You've got to fight for your right to poultry: Could backyard chickens become a reality in London?5/10/2020 Molly MiksaMolly Miksa is a student in Western University's master of media in journalism and communication program. She is also a photographer, mother of two, environmentalist, cycling advocate and proud Londoner. Now, perhaps more than any time in recent memory, people are looking for ways to produce food at home. Raising backyard chickens is an option for some. But not for Londoners. This potential source of daily fresh eggs is something people in various parts of Ontario may be considering. While bylaws making urban chickens legal have been passed in Guelph (1985), Kingston (2011) and Kitchener (2016), and while pilot projects are underway in cities including Toronto and Orillia, poultry are still outlawed in London. Brooke Hutton is a renegade chicken keeper. She’s been raising chickens at her home in North London for eight or nine years. It started as an educational project, her sons raising the first birds from when they were chicks. Hutton has never hidden the fact that she has chickens. “I’m an environmentalist as well,” she says. She supports urban agriculture and sustainable food “with my heart and soul,” so she is willing to take the risk of openly defying local bylaws. Not everyone is so comfortable. Jenny Egan and Lawrence Lawrenson (who asked that their real names not be used) live in East Toronto. Two summers ago they lived in a house just outside one of the areas zoned for the UrbanHensTO pilot program, and rented chickens from a company called Rent the Chicken. While Egan and Lawrenson, like Hutton, were open with their friends and neighbours, they preferred to fly under the radar with authorities. Lawrenson says it cost roughly $500 to rent the chickens for the summer; they didn’t want to lose their money. They never had any issues, enjoyed the summer they spent with their hens, Ginger and Pearl, and say they would do it again. While they enjoyed the eggs, Egan and Lawrenson’s memories of the chickens are more focused on the times they spent with them. “I think we got fairly attached to them, sort of as pets,” Egan says. “It’s kind of changed the way I feel about eating chickens, honestly. I don’t really feel as comfortable anymore.” Ironically, the most vocal group opposing backyard chickens in London seems to be animal rights activists. Hutton initially had a hard time understanding this, given what she calls a “very happy partnership” between herself and her poultry. But then Hutton’s vegan friends explained their philosophy to her: people aren’t ethically supposed to use animals for anything. “Then I did shift,” she says, “and I’m like, OK, I kind of get that.” Becky Ellis studies and practises urban agriculture in London. A vegan herself, Ellis has published an article on her blog titled, “Why vegans should support backyard hens.” Ellis sees chickens as part of an urban agriculture ecosystem, where the relationship between chickens and humans is mutually beneficial. The chickens can live healthy lives, protected from factory farms and predators; they can eat kitchen scraps and roam the yard freely. In return, they eat garden pests and provide fertilizer, by way of their manure. (If she had chickens, Ellis would choose not to eat the eggs, but she sees this as a personal choice.) Backyard chickens and gardening often go hand-in-hand. “All their bedding and manure is a perfect mulch, and it fertilizes my garden,” says Hutton. She adds that even their scratching can be good for the garden—before you get your seeds in. Once planted, gardens must be protected from the chickens’ habitual scratching. Lawrenson describes the scratching as a backwards scraping motion, “almost like a moonwalk.” Cute to watch, but potentially destructive to young vegetable seedlings. Scratching and “dirt baths” were the two reasons Lawrenson says he would better protect his gardens in the future. “They just pretty much turned one of my gardens into a dirt bath. They got rid of all the flowers and they kicked up the dirt everywhere.” Lawrenson, Egan and Hutton all agree that caring for backyard chickens is fairly low-maintenance. Hutton says, “They’re as easy to keep as a fish tank.” But as with anything, there is a learning curve. And there were a few things to watch out for. Protecting gardens from chickens is one; protecting the chickens from predators is another. Lawrenson and Egan didn’t have issues with predators, though their chickens did escape into their neighbour’s yard. Luckily, the neighbour didn’t mind. They had concerns that their two cats might try to attack the hens, but they needn’t have worried. Lawrenson recalls a time when one of the cats was in hunting mode. “Those chickens can really hold their own. They get their wings really big, flap their wings, and kick with their talons. The cats were then terrified of them.” Hutton also has cats and dogs. Her cats have not been an issue at all, but one of her previous dogs was. After an incident where the dog (seemingly with playful intent) shook a chicken to death, she is very careful when allowing dogs into her yard. “Because the chickens come first. The chickens make my breakfast. What does the dog do? He just lies there; he’s a free-loader.” Hutton says that while keeping chickens is not expensive, the biggest investment for her has been a very secure enclosure to keep them in. She cites raccoons and weasels as predators that will find their way through even small openings in a shed or coop. Predators aside, Hutton’s chickens are allowed to live out their lives naturally at her place. Like many other urban chicken keepers, she isn’t interested in eating her birds. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, small flock chickens generally live three to seven years, but can certainly live up to 10 or 12 years. It is generally said that prime laying age for chickens ends after two years. After that, there are concerns about where hens end up. For Hutton this hasn’t been an issue. She’s had birds laying at their peak at five years of age, and has found generally that her hens die naturally before they’ve stopped laying. She has put some birds on Kijiji, all of which were relocated to small farms. Generally, municipalities allowing backyard chickens prohibit home slaughtering of hens, and prohibit the keeping of roosters altogether. Numbers of hens are normally capped at four or six per household. Urban chickens fall under London’s animal control bylaw. The bylaw defines “chicken, goose, turkey, duck and any domestic fowl” as Class 2 animals, and states that “No person shall keep a Class 2 animal within the municipal boundaries of the City of London.” There have been efforts to change the bylaw. In 2010, then city councillor Stephen Orser proposed a backyard chicken pilot project. The proposal was defeated; Orser subsequently lost his Ward 4 seat to Jesse Helmer in 2014. In 2017, London passed the urban agriculture strategy. The strategy initially included a backyard hen pilot project, but council voted to remove it. Then-mayor Matt Brown said that the issue should be put to rest for 12 months. Two and a half years later, there hasn’t been much progress. And while Hutton will continue to raise her chickens regardless, she’d like to see the bylaw changed so everyone can freely do so. “Canadians really do, as a culture, love and respect their rules,” Hutton says. “So I do think if the bylaw was changed, a lot of people that have been considering it would feel more able to do it. I do think that’s what’s holding people back.” Pamela Reid is an avid gardener and seed saver. She’s lived in London since she was 12, has a degree in anthropology, and researched urban agriculture as part of her master of environment and sustainability program at Western University. She has several ideas about why London’s been slow to adopt backyard chickens. Reid sees London city councillors as being generally socially conservative, both currently and historically. “I think we need more progressive people to run.” She believes that as the older generation leaves, there will be more room on council for progressive voices. Reid also notes the long-standing idea of a boundary between urban and rural activities. In the city, “homes become places of consumption versus places of production.” But in uncertain times, where citizens want sustainable, local food options, maybe it’s time to reconsider these distinctions. According to Reid, many bans on urban agricultural animals happened in North America after the last rounds of bubonic plague. Animals coming from abroad could carry fleas, which could carry plague, so one by one agricultural animals in cities were outlawed. Today, people may be concerned about contracting avian flu, salmonella, e. coli and other transmissible diseases from chickens. Veterinarian Joanne Rafuse specializes in chickens and turkeys. She notes that of the three cases of avian flu in Ontario in 2015, all were in Southwestern Ontario. She advises that the best way to avoid avian flu is to not let chickens come in contact with external birds, such as geese and ducks. In terms of salmonella and e. coli, Rafuse says that proper handwashing (which we’re now all familiar with) “would be extremely significant for controlling that.” Reid has some ideas for protocol if and when a bylaw is passed in London. While not all municipalities require it, Reid thinks Londoners should be required to go through a training program before being allowed to keep chickens—a required course on raising poultry, including bird care, housing and common diseases. Once birds are obtained, people should be required to buy leg bands for each bird (for identification in case of escape). Minimum health standards should be required, including appropriate vaccinations. For Egan and Lawrenson, Rent the Chicken was a great educational resource. The company provided a book (Happy Hens and Fresh Eggs: Keeping Chickens in the Kitchen Garden, by Signe Langford). They also gave the new hen caregivers an in-depth talk about proper care and maintenance when they delivered the birds, coop and six months’ worth of food. And they were always available to answer questions. “It was a good sort of training wheels,” Egan says of her experience with the chicken rental company. Many Londoners may already have some experience raising chickens. Both Hutton and Lawrenson were exposed to family farms growing up, for example. Reid points out that many new Canadians bring existing skillsets to London with them. “I think they would be [some] of the first adopters, perhaps, people who have come here from China, from the Philippines, from Mexico, from Somalia, from Syria. They would jump at that chance, because they still have that active memory.” On the darker side of this coin, Reid fears that racist and xenophobic attitudes may be another reason for London’s slow movement on backyard chickens. She thinks economic concerns may be an issue for some social conservatives as well, but she feels that these concerns are misguided. “The whole argument is, if you have chickens in the backyard you’re going to stop buying eggs. Well, that’s probably not true.” Birds not kept under artificial lights often stop laying over the winter. Hobby chicken keepers will also need to buy supplies, feed and bedding for their birds. Chicken-keeping supplies are not hard to find in London. TSC stores in the city, which service outlying agricultural communities, carry everything someone would need to get started. Hutton is excited to be starting another season with her birds. She plans to try a couple of ducks this year, in addition to her hens. She feels like it’s a good time to be pushing the envelope, in her gentle way, on the backyard poultry file. “I’ve been always thinking about food security,” she says, “but until actually just about a month or two ago, now I’m seeing, wow, this actually might be an essential thing for people in the future. I’ve always thought ‘what if’ there was an economic collapse, or ‘what if’ with climate change, or ‘what if’ this or that. And I guess having children too, through this (pandemic), I’ve realized the only real anxiety I have is feeding my boys. That’s my responsibility as a mother.” And it’s hard to argue with a mother hen.
46 Comments
Grace
5/12/2020 04:12:47 pm
It's a shame that the law prohibits this beautiful multi-faceted activity. There are so many benefits: food security, respect for animals, learning opportunities for children (and adults!), the gardening benefits, the social benefits of neighbourly relationship... I could go on.
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Brooke Hutton
5/14/2020 08:22:36 am
I buy my supplies at TSC, they ask for postal code and phone incase there is a feed recall... they have been selling to me for years without issue! I even bought chicks and duckings directly from them this year. A few years ago they donated a small chicken tractor to our urban chicken initiative (Great Lakes Poultry Association, Western Fair). Support TSC!
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anne parker
5/14/2020 08:24:59 am
Good article Molly--watch for friend request from my friend Jessah who is a serious gardener (including the Butterfly Garden) and chicken coop builder--lovely to join the chicken dots :))
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Randy Welch
7/2/2022 08:10:47 am
Given we have 4 hens in our yard, and have had them for many years, I would like to know if anyone is currently spearheading an opposition against this bylaw in London. We also live in London and would like to join any group that is taking this on.
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Once birds are obtained, people should be required to buy leg bands for each bird (for identification in case of escape). Minimum health standards should be required, including appropriate vaccinations. Good post thank you so much!
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