By Jenny Ho, Grade 9
Ever thought about keeping a few chickens in your backyard for fresh eggs? Recently, Vancouver City Council introduced a new policy, which allows residents to keep backyard chickens. There are many cities in the United States and Canada with a similar bylaw, including Seattle, Washington D.C., New York City, and Victoria. Of course, within the bylaws, there are many points to consider. If this proposed bylaw passes, residents are able to raise chickens as early as June. The proposed by-law raises much debate from Vancourites. Some are in favour of this new policy, but some residents and animal welfare groups are against the idea.
There are numerous benefits from raising backyard chickens. The idea is very appealing to some residents because of health, financial, and environmental reasons. It is much more sustainable to consume locally grown food. It reduces much of the required packaging and energy for commercial products. The fuel used to ship the eggs and poultry is greatly reduced, reducing the ecological footprint. Therefore, the cost of raising chickens is virtually nothing; the chickens pay for themselves. But is it that simple?
Chickens can be fed a wide variety of foods, ranging from onions to fish. Depending on the food source and where the chicken was purchased from, the laid eggs could even be organic. Locally grown eggs contain much less fat, more vitamins and omega-3 fatty acid than commercial eggs. Most of the commercially grown eggs and chickens contain unwanted trace amounts of pesticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones that were fed to them.
On the contrary, backyard chickens may cause unwanted pests, diseases, noise, and other important issues. The reduced number of people going to the supermarket to buy commercially grown poultry and poultry products could directly affect the poultry/egg industries. If there is a lesser demand of eggs and chicken, farmers are forced to lower their prices. Therefore, it affects their income greatly.
Another challenge with raising chickens is pest control. It would be quite difficult to keep the dogs (coyotes) and raccoons away from the birds. If their waste is not disposed of properly, it may attract unwanted pests, not to mention foul smelling odours. Also, if your chicken becomes sick or gets eaten, you might have to pay for medicine or get a replacement.
Now, if you’re planning on having more than one live chicken, not just eggs in the future, you may need to invest in a female and male chicken. It’s the male roosters that make a lot of noise – “cockle-doodle-doo!” – so keep that in mind. Otherwise it’ll just be the occasional scratching and “bawk-bawks.”
This leads us to another concern: possible disease outbreaks. Chickens can get diseases such as lice, ticks, fleas, worms, and even the Avian Flu (commonly known as the Bird Flu, or H5N1). Even if you don’t plan on raising a chicken, would you want to hear and smell it?
Another major issue is the ethical treatment of chickens. According to the editor, Jenn Lin, “Chickens need to be properly cared for. It’s not as simple as leaving it outside while trapped in a small cage or in a garage. Urban lifestyle is often incompatible with rural life practices – it takes a lot of work to raise any animal and provide the proper care by keeping it safe from predators, feeding it, giving it water, as well as a sufficient amount of space to roam. If your backyard is tiny, you own a dog that you already have trouble looking after responsibly, or you don’t want to clean up the mess afterwards, I would not suggest that you raise a chicken. I would be all for the bylaw if people could be 100% accountable, especially since chickens are inhumanely and brutally handled in chicken farms… I guess your backyard space, possible pests/predators, disease outbreak, and the inconvenience of some neighbours is a small price to pay for cheap locally grown eggs, and healthier – if not happier – chickens.”
Ultimately, it is your decision to raise a backyard chicken. Although the advantages are very appealing, it is important to consider the responsibilities.
Some Windermere students’ opinions:
“I think that the growing of chickens is actually a good idea. It will decrease the amount of transportation needed to feed us – also, it will encourage locally grown food. It starts with your own backyard, and soon it will bring awareness to the whole idea of why buying food from far away is bad for our world.” –Emily Chan, Grade 10
“I personally think that proposing the chicken by-law in Vancouver will cause different impacts on the city. We will have the advantage of locally grown food and buying ethically, however, sanitary problems will definitely be a big issue (i.e. outbreaks of diseases, waste in general). Also, the risks of walking around the neighbourhood now may be a bit dangerous, as coyotes have been wandering around the area. I personally saw one or two myself near Boundary.” –Cassandra Ly, Grade 10
“Personally I believe the growing of chickens in Vancouver is not the greatest way of promoting sustainable living in our city. Sure, the results could be environmentally rewarding, but if there are no restrictions to where or how many can be housed than problems such as excessive waste, noise, and outbreak of disease may occur, especially if they are under the care of citizens who are inexperienced and unaware of how to raise the chicken in a proper and healthy way.” –Suchin Pawa, Grade 10
- What do you think? leave a comment!
good job jenny, you’re getting better and better at writing (longer articles especially).
thanks! by the way, i’m in grade 10
Wow, I swear I typed grade 10! My bad!
hey, jenny! great article – it’s very informative, and yet still easy to read. awesome job!
another thing that could be stressed is the way that chickens are actually handled in factory farms. if anyone has ever seen those brutal documentaries, such as “meet your meat” – you know what i’m talking about. maybe having them in cages but letting them roam free outside every once in a while is slightly better in that sense, for the chicken. at least they wont need antibiotics the same way or get their beaks cut off to stop them from pecking each other.
Firstly, I wanted to congratulate the entire Word team for their commitment and energy to producing the monthly Windermere Word. The Word has come a long way since its beginning days!
As someone who has lived next to a mini-chicken farm as a child in suburban Sydney (Australia), I would like to comment on what it’s like. Chickens (or roosters in particular) have a tendency to crow quite early in the morning. I was never late to class because of that, but I never found out till later in life how nice sleeping in on weekends were! Also, the overwhelming stench of chicken waste was unbearable at times especially during the summer. Unfortunately, the bylaw does not ensure that these chickens are raised suitable environments.
Vancouver is a great city to live in, and I hope it remains that way.
I grew up on a 5 acre family farm but I currently live in an urban environment (Santa Cruz). We have lots of chickens, some of which are roosters. Our roosters we place in our garage in a large dark box with large breath holes at night and we let them out when we leave for the day. Near to evening, the roosters jump in their box. One hen lives in a cat carrier in our kitchen at night right now – we leave the back door open and she goes right in. Chickens like to be in a cozy environment at night and they are creatures of habit so they return nightly to their roosting spots.
How do we handle all of the chicken CR-P? We compost it. Every two weeks, we change the sawdust in the pen. All of the litter goes into one of two compost “bins” we created simply by using 1/4 inch hardware cloth (metal wire stuff) and forming a bin. We also put much of our rough yard trimmings and other organic matter into the bins. My husband keeps the compost moist and turned and within 6 months, we have the most beautiful soil you can imagine. You can pick it up and stick your nose in it and it smells like lovely sweet dirt! I was skeptical at first when my husband told me this would be the outcome, but the proof has been phenominal.
I am the gardener of the family. My front yard is not a huge lawn patch (although we do have a drought tolerant lawn space for the kids to run about). The majority of my front yard is garden. In April of 2008, there was not one tree on our property and when we moved in, the front yard had been scraped clean as they developed the house next door. We now have about 20 trees on our property, all but one of them is a fruit tree. Our property is about 8600 ft2. I have been able to put all of the wonderful chicken compost to good use. And should we get too much. I know lots of folks who would pay money to buy some real good organic chicken compost. We also have worm bins too.
Smells, if you keep to 2-5 chickens, this is not usually a problem if you clean regularly and compost properly. Flies? There is a fabulous product at Arbico.com – a natural insect enemy to the fly larvae which eat the larvae and thus prevents flies. Fly traps work for us to some extent.
Whenever we are home, we let our chickens free range. We strictly avoid pesticides. Our chickens eggs have stronger shells, darker more orange yolks, and stronger shells than most organic store bought eggs. Most profound is the TASTE of eggs from home grown chickens is so much better than any store bought egg. We also raise chickens to eat and the meat is MUCH MUCH tastier. We know that our chickens have incredibly happy healthy lives and we know where our food comes from and we respect the lives of the animals and honor the animals that we eat. Our philosophy is that we would rather kill our own chickens and know they had a great life versus the chickens who live stuck in large cement floored indsutrial barns under artificial lighting. Even many “organic” farms are not very humane.
We get a kick out of watching our chickens in the yard as they dust bathe and forage for insects. It is easy to raise healthy happy chickens in an urban setting as long as, like with any animal, they are given a clean healthy environment and you do not have too many for the space. CLEAN, for a chicken, means a dirt floor pen with regular changes of sawdust and regular access to forage and dust bathe (which is how they rid of fleas, etc.). Chickens have a high metabolism and so they need lots of fresh water and food. Anyone with a small yard can easily raise 2-3 chickens for eggs and with some training, easily manage the waste, etc. Chickens are social and so you should have at least 2 chickens. We raise bantum chickens as they are smaller and have sweeter personalities, although we have an austrolorp (excellent layer) and an Easter egger which are full sized hens. Research the breeds as they do have differences in temperament, egg laying averages, etc. We have been trying different varieties for meat, avoiding the typical Cornish Cross because they are bred so that they can barely walk (lots of bulky meat) but this means they don’t walk much. OK, so that means a more tender chicken – but we have learned to appreciate the texture of a chicken allowed not just to walk, but run, around. We have tried several heirloom varieties and others and have settled on a variety which putd on wait reasonably quickly (2 or so months) but not so quickly that they are so large their legs cannot hold them up (Cornish Cross mature in weeks not months and the heirloom varieties took 4-6 months and were still not huge.)
Before you start, find someone who does it and shadow them so you can learn and know more about raising chickens and then get a couple and have fun watching them.