In the hen house

“Chickens were a pet that was friendly enough to still be fun to watch and for the kids to play with, while still providing good flexibility”

BY STACIE GAETZ | PHOTOS BY SERGEI BELSKI

HOUSING HENS:

all it’s cracked up to be

he answer to the age-old question of which came first, the

Tchicken or the egg, may be closer at hand than you think.

After a successful Urban Agriculture Pilot Project (UAPP) project, Airdrie City council recently approved a bylaw to allow residents to keep hens in their backyard and residents are fowling in love with the idea.

COOPED UP

James DuMont is a King’s Heights resident who has housed chickens in his yard for about a year.

He says he wanted to keep hens because they are low-maintenance pets that also provide eggcellent benefits.

“With the proper setup, you can leave your chickens for a few days on their own, so this was a great fit for being able to go camping or on trips without too much issue,” he adds.

“Chickens were a pet that was friendly enough to still be fun to watch and for the kids to play with, while still providing good flexibility.”

DuMont has built a space-efficient coop under the family’s back deck stairs that includes two levels, windows, hatches for access to the eggs, a feeding and watering dispenser, temperature-controlled heaters and even a webcam.

“The webcam was a great escape for a bunch of our friends during the pandemic because they would login and see what the chickens were up to,” says DuMont.

Sarah Stilborn also decided to keep four chickens in her Hillcrest yard during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are all home due to COVID, so we thought, why not have fresh eggs?” she says.

Her three girls, ages eight, 11 and 13, were the main driving force behind the decision and Stilborn says she was surprised by how social chickens are.

“They really are quite friendly, smart and they get excited when you come outside,” she says.

“They are also not noisy at all and the cost to keep them is minimal.”

DuMont and Stilborn agree that the biggest benefit of having chickens is the fresh eggs, but DuMont adds that they are also fun to watch and depending on the yard/garden setup the chickens can do a good job cleaning out the bugs and slugs.

“The chickens also will eat pretty much anything, so you can send a lot of your leftover fruits and veggies to them as snacks, and poof – turn them into eggs!” he jokes.

FOWLING THE RULES

The City of Airdrie Urban Agriculture/Hens Regulations Bylaw sets the minimum number of hens allowed at two and the maximum number at four, dependent on the lot size of the house. “The Urban Agriculture Pilot Project (UAPP) represents the City’s continued effort to provide opportunities for residents to learn and explore various options for integrating local food and urban agriculture,” according to Gail Gibeau, senior planner at the City of Airdrie. “It was created in response to a public engagement process that was conducted to determine what urban agriculture activities residents were interested in supporting and/or pursuing within city limits.” The bylaw also includes regulations around enclosures for the animals. Both the henhouse and the run area shall be fully enclosed (i.e., fencing, chicken wire, roof covering) to provide hens secure access to exercise, sunlight, earth and vegetation when unsupervised during the day. It shall be constructed to prevent the hens’ escape and prevent entry by intruders or predators.

The maximum size of the henhouse and the run is 4.65 square metres each.

Backyard hens are only allowed on single-family residential lots and roosters are not permitted. life