This Moment

New baby chicks are here!  Currently they are residing in a cozy box in our guest space, until their feathers grow and the weather warms up. 

NEW WORKSHOPS now posted for winter/spring session!

New at the homestead: Part 1 Baby Chicks

Spring brings many new things - and this spring we've added new baby chicks to the homestead again.   There are 4 cute little peeps currently housed in a large plastic bin with heat lamp in our living room!  Soon to move out to the greenhouse, and the eventually (when they are old enough to be outdoors with the other hens) we'll introduce them to our older girls in the hen yard.  These peeps are now a week old, and growing quickly.  The feather tips are sprouting and they are trying out their "flying" by darting around their enclosure and flapping their little wings.  We are using a great book called Fresh Eggs Daily: Raising Happy Healthy Chickens Naturally, (she also writes a great chicken blog) with loads of tips on getting the chicks off to a healthy start using herbs and other simple natural approaches to bedding, cleaning, an so on.  Our daughter and her friend made up a special chick herbal blend last week in preparation for the arrival of the peeps - using herbs like garlic, lavender, chamomile, chickweed, nettle in a dried mix to supplement the commercial chick food.  We've lined the bin with bran (which they can eat and does not cause complications for their digestive systems like straw bedding could at this age), and they sleep on a pile of old wool socks in the corner under the heat lamp. 

Here are a few photos of the little peeps when they had just arrived - named by our almost 8 year old: Cloud, Cranberry, Cherry and Freckles.

First egg

First tiny egg from the new hens!  How they are growing...

Healthy greens yield healthy eggs

So many fresh eggs...we've been feeding the hens fresh greens from the cold frame and green house (arugula going to seed, dandelion that's gotten away on us and is too bitter, outer lettuce leaves) which helps to produce bright yellow healthy yolks in their eggs.  In a few weeks it will be fresh nettles, then all the dandelion we can harvest (even the neighbours bring us bags of their dandelion "weeds"), then comfrey, then in summer the left over wilted greens and compost bits at the end of Saturday market day from our friends at Fertile Ground CSA...our hens are well supplied.  (A rainy day made for foggy photographs here).

Chicken love

We love our hens!  I think any urban chicken keeper, who has raised their birds from early on, given them names, collected their eggs, cleaned their pen, fed them by hand, watched them bustle around with their constant activity, and let them free roam in the garden, can attest to what wonderful additions chickens make to any homestead.

Here are ten reasons we love having hens at our little urban farm:

1) manure - chicken manure hugely benefits our gardens
2) permaculture - closed loop permaculture principle (i.e. hens eat compost scraps, turn it into manure, back onto the garden, grow more veggies, which we use in the house and compost goes back to the hens - and the cycle begins again)
3) companionship - hens make loyal companions and are incredibly social birds
4) pest control - hens are excellent fly, mosquito, snail, slug and earwig catchers
5) soil health - hens help till up our soil while scratching for bugs
6) eggs - wonderful omega-rich eggs provided every day!
7) new skills - teaching our children animal husbandry skills (feeding, cleaning, watering, animal care)
8) earth connection - greater connection to the rhythms of nature and cycles of life
9) entertainment and fun - hours can be spent watching the constant antics of our hens
10) food security - adding our small part to develop greater food security for our urban areas

Waterloo Chicken Coop Tour, Sat June 19th

Did you know that there are people raising chickens inside the City of Waterloo? It’s true!

This invitation comes from the Waterloo Hen Association:
Want to see how we do it? The Waterloo Hen Association is hosting a Chicken Coop Tour to raise awareness about the reality of backyard chickens. This is your chance to visit with actual urban chicken keepers and learn about coops, chicken varieties, and the joys of garden fresh eggs.  This is a free, self-guided, mapped tour through Waterloo neighbourhoods that will take you to several different styles of coop: from a simple “Chicken Tractor” to elaborate Multi-room designs. You can visit one coop, or you can visit them all.

The tour runs on Saturday, June 19th from 10am to 2pm. On the day of the tour, pick up your map at the Waterloo Public Square, at the corner of King St. and Willis Way. Details are available at http://www.waterloocooptour.com

Spot the chicken

We have two hens, Buttons and Gypsy, who have taken to laying eggs in a bucket of sawdust which we keep near our cob oven! Each day we find one of the hens sitting quietly in the bucket - quite a cozy soft spot actually, under a sheltered roof hidden by a woodpile, out of sight from potential predators. Those smart hens :)

Warm March breezes...

Spring is definitely in the air! We've been enjoying the balmy weather all weekend and it was difficult to head back inside (to the computer!). I noticed the greens in our cold frame tunnel have really perked up - parsley, chard, kale, various lettuces, arugula, Asian greens, chives - these seeds were planted last October, had just enough time to germinate and then sat as if in a refrigerator, all winter long. Now, with the longer hours of direct sun, they are thriving - the temperature inside the grow tunnel was near 30C yesterday at the peak of the day! These cold frames, whether grow tunnels like we have with hoops and plastic sheeting pulled over the entire raised beds, or just old-fashioned glass windows hinged onto a wooden box frame, are amazing aids in helping to extend our growing season. By April we should be eating fresh salad out of the grow tunnel!

We've also been doing quite a bit of tree pruning, including some fairly large overhanging branches which were casting increasingly more shade over the periphery of the garden each year. We'll have our work cut out for us, cleaning up the brush, and chopping and stacking firewood before we need to get into the garden soil! However, during the next warm spell, when we can't do much gardening yet but long to be outside, this is the perfect kind of work.

Chickens!
While working outdoors in the yard we have also let the hens out of their run, into the wider yard so they can truly roam around. They love this blissful warm sun, and frolic in the muddy patches scratching at seeds and the odd grub or tuft of green grass, and generally being their usual sociable selves. When we took a break to sit on our patio and soak in the sun, all five hens gathered around our feet preening their feathers and gently nipping at our pant legs to remind us they like to be petted, and looking up hopefully for a snack. We can't say enough good things about hens - they make great company, are child-friendly, provide hilarious entertainment, have quirky personalities, lay wonderfully tasty healthful eggs, keep insects at bay in the garden, help till the soil , eat kitchen compost wastes and turn it into rich manure, are loveable... In case anyone reading this is considering getting a few hens, now is the time. Usually around Easter time (early April) the day-old chicks are available from local hatcheries, and very affordable - about $1 per chick! Frey's, in St. Jacobs, is where we got our hens.

Just wanted to mention that all our herb seeds are now up - although lavender and rosemary are the slowest, and with a poor germination rate so far. These tend to be difficult seeds to start, at least in my experience. The basil is starting it's second set of leaves (or it's true leaves) so I am hopeful for a small batch of fresh pesto by early May! We have two indoor growing racks, each with three sets of shelves and full spectrum lights. We've wrapped plastic sheeting around the racks (or an old shower curtain could do in a pinch) to hold in the heat of the lights and give those seeds extra warmth as they get started. We also tend to water them with warm water, as our house is cool. In a warmer house this wouldn't be necessary.

We're hosting a seed starting workshop here next Saturday - facilitated again by Angie Koch, our friend who operates a new and very successful Fertile Ground CSA (community supported agriculture). More on the details of this workshop after it happens! We've written about her in other posts, and check out her site at: www.fertilegroundcsa.com

December chickens

The hens are settling into the colder weather. We've set up their winter heat lamp, which has served them well the past two winters. It's on a timer, so comes on from early evening until sunrise, generally the coldest part of the day. We also stacked strawbales around the coop and boarded up the mesh windows.

Although, sadly, all egg laying seems to have completely ended for this season, the hens still love to wander around the yard during the daytime, looking for any leftover greens in the garden (we still have kale, chard, brussel sprouts, mizuna), nibbling stray bugs, and keeping themselves occupied with their antics. They often head over to the sheltered side of the house to be out of the wind, or scratch around near our basement windows where warmer air must be escaping. They tend to stick together now that the yard is more barren and there are fewer hiding places from predators, and like to mingle as a group on our back porch (waiting for treats like sunflower seeds). They hover by the back door, often sitting for hours preening and fluffing their feathers, peeking in the big glass window to see if we are coming out. Like faithful pets they also wait for us outside our bedroom door first thing in the morning (our door opens onto the back yard, and is located in a sheltered nook of the new addition).

Important with winter chicken care is to make sure fresh water is always available to them, and to thaw any frozen drinking water which tends to freeze during the night. As well, the combs and waddles of chickens are susceptible to frostbite, so they need to stay indoors on the very cold days - we've heard of using vaseline on their combs to protect from the cold, and even seen some photos of innovative cozy chicken sweaters, hats and boots for the adventurous knitters out there! Maybe I'll ask our neighbourhood knitting group about that. It's nice to see that all the winter feathers have now completely come in, as during the molting season (all of October) we were a little worried on the cooler nights about whether they were able to stay warm enough.

Happy hens

The weather was so gorgeous today that I had to let our hens free-range around the yard and garden. By now we've done much of our garden harvest, so I'm not too worried about watching that they don't eat seedlings or tomatoes (they love to take one peck out of a ripe tomato and move on to the next!). I noticed they love comfrey leaves, nettle, lambs quarters, and even Jerusalem artichoke leaves, and since we have lots of these growing in our "wild" sections of the yard there really was no need for the hens to venture into the garden too much. Not to mention snails, slugs and worms after all the rain we've had lately. The hens were in late summer bliss today! With cooler days ahead they need to make the most of these warm days. They were lazily taking dust baths in their favourite spot near our back patio, and at the end of the day all preening and gathering on our back steps. I walked them back to the coop (enticing them with a handful of snacks - peach peelings), and the trotted along behind me in a line. They are such funny creatures, always busying about, and we spent much of the afternoon just watching their antics. We love these hens!

Raising Chickens in the City - from Ode Magazine

www.OdeMagazine.com

Urban gardeners are flocking to chickens to keep bugs away and provide eggs and compost. Keeping backyard birds is easier than you might think.

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon, and Beatrice, Gertrude and Zelda, three butterscotch-brown Buff Orpington hens, are having a field day in Jennifer Carlson’s Seattle back yard. A landscape designer and organic gardening expert, Carlson has placed a floorless chicken coop––or “chicken tractor”––on her lawn, where the hens methodically search for bugs and worms, taking an occasional break for a dust bath. Once the birds have excavated one area, she moves the tractor to a new piece of turf.

The remains of the chickens’ excavations—a rich mixture of dirt, chicken manure and grass that’s sprinkled with oak leaves to help decompose the droppings—gets a second life as compost for Carlson’s organic vegetable garden, which features basil, raspberries, eggplant and heirloom tomatoes. “The vegetables we grow then provide scraps for the birds, who produce delicious eggs and great compost for the vegetables,” explains Carlson, who has raised chickens in the city since the 1980s. “It’s a really cool cycle.” Carlson, who spent her early childhood among Wyoming and Colorado ranchers, now lives in a cheery red house on a corner lot in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood. “Chickens make ideal pets,” she says. “They like being around people, and they’re very curious, comical and ungainly. Yet they’re contained, so they’re not chasing the mailman.” With a cup of coffee in hand, she makes a daily round of the garden every morning. “It’s relaxing seeing the chickens and garden thrive.”

Recycling Bins That Cluck

The municipality of Diest in Flanders, Belgium, gave 2,000 households an unusual gift: three chickens each. Why? The birds are supposed to recycle biodegradable garbage.

Chickens are omnivores who love leftovers, according to Kippenmail, the digital newsletter of the Dutch animal-rights campaign Adopteer een kip (“Adopt a Chicken”). In one month, a chicken can consume approximately nine pounds of kitchen garbage. In return, it will lay eggs. And what’s more, its droppings can be used to fertilize the garden.

Officials in Diest see the chickens as an economical solution to the costly problem of recycling biodegradable trash, which costs the town about $600,000 annually.

“I make the mistake every now and then of ordering an egg dish at a restaurant, and I regret it...

A homegrown egg tastes just like butter. It’s fantastic.”

Backyard birds

From Seattle to St. Louis, hens are the latest trend in natural gardening. The Murray McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa, the country’s largest supplier of two-day old chicks, sends about 1,000 chicks a week to people in urban and suburban areas. (Five years ago, the number of urban buyers was so small the hatchery didn’t even keep track.) Reversing decades-old laws against urban chickens, advocates across the country are lobbying city officials to permit backyard hens, while community gardening organizations are hosting overflow crowds for chicken-coop tours and chicken-raising classes.

“People have lost touch with what used to be considered common knowledge about animals,” says Pam Karstens, who teaches Backyard Chickens 101 through the Madison, Wisconsin, nonprofit Mad City Chickens. Most attendees are well-educated urban professionals in their 30s and 40s. “Many are parents trying to teach their children where food comes from,” she says.

As the number of city chicken owners increases, chicken-coop entrepreneurs have sprung up to meet the need. Many cater to the custom-built sensibilities of urban professionals, including Egganic Industries in Ringgold, Virginia, which sells the $1,300 (plus shipping) luxury Henspa, complete with an automatic egg-retrieval system. A British company, Omlet, sells the Eglu, which resembles an iMac computer and is made from recyclable polymers.

For most people, however, hosting a couple of backyard chickens is neither high tech nor high cost. Carlson’s henhouse, a regular stop on Seattle’s annual chicken-coop tour, is a 3-by-18-foot modular coop painted bright orange and yellow. The wooden structure, which Carlson designed and built herself, sits on six inches of gravel, topped by concrete pavers. “The pavers protect the wood from rotting and discourage burrowing by predators—and you will have predators,” Carlson says, noting that raccoons and possums pose the biggest threats to urban fowl.

A storage unit under the nesting box contains feeding and cleaning supplies. Carlson points out other useful coop features: plenty of horizontal space for birds to move, good air circulation, sunlight in the afternoon and a spot for shade. The chicken tractor, a portable cagelike structure without a bottom that is meant to be rotated and moved on a regular basis, gives birds daily escape from the coop and access to new scratching space, while restricting yard destruction to a designated area.

“It’s kitty TV,” Carlson laughs, noting that the family cat spends hours watching the hens peck in the tractor. Zelda, Gertrude and Beatrice are unruffled by the feline attention, she says. “That’s what I love about this breed; they’re so mellow.”

Urban chickens

Ordinances governing city chickens vary from city to city. Bill Finch, a Mobile, Alabama, newspaper editor who has written several articles on the subject, says laws prohibiting backyard hens often can be traced to the suburban development boom in the 1950s and 1960s. “As bedroom communities incorporated, they overturned codes allowing animals so they wouldn’t appear to be podunk towns,” he says. “But in older cities and towns, the codes were never updated.”

Mobile, for example, allows a liberal 25 chickens per household. Finch himself keeps seven backyard Ancona hens—a good breed for hot weather—that make the rounds of his oversize vegetable garden in a chicken tractor. “It’s the only nitrogen fertilizer I need,” he says.

As the “buy local” food movement gathers steam nationwide, activists are working to loosen more restrictive chicken codes. In Madison, Karstens says interest in backyard birds was so high that a fairly active “chicken underground” was developing until last year, when she and several others persuaded local officials to pass an ordinance permitting backyard coops and a maximum of four hens. The group prevailed with support from affiliates of the University of Wisconsin Poultry Science Department, who helped convince city officials that reasonable regulations could deter potential problems. “With a flock of 40 chickens, manure is a concern,” Karstens says. “With four, it isn’t.”

In Providence, Rhode Island, the Southside Community Land Trust raises urban chickens to educate the public about safe treatment and how to use chicken manure as compost. The organization also is working to combat the myth that you need roosters, the chicken world’s noisemakers, for egg production. You don’t. Although females need to mate with a male to produce a fertile egg, hens lay edible eggs as part of their ovulation cycle.

Every once in a while a male can sneak into a backyard, unannounced. A few weeks after Cranston, Rhode Island, resident Joanne Rich got her first hen—a Polish Golden Lace she dubbed Mrs. T because of a crown resembling a mohawk—she awoke to an unexpected surprise: a 5 a.m. wake-up call in the form of rooster crows emanating from the coop she had fashioned from her daughter’s swing set.

Mrs. T., as it turned out, was actually Mr. T—a gender mix-up that got the hapless male whisked out of Rich’s yard to an urban farm operated by the Southside Community Land Trust. “I didn’t want a run-in with my neighbors,” says Rich, an avid organic gardener who tends a vegetable patch and grows five kinds of berries. “And I wanted eggs.”

For Carlson, eating eggs straight from the source is like nothing else. Between March and October, Beatrice, Zelda and Gertrude each lay about one egg per day. The rest of the year, Carlson gets an average of one or two eggs per day from the trio. “I make the mistake every now and then of ordering an egg dish at a restaurant, and I regret it,” she says. “It’s like eating cardboard. A homegrown egg tastes just like butter. It’s fantastic.”

Aren’t Chickens Unhealthy?
Talk of chickens inevitably brings up two big health concerns: salmonella and Asian bird flu.

Emilio DeBess, public health veterinarian for the Oregon Department of Human Services, says his department occasionally sees outbreaks of salmonella associated with chickens in Portland, where hen-free neighborhoods are becoming the exception, not the rule. These outbreaks usually occur around Easter, when families get baby chicks and keep them inside, DeBess says. “Keep chickens outside, wash your hands and don’t allow kids under 5 to handle them,” he says. “If you follow these guidelines, you’ll reduce salmonella exposure by 100 percent.”

First-time chicken owners often raise questions about Asian bird flu. Like mad cow disease, avian flu is largely a product of limited resources, overcrowded conditions and cross-contamination between species—and thus has little to do with managing one or two chickens in a yard. The fear among world health officials is that the disease will spread to migratory birds; if and when that happens, urban chickens will be a bit player in a catastrophic global epidemic, not the cause. Echoing DeBess, organic gardening expert Jennifer Carlson says: “It’s a matter of being mindful and keeping clean.

Winter chicken update

Can hardly believe it's December already! But we received my mom's annual "Nickolaus Tag"* package in the mail today (* a traditional German/Dutch celebration held on Dec 6th where children leave their shoe infront of their bedroom door the night before, and appropriately receive either treats or coal/sticks - depending on how good they have been that year - from Nickolaus who comes in the night).

We also have a sturdy layer of snow on the ground with more falling as I write, so it looks like winter is definitely here to stay. We've put the heat lamp back on in the chicken coop, and this keeps the temperature hovering at around zero to - 5 in there. We've read that chickens can tolerate upto -10C, but after that they are not happy and their wattles or combs can freeze. They are also laying significantly less now that the days are shorter and colder, and eat substantially more grain as they can't forage in the garden anymore. We've put straw in their yard which they can scratch at, new bran in their nest boxes and coop (which they like to nibble), and also frozen kale and broccoli plants pulled up from left-overs in the garden. We just don't seem to produce enough kitchen scraps for them, as at this time of the year (eating seasonally) we only have potatoes, carrots and other roots, squashes, onions and garlic, and I even use up the peelings and tops to make soup stock. There's not much left for the hens. It's a bit of a sacrifice to give them the kale, which we would also like to eat, so I approached the produce department at a nearby grocery store today to inquire about "waste" greens. They told me I can have as much as I like, as they go through the produce every morning. I plan to pick up as much kale, broccoli, romaine and other tasty treats for the girls several times a week. Our bike trailer should hold a fair sized box and make it through the snowdrifts. It's nice to turn "waste" into a useful resource!

Cooper's Hawk in the yard

This morning I heard an unusual ruckus coming from the chicken pen in the back part of our yard. I rushed out to see what was going on, and saw a large hawk swooping over the yard, coming from the chicken run area. It settled on a low dead branch of a nearby tamarack tree, to watch as I approached. Usually as soon as I open our front door, the hens come running to the edge of their pen to wait for snacks and attention. Now, not a single hen was visible, obviously hiding from the hawk. They were all hiding under a huge pile of dried sticks and branches which we have left in their yard as shade/cover, and now I was extremely glad they had this refuge. I neared the tamarack and the hawk flew off, but not before I could get a fairly good idea of colouring to identify it.

I am pretty sure it's a Cooper's Hawk, and once I read more about this type of hawk I was pretty assured that's what we had. The Cooper's Hawk is well known by farmers and has earned the nickname "chicken hawk" for it's predatory nature on chickens in poultry yards. It's main diet is smaller birds, as well as chipmunks and other small mammals. In the 1950s-60s the Cooper's Hawk population dwindled, and some suspect it was due to DDT chemical spraying. Today, populations have risen again to the point where these hawks are becoming nuisances again. They are becoming well-known in urban areas as well (as cities encroach on farmland and hawk habitat), and many urban chicken keepers mention seeing these hawks in their yards or even having their hens attacked (and sometimes eaten). We back onto the railroad tracks lined by tall trees, and have heavy tree cover at the back fence of our property, so plenty of places for this hawk to live. I know this may all be part of nature, and the life of a farm (urban or rural), but I would be very upset to see one of our hens taken. We'll have to consider covering the run with mesh to keep unwanted predators away as this hawk may become a regular visitor now that it knows the hens are here.

Waterloo Hen Association by-law proposal

There is a new local citizen's group called the Waterloo Hen Association, which has formed to create a new City of Waterloo by-law allowing small-scale chicken raising in the city. The group sees many examples in other cities, including Victoria BC, London ON, and Niagara Falls ON, where city chickens are encouraged and offer a positive contribution to the growing need for local initiatives around food security. A copy of their proposal is attached here - if you wish to support the group, or find out more, contact:

Facebook: Waterloo Hen Association
Phone 519.578.2416 or email hope@gto.net

Small-Scale Urban Chicken-Raising

By-Law Proposal for the City of Waterloo

Submitted by the Waterloo Hen Association, March 2008

Proposal

• To create a new City of Waterloo by-law that would encourage and regulate small-scale
chicken-raising within the city.

Why keep chickens in an urban area?

• Chickens are productive . they provide eggs for personal consumption and fertilizer for gardens
• Chicken-raising is a fun and educational hobby
• Chicken-raising is an easy and accessible way for average people to contribute to local food security
• As food prices go up, people are looking for affordable ways to feed themselves

Why keep chickens in the City of Waterloo?

• Most citizens in Waterloo are looking for tangible ways to contribute to environmental
sustainability on a local, neighbourhood level
• Through the increasing number of community gardens in Waterloo, local food production
is already happening throughout the city . small-scale chicken raising can be another
concrete step toward local food security
• Waterloo identifies itself as an .environment first. community in which environmental
matters are assessed at the forefront of all activities
• .There is a strong belief that the path towards global environmental improvement begins
with local-level initiatives. (Waterloo.s Environmental Strategic Plan, p. 1)

What resources are available?

• Models from other cities: e.g. the City of Portland holds an annual .Tour de Coops. as a
way of educating Portland citizens about urban chicken-keeping . check out
http://www.growing-gardens.org/portland-gardening-resources/chickens.php

• Media exposure: e.g. USA Today article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007
06-21-chicken-coops_n.htm
• Urban chicken groups: e.g. .The City Chicken.
http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/index.html

• Organizations: e.g. Hen Keepers Association at http://www.henkeepersassociation.co.uk/
• Urban chicken advocates: e.g. http://backyardchickens.com/
• Books: e.g. Keep Chicken! Tending small flocks in cities, suburbs, and other spaces by
Barbara Kilarski (available at Waterloo Public Library)
• Local chicken farmers
• Waterloo residents who still have memories of when chickens were raised in the city
What are the concerns?

• Regarding noise: Laying hens sometimes make .clucking. sounds which many find
enjoyable . noise only becomes an issue when there are more than 15 or 20 hens, or
when a rooster is introduced into the mix
• Regarding mess: Chickens are relatively easy to care for. By regularly maintaining the
chicken coop, mess can be kept to a minimum.
• Regarding disease: Proper disposal and/or composting of chicken feces prevents the
spread of disease.
• By-laws can be written to ensure a simple, common set of standards for the safe and
sustainable keeping of poultry in an urban area

Some examples of urban chicken coops (photos not included here)

What are some examples of by-laws in other cities?

Niagara Falls, ON

No owner shall allow or permit his or her chicken to be at large. Roosters are not permitted
within the Urban Boundary. The total number of chickens permitted within the Urban Boundary
shall be as follows: (a) On and after July 15, 2002 - maximum 20 chickens; (b) On and after July 15, 2005 - maximum 10 chickens. All chicken coops shall be located only in the rear yard and
must fully enclose the chickens and prevent them from escaping. The chicken coop shall be
designed and constructed to ensure proper ventilation and sufficient space for the chickens and
maintained in accordance with good animal husbandry practices and shall keep all vermin out.
All dead chickens must be disposed of immediately and in any event, within 24 hours. There
must be hygienic storage of and prompt removal of chicken feces. The chicken’s food supply
must be protected against vermin.

http://www.city.niagarafalls.on.ca/city_hall/departments/clerks/bylaws/pdf/Animal_control.pdf

Victoria, BC

Farm Animals are prohibited with the exception of chickens, ducks & geese. These fowl can
only be kept as pets or for personal egg consumption. Eggs cannot be sold for any reason.
Excessive numbers of fowl will bring into question intended use. Roosters are prohibited.

http://www.vacs.ca/

London, ON

Class 2 animals (chickens) shall be kept in a building, structure, yard, coop, pen or run. Every such building as required under section 6.3 of this by-law (other than a dwelling), structure, coop, pen or run in which any such animal, bird or fowl is confined, kept or allowed to run, shall be no less than 15 metres (49.2 feet) from any school, church, public hall, or store, dwelling or
premises used for human habitation or occupancy other than premises occupied exclusively by the owner or keeper of such animals, birds or fowl or members of his immediate family..All refuse resulting from the keeping of Class 2 animals (chickens) shall be kept in substantial air-tight containers until it is removed from the premises or dug into the earth in such a manner as to prevent odours arising therefrom. All feed or other animal food shall be kept in rodent-proof containers.

http://www.london.ca/By-laws/PDFs/animals2000.pdf

Portland, OR

A person keeping a total of three or fewer chickens, ducks, doves, pigeons, pygmy goats or
rabbits shall not be required to obtain a specified animal facility permit. If the Director
determines that the keeper is allowing such animals to roam at large, or is not keeping such
animals in a clean and sanitary condition, free of vermin, obnoxious smells and substances, then
the person shall be required to apply for a facility permit to keep such animals at the site.. It is
unlawful for any person to harbor, keep, possess, breed, or deal in roosters in the City of
Portland.

http://www.portlandonline.com/auditor/index.cfm?a=185339&c=28228

Denver, CO

It shall be unlawful for any person to keep, maintain, possess or harbor on any property within
the city any livestock or fowl such as, but not limited to, horses, mules, donkeys, burros, cattle,
sheep, goats, swine, chickens, geese, ducks or turkeys, unless a livestock or fowl permit therefor
has been issued by the manager. Such permit is required to be renewed annually for a fee of fifty dollars ($50.00) for each application. A permit to keep livestock or fowl within the city shall not
be granted unless the owner or possessor provides facilities which will reasonably assure the
manager that the premises will be maintained in a sanitary condition, free from insects and
rodents, offensive odors, excessive noise, or any other conditions which constitute a public
nuisance.

http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/245/documents/Article4-Div2.pdf

San Francisco, CA

It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to keep or feed.more than a total of four
of the following in any combination: dogs of age six months or older unless part of a dog kennel,
hares, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice, gerbils, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, doves, pigeons,
game birds of any species, or cats..Any person, firm or corporation, keeping, feeding, or
causing to be kept or fed, or permitting to be kept or fed, on premises over which such person,
firm or corporation may have control, four or less hares, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice, gerbils,
chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, doves, pigeons, parrots of any species, game birds of any species
or wild animals of any species except those animals prohibited by Section 50 of this Code, shall
keep same in coops or enclosures that are approved by the Director of Public Health. Where the
coops or enclosures are located on the outside of or on top of any buildings, premises or
structures, the coops or enclosures shall be not less than 20 feet from any door or window of any
building used for human habitation.

http://www.municode.com/Resources/gateway.asp?pid=14136&sid=5 (article 1, section 37)


Waterloo Hen Association

Working for the advancement of small-scale urban chicken-raising

Facebook: Waterloo Hen Association
Phone 519.578.2416 or email hope@gto.net

Diet for a Hungry Planet - Urban Agriculture on CBC Radio One

There was a great short piece on CBC Radio One this morning, as part of The Current's "Diet for a Hungry Planet" series. The show looked at issues around urban chicken keeping including examples of Canadian cities fighting to change bylaws; the history & future of urban agriculture on a global scale; and possible solutions to cities feeding themselves in an attempt help reduce our ecological footprint. As well, the final guest speaker on the show was a co-founder of an exciting new group called the "North American Urban & Periurban Agriculture Alliance". More information on this group can be found through the Ryerson University Food Security program (Toronto).

Below is a short summary of the program, and it can be heard via podcast or from the Radio One site at: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008
(and thanks to various friends who called to let us know it was going to be on the CBC today!)

The Current: Part 2

Diet For A Hungry Planet - Urban Agriculture

As part of our ongoing series Diet for a Hungry Planet, we took note of three unassuming chickens causing a disproportionately large stir in Halifax. Their names were Captain Crochet, Bernadette and Chicken. They provide Louise Hanavan with fresh eggs. But they're ruffling the feathers of some of neighbours like Reg Harper. Ms. Hanavan and Mr. Harper explained the situation as they each see it.

The Halifax Regional Municipality allowed the chickens to stay until the end of February 2008, but what happens then is still very much up for debate. The community council held a public meeting on the issue, voicing some conflicting thoughts on chickens.

In January 2008, a similar battle played out in New Westminster, British Columbia. In the end, a family there was told their property was just too small to keep their six chickens.

For most city dwellers, the idea of raising chickens -- or other food -- in your backyard probably just seems quaint; a throwback of sorts. But for The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), it's a key part of a sustainable food system for the future.

In February 2008, the WMO called for greater investment in urban and indoor agriculture as a way of safeguarding food security in the world's mega-cities. Robert Stefanski is a scientific officer with the WMO and explained the thinking behind the proposal.

And according to Sunny Lam, urban farming could make a big difference in the size of your carbon footprint. He's an independent researcher who studies food and environment issues. He looked specifically at Kingston, Ontario and what would happen to its greenhouse gas emissions if more of the city's residents grew their own food.

Some ever-optimistic people look at these various threads and see a future where cities can feed themselves with community governments, food co-ops and even large, commercial market gardens all playing a part.

To get the lay of the land on that idea, we were joined by Joe Nasr, co-founder of the North American Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Alliance who teaches urban agriculture at Ryerson University in Toronto.

First Egg!

Great News! Our largest hen Sadie, laid her first egg on Monday!

We have been waiting and watching the girls, just wondering who is going to be the first to lay. Any information we've read states that the hens are ready for laying when they are between 17-20 weeks old, and when their combs are developed. Our three biggest hens, the Plymouth Barred Rocks, who are named Sadie, Neko and Lucy, were exactly 20 weeks old on Monday. Our three other hens, the Black Sex-Link (which is a cross between Rhode Island Red & Plymouth Barred Rock), named Pickles, Buttons, and Gypsy, are a week younger. It was no surprise to find out that Sadie laid the first egg, as she has been the most dominant of the brood from the start.

The first egg was not a "wind egg" (hollow inside) as we had anticipated, but in fact a solid, small sized brown speckled shell egg. The following day Sadie laid her second egg - however, both times not in the nest box. She actually laid her egg out in the open, near the gate of the chicken pen. This seems surprising as hens are said to like to lay their eggs in private. We've placed a white golf ball into the nest box, as this is meant to encourage egg laying in the nest, but we may have an independent hen on our hands! She was crowing loudly with a new sort of voice, almost like she was making an important announcement to the world, (or out of shock, surprise, or relief!) and there it was! We felt like proud parents :)

Two excellent resources we recommend for new urban/backyard chicken keepers are:

Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Space - by Barbara Kilarski. (this book provides instruction on building a coop, chicken history, and good breeds for backyards including lots of colour photographs!)

Backyard Poultry Naturally: A Complete Guide to Raising Chickens & Ducks Naturally - by Alanna Moore. (this book has an excellent section chicken behaviour, nutritional requirements, herbal remedies including homeopathics, and poultry & permaculture)