Owen Sound Chicken (and other fine creatures) Bylaw

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Permalink Reply by Anne Finlay-Stewart on February 19, 2010 at 3:57pm

bak bak bak bak bak bak bak bak

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Permalink Reply by Shane Jolley on February 19, 2010 at 5:09pm

I'll take that as a yes!

Anne Finlay-Stewart said:

bak bak bak bak bak bak bak bak

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Permalink Reply by Ang Freeman on February 20, 2010 at 6:40pm

YES! I would be so excited to have that bylaw overturned and have chickens quietly or not so quietly going about their day in our backyard. Waking up and gathering a few eggs, creating a chicken supportive network of people who want to learn together, training chicken-sitters so that chicken owners can go away for a few days without worrying about their feathered friends - these among others are ideas (such as heritage breeds) that have been tossed around over an egg breakfast.

I would also be interested in looking into other feathered friends like quail, which make a great micro-enterprise (although I bet their are different laws about drawing income from having birds vs. for personal use).

K-W has just been through the discussion. I think it is o.k. in Kitchener, but not Waterloo, unless you had chickens before the bylaw was firmed-up, as it was a-legal before it was illegal. There are definitely people there who have made pretty clear presentations before their own city council that we could draw on.

Ron and I also just picked up a Rodale Press book entitled "Chickens in your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide" by Rick and Gail Luttmann, 1976. I'm sure parts are dated, but I'm sure raising chickens hasn't changed that much in 30 years.

Sign me up for wooing the council. This could be one of the first Transition Town projects. Looking forward to meeting soon to plan out more possible endeavors for those interested.

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Permalink Reply by Ang Freeman on February 20, 2010 at 6:52pm

Madison Wisconsin is doing some pretty exciting work with chickens

Check out trailers for a film at http://www.tarazod.com/filmsmadchicks2.html

and for more info on raising chickens, coops, breeds, etc www.madcitychickens.com

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Permalink Reply by Anne Finlay-Stewart on February 23, 2010 at 12:06am

We should show the Mad City Chicken video.
Here's this week's Orange Crate

Due to scheduling conflicts, we celebrated Christmas with my sister’s family last weekend. Not a moment too soon, I realize, but the delay meant we were able to include three birthdays, Family Day and Valentine’s in the celebration. In keeping with the primary holiday, we had turkey for dinner – a big fat delicious organic bird from a Grey County farm. While passing the gravy and cranberry sauce, I got to tell the story of another local turkey farmer who benefitted from the power of the media and consumers.
Matthew Dick and his wife Janice decided a few years ago that they would fill growing consumer demand by raising organic turkeys. Getting organic “credentials” for their turkeys required that they give the birds a vegetarian diet without antibiotics or animal by-products common to poultry feed such as pork fat or bone meal. It also meant keeping the turkeys on pasture – out in the fresh air and sunshine.
The first time I heard about Matthew Dick he had already lost an appeal to the Ontario Farm Products Tribunal , who upheld a ruling by the Turkey Farmers of Ontario that every turkey producer with quota (raising over fifty turkeys) should keep them under cover to protect them from any risk of infection with bird flu from wild birds. Effectively, these representatives of commercial turkey operations, the smallest of which seem to have confinement barns of 35,000 birds, were telling Matthew that he could no longer raise organic turkeys on his farm.
Enter a newspaper reporter who pointed out the apparent motives of the Turkey Farmers of Ontario, and their glaring lack of evidence of any risk. Enter her readers, consumers who want the option of eating food produced in Ontario under organic standards. And trailing behind but seeing the writing on the wall, enter the (now former) Minister of Agriculture who intervened where she had previously refused, and Matthew and Janice put their Christmas turkeys back outdoors.
In fact, the 60,000 turkeys that had to be destroyed in British Columbia due to an avian flu outbreak were confined birds – never exposed to wild birds or sunshine or fresh air, but regularly wading in each other’s droppings. These are precisely the stressful conditions under which, according to some scientists, pathogens like those causing avian flu thrive and mutate.
Now I’m about to wade into some droppings myself. The kind that got councilor David Adair some interesting correspondence and not the good kind. Why is it that in Owen Sound we can keep pigeons or rabbits or dogs or cats or chain saws for that matter, but not chickens?
Chickens produce much less waste than cats or dogs. It does not smell once it’s dry, and does not contain excessive nitrogen that pollutes waterways. It does not have to be collected into plastic bags that will never break down and put in landfills to become “perpetual poop”. And it can be used as fertilizer because it does not contain pathogens and parasites. Chickens are a gardener’s delight not only for what they add in the way of soil amendment but because they eat weeds, grass clippings, veggie trimmings, slugs and bugs. They don’t attract flies – as a matter of fact they eat them, along with mosquitoes and ticks. Hens, unlike roosters (sorry boys), are fairly quiet and at night they perch indoors in silence. Not always true of cats and dogs and certainly not motorcycles or chainsaws. Rodents are only interested in the chicken feed, which should be stored properly, and predators are no more interested in chickens than they are in squirrels or, frankly, Fluffy.
And the eggs. How much fresher , thriftier or more local could food get?
We’re going to have a committee about this, I can tell. We’re going to have public meetings. And we’re going to hear both sides of every argument that every community before us heard when they changed their bylaws. I am convinced of this because it is the Owen Sound way – give new ideas a chance, let everyone have their say, don’t be too hasty, and always be willing to compromise. And who can argue with that?
But I am equally convinced that one day we will join New York, Chicago, Vancouver, Brampton, Niagara Falls and the other one hundred and growing North American cities who permit and control urban chickens. And one day when my family comes for a holiday from Toronto, another city considering chickens, the Easter eggs will be more local than ever.

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Permalink Reply by Lishui Springford on July 3, 2010 at 11:31am

I'm new to the group, but this is a big one for me - I'd love to see chickens as prevalent in the landscape as dogs, cats, and seagulls... :)

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