The many benefits of keeping chickens in the backyard
There’s a town in Belgium and another one in France that offer residents free backyard chickens — not because people are clamouring for better omelettes or happier hens, but because these towns are trying to manage their kitchen waste in a way that doesn’t overburden already bulging garbage dumps. These towns recognize that chickens are compact, twolegged, live composters that turn food scraps into rich, nutrient-packed garden fertilizer.
A number of nursing homes in England have introduced flocks of chickens for residents to look after. Videos showing the positive effects these creatures have had on seniors’ lives are guaranteed to make you weep.
It’s simple, really — chickens and their endearing antics make people happy.
In Brooklyn, you can visit a flock of urban hens that live on a rooftop farm. In New York City, there are chickens in com- munity gardens. In a Minnesota city, hens might have the most fun of all: a draft ordinance would allow roosters in the city for 48 hours every two weeks — for conjugal visits.
At a high-end Paris hotel, where rooms run to the hundreds of euros, there’s a flock of hens on the roof, a block away from the Eiffel Tower. During a tour of this most haute coop, the hotel’s manager, herself a very haute Parisienne, curled her mouth into an expression that mixed incredulity and pity (no doubt imagining the culinary deprivations forced by storebought eggs) and exclaimed, “No chickens allowed in Toronto? Mais, pourquoi pas?!”
As of March 1, pourquoi pas will have morphed into peut-être in four lucky Toronto wards where a backyard hen pilot project has been launched. Residents in these wards can register to keep up to four hens for the duration of a three-year experiment to see if hens, coops and neighbours can coexist peaceably in the urban environment.
Cities all over the world have already answered this question. Most major U.S. cities, for example, allow backyard hens, as do an increasing number of Canadian municipalities. But Toronto is taking a cautious route, one that at least takes backyard hen-keeping out of the clandestine shadows and into the light, where the practice can be seen, heard, smelled and evaluated.
Actually, though, there are already a lot of chickens in Toronto. At least one school has a coop, and local community mem- bers have self-organized a roster of regular care and feeding of the hens. Black Creek Urban Farm has a flock. And countless rogues — nobody knows how many — have been raising hens on the sly for decades. A city employee even harboured a hen in his office for a few hours (it’s a long story) and was rewarded with an egg — that’s right, a hen laid an egg in Toronto City Hall.
It’s impossible to predict how many Torontonians in those four wards will take advantage of the pilot and raise a couple of hens. But if some new pets-with-benefits show up next door, keep an open mind — evaluate what, if any, impact it has on you and your property — and ask for an egg. It will no longer be offered as a bribe for your silence. It’ll be a delicious gift. Lorraine Johnson is the author of City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing. Adam Dirks is an urban farmer and educator. They will be conducting workshops in Toronto’s four backyard hen pilot wards throughout the spring.