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Council considering backyard chickens despite old concerns

A group of Okotoks residents are hoping to get town council to approve a pilot project allowing them to raise hens in their backyards in town.
Jenni Bailey and her sons hold the chickens that used to live in their backyard. The family had to get rid of their hens last year.
Jenni Bailey and her sons hold the chickens that used to live in their backyard. The family had to get rid of their hens last year.

A group of Okotoks residents are hoping to get town council to approve a pilot project allowing them to raise hens in their backyards in town.

Okotoks, and made their case to council

Jenni Bailey and Jessie Smulders, members of Okotoks CLUCK – Canadian Liberated Urban Chicken Klub – made their case to town council on Oct. 14 promising the poultry would be no bother to neighbouring residents. They asked for a one-year pilot project to test the viability of allowing hens in back yards. Under their proposal, people would be limited to six hens per home, it would restrict the amount of participants and require them to take workshops on proper hen care.

Many councillors suggested they were open to the idea, but had further questions on some of the details. The request was referred to administration to come back with a detailed report for council in January.

Mayor Bill Robertson voted against allowing the hens in 2008 after council received a letter from a veterinarian outlining concerns the potential for disease transmission from chickens to humans.

“It seems to me it was unanimous against it, based on the dangers and there's a number of things that came out regarding the dangers of backyard chickens,” Robertson said.

This time around Robertson said he’s eager to hear how other municipalities are dealing with backyard chickens and is still open to the idea.

“Any time you grow your own food, I’m all for people having an apple tree and getting apples and growing their own vegetables and so on, whether chickens is the way to go, I'm unsure about that,” he said. “I have an open mind, I'm certainly willing to hear what administration has to say.”

Bailey is also eager to hear what administration has to say, and is continuing to round up support for backyard chickens, including from veterinarians.

“It’s not a huge concern for us, it’s a small amount of birds and it’s totally manageable to keep the coop and everything clean, so infectious diseases are not even a concern for me,” Bailey said. “It’s not an issue with small scale egg production, it’s more an issue with larger scale farming where you can’t keep chickens clean or the coop clean or they're confined chickens.”

Bailey noted that she’s aware of a number of people who currently have chickens illegally in their backyards, and said so far there haven’t been any disease issues.

“This is just a case of people being fearful of the unknown,” she said. “People get really nervous when we start talking about chickens, yet cats are allowed to roam free and they poop in sandboxes, and that is a hazard… so people need to put it into perspective.”

Some councillors wondered if people should be required to get a neighbour’s approval before allowing them to get a hen. However, Bailey said if the birds are taken care of, neighbours won’t be bothered by backyard hens at all.

“In my backyard where my coop is, my deck is over top of it where we sit in the evening, so I don’t want it to smell, I don’t want flies,” Bailey said. “It's spotless.”

Coun. Matt Rockley had some first hand experience with backyard hens, when neighbours had hens in their yard.

“They had 5 hens in the yard and you really wouldn’t know they were there unless you looked for them, it was fairly discreet,” he said. “It was a pretty low impact type of a thing, they took good care of them and made sure that they were being responsible and everything.”

Rockley did say he still has concerns about disease control and is looking forward to a more detailed report from administration in the new year.

“It’s certainly something that I would like to see more research on in terms of the possibility of disease spreading to humans from chickens,” he said. “My experience with neighbours having chickens to me it was no big deal, but that is the only reservation that I have about it. I would like to know more about what the medical community has to say on that point.”

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