Fort Collins to more farm animals.
"They were concerned we'd be establishing the same precedent for pygmy goats and cows," Shepard said.
The vote was 5-2.
Brown said cows don't merit a place in neighborhoods, while chickens do.
"Chickens have a long history of being with human beings in the city," he said. "But cows don't belong in an urban setting."
Some people worry about disease.
The emergence of deadly avian influenza in Asia and Eastern Europe was due in part to people living and sleeping in the same area as chickens, said Adrienne LeBailly, director of the Larimer County Health Department.
Brown said that if coops are well maintained, there is little chance the chickens will spread disease.
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
Backyard chickens approved for Ann Arbor
Residents can have up to four hens, if neighbors approve
By Sara Lynne Thelen
Daily News Editor On June 8th, 2008
Ann Arbor resident Susan Blake stepped up to the podium at Tuesday's City Council meeting and made her presence known. "I'm a chicken," she said.
Blake began clucking like an agitated hen to demonstrate the potential noise level of backyard chickens in Ann Arbor. Her squawks bounced off the council chamber walls, reiterating her point as she finished her speech: "I'm against chickens for several reasons, but that's one of them," she said.
Despite some residents' fears of noise, smelly manure, unsightly coops and the avian flu, Ann Arbor City Council voted 7-4 Tuesday to amend an ordinance that previously banned backyard chickens. When the amendment becomes effective in 60 days, Ann Arbor residents will be able to keep up to four hens in coops in their backyards with their neighbors' consent. Chickens could be kept as pets or for eggs.
"All the jokes are done with, and all the real sustainable living is now underway," said city Councilmember Stephen Kunselman (D-Ward 3), who owns a chicken and first sponsored the ordinance change last December. "It shows that community activism is still alive and well in Ann Arbor."
About 15 residents spoke, joked and broke chicken wishbones in front of the City Council on Tuesday to show their support for the chicken ordinance. Many felt that backyard chickens would provide a healthy and cheap alternative to store-bought eggs and a learning experience for first-time hen owners.
"I want my kids to understand where their food comes from," said Ann Arbor resident Jennifer Hall.
Molly Notarianni, the manager of Ann Arbor's Farmers Market, recently moved to Ann Arbor from Portland, Ore., where backyard chickens are also legal. She said she was not concerned about urban chickens detracting from business at the Farmers Market. She enjoyed keeping chickens when she lived in Oregon because their eggs are delicious and they make affectionate pets, she said.
"I found that they were very quiet. Rather than being divisive, I met a lot of people I wouldn't have otherwise," she said in an interview. "It's a good way to build community. I'm very fortunate and grateful that the city of Ann Arbor has decided that they are important."
Residents who kept backyard chickens before the law was amended would have been fined up to $500.
Councilmember Leigh Greden (D-Ward 3), who voted against the ordinance change, said he believes legalizing backyard chickens is unnecessary because fresh eggs can be bought at the Farmers Market.
"I believe the potential problems outweigh the very few potential benefits," he said, adding that most of his constituents were against the proposal. "I don't know how anyone can say that this should be something we're spending time on."
Councilmembers Joan Lowenstein (D-Ward 2), Stephen Rapundalo (D-Ward 2) and Chris Easthope (D-Ward 5) also voted against the amendment.
Richard Fulton, an associate professor at Michigan State University specializing in avian diseases, said that many studies on migratory waterfowl throughout the United States have concluded that Michigan's risk for avian flu is low, especially for chickens in small numbers.
"If this disease does come to Michigan, common sense will protect people and their chickens," he said in an e-mail interview. "The chickens at that time should be kept indoors, and they should be kept isolated from other people and animals."
Fulton added that children should not cuddle chickens like they would a dog or a cat.
Kunselman's pet chicken, Bercilia, has been in "political exile" because of the law, he said. But he won't be able to build a coop at his home in Ann Arbor anytime soon.
"The irony is that being a city councilmember is a lot of work," he said. "Maybe we'll bring her home for a weekend or something."
BACKYARD FARMING
TheStar.com | GTA | Poultry in motion: Chickens adopting urban lifestyle
Poultry in motion: Chickens adopting urban lifestyle
RON BULL/TORONTO STAR
Lucky Clucky feasts directly from the bowl of plenty while behind her Sally and Heidi forage on the backyard lawn. The chickens are illegal in Toronto, a situation their owner is hoping to change.
You can raise them in New York but not here. Toronto locavores are hoping to change that
May 04, 2008 04:30 AM
Leslie Scrivener
Toronto Star
It's an idyllic scene in a sunny backyard in North Toronto. The forsythia is bright as springtime, and Sally, Heidi and Clucky wander by contentedly. They are plump, vigorous, egg-laying hens that, despite their beauty and utility, are illegal in Toronto.
Nonetheless, their owner has kept them quietly in her backyard coop through the winter and now lets them range freely in the yard, which is shallow but 15 metres wide.
"It makes total sense to me, rather than getting in the car, driving to the grocery store and buying eggs trucked in from a far away farm, to go to the back yard and get eggs," says "Alice," who asked that her real name not be used. A middle-aged mother of two teenagers who works at home in the food business, she had identified herself on the telephone as a "renegade" chicken owner. "Besides, I know they are healthy and what they've eaten."
Toronto bylaws forbid keeping poultry, for health reasons. On the other hand, pigeons raised for sport are allowed, provided they rest, roost or perch only on their owner's property.
Oddly, by raising a few chickens in the city, Alice is in step with a do-it-yourself food movement that is thriving in cities like New York, Portland, Chicago and Seattle. It's legal to keep chickens in those cities and dozens more in the United States.
INCREASINGLY, urbanites concerned about about food miles and safety are pushing their local governments to be more flexible about backyard livestock. Websites, including backyardchickens.com and TheCityChicken.com, offer direction and inspiration to city farmers. When Elaine Belanger launched the first issue of her magazine Backyard Poultry in 2006, she had 15,000 copies printed, which proved to be not nearly enough. "People kept asking for them," she says from Eau Claire, Wis. "Now we have 50,000 paid subscribers. It's truly beyond what we were expecting."
She believes the interest has been spurred by post-9/11 fears, recent scares about E. coli in meat, and distrust of additives in food. "People want a little bit of control."
Closer to home, Waterloo city council recently agreed to study a proposal from Matthew Bailey-Dick and a new organization he had formed, the Waterloo Hen Association. "We didn't want to quietly do our own thing on our property," says Bailey-Dick, a Mennonite peace educator and father of three young children who doesn't yet raise chickens. "This is a community issue and an opportunity to realize they can contribute to practical food security.
"There are broader issues ... food prices going up, global warming and environmental sustainability, which one family cannot solve."
Here in Toronto, it's not known just how many residents keep chickens in their backyards. One recent afternoon, Alice's birds cluck pleasantly as they peck and hunt in the grass."They're in chicken heaven, since the weather's been nice and we've been letting them out of their coop," she says. Their coop, a U.S. product called an "Eglu," is made from stylish moulded plastic, includes a wire run, and sells for about $500.
Alice has launched an online forum at torontochickens.com, which includes a petition asking Toronto to update its bylaw to allow residents to responsibly raise chickens in the city.
She contends there are worse sources of city noise than a few chickens. During an interview with the Toronto Star, she noted a plane flying overhead and a roaring leaf blower across the street. She's an environmentalist interested in living sustainably.
"Properties are mainly used to grow grass," she says, "and we use our drinking water to water grass, and pesticides to get rid of bugs and weeds, and chemicals to fertilize the grass, and then we collect leaves and put them in bags when they could be used for mulch and as a good source of carbon for the compost."
Alice also subscribes to the "locavore" movement, which includes growing your own food or buying only food raised locally. She grows garlic, alpine strawberries, sorrel and other herbs in her front garden. She worries about contaminants in food and about factory-farm production and the resulting runoff from manure. She uses her chicken manure as a resource, a source of nitrogen in the garden.
Matthew Bailey-Dick of Waterloo and his wife, Nina, would like to raise a few chickens on their 18- by 49-metre property in Waterloo. They already have a large garden and preserve or freeze a lot of their harvest.
WATERLOO DOESN'T have a bylaw regulating chickens, and after Bailey-Dick's presentation April 21, council agreed to review and update its animal control bylaw.
In recent months, two families in Halifax have had to give up their chickens because of complaints from neighbours – one over a noisy rooster and the other claiming chickens were attracting rats. Those chicken owners are calling for bylaw amendments. Meanwhile, in Chicago, there's been an uproar since councillors tried to amend a bylaw in order to ban chickens last December. In the interests of keeping the peace, they've decided to review the regulations.
Christie Young, director of Guelph-based FarmStart, an organization that supports new farmers, is confident that small-scale poultry production can work in the city. Bylaws can limit the number of birds and the minimum distance from a neighour's property, she says. Owners would be responsible for chicken waste, just as citizens are for waste from their pets, and required to build coops strong enough to keep chickens in and predators out.
(In Niagara Falls, for example, rules for keeping chickens include minimum property size of 30 by 12 metres, no more than 10 chickens per yard and no roosters.)
York University graduate student Carolyn Young, who has written a research paper on raising chickens in the city, says giving it the green light in Toronto could be "a very smooth process ... "it works in (other cities) in North America and it works in other countries."
Still, she noted, there is the problem of attitude. "There continues to be a mindset that chickens are dirty, a nuisance and disorderly when kept in the city."
Keeping backyard chickens was more common in Toronto a generation ago, especially among immigrant families from Portugal and Italy. But concerns about public health and the possibility of disease being spread by chickens led to a change in the bylaw in 1983, recalls deputy mayor Joe Pantalone. "It was a big debate, and I was on the losing side. I was of the view that allowing the farm to be part of the city is part of the holistic solution ...
"Rabbits were spared because somebody brought in a cuddly little thing to the committee meeting. Pigeons were a bit tricky. If they were kept for food, they were banned, but they were allowed for sport."
Pantalone, councillor in Ward 19, says the time is right to take another look at the bylaw. "But it doesn't make sense to keep chickens on the balcony of your condominium. However, there's something to be said if you have a big back yard abutting a ravine where you keep a limited number of animals in clean condition."
Chickens are banned in Toronto because they are considered farm animals. "Because of the urbanized environment and the density of houses, farm animals are not appropriate and not allowed," says Fiona Venedam, supervisor of Toronto animal services, north.
However, there are a few places in the city, including parts of Scarborough near the zoo, that are zoned agricultural and where chickens are permitted.
Each year, there are only a few complaints about chickens being kept in the city. Violators face a $240 fine. Recently in a west downtown ward, however, there have been complaints about people barbecuing pigeons. "If only they were looking for people who are raising pigeons, I would turn my neighbour over without hesitation," one west-end resident wrote in response to a Star inquiry.
Rhonda Teitel-Payne, urban agriculture manager for The Stop Community Food Centre, says there's a perception problem about raising food in a place like Toronto – "the city is 100-per-cent toxic and the country is 100-per-cent clean." That view is changing as people turn their minds to roof-top gardening, boards of education reopen greenhouses in local schools, and residents try to secure plots in community gardens which, she says, is difficult. "It's very hard to do, we are inundated with requests."
Free-range eggs are the first things to sell out at farmers' markets, she adds.
"The demand is there, and people are getting to the point where they say, 'I'm going to try and do something myself.' "
Back in North Toronto, Alice's three birds cluck soothingly in the backyard. Each bird lays an egg a day – actually, one every 26 hours. Today's offerings, in muted shades of brown, are sitting prettily in a small straw basket sitting on the patio table.