Jill, with Sunshine
Little Italy
Hen keeper since 2009
Our chickens are great pets and garden companions, and they provide us with beautiful eggs. It’s a nice feeling to see a basket of multicoloured eggs in your kitchen that you raised yourself from a few very happy hens. It’s been a great learning experience for our kids, as well as their friends. We have even held class tours to show them that you don’t need to live on a farm to be able to grow your own vegetables and have a few chickens. It’s about being self-sufficient and having some control over where your food comes from. Our “urban farm” doesn’t smell like a barnyard, nor is it noisy. We’ve had no complaints from neighbours—only full support.
love the photo of ziggy and helen!
December 12, 2011 at 2:31 pm | by sugarsugarI LOVE and fully support this movement! Done right, there should be no complaints from neighbors. I find those who do complain are usually chronic complainers!
December 12, 2011 at 3:21 pm | by UrbanFarmer“Done right there should be no complaints” is like saying if the criminal code is well implemented, there should be no crimes committed. Chickens will escape, they will fly the coop, they will end up in the yards of people who didn’t ask that this bylaw be repealed. Citizens of residential areas where neighbours live in very close proximity should not be farmers.
December 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm | by shake n bakeSo happy to see this article! As with any pet, it’s the owners who make them great and these people are all wonderful examples.
If any of the west-enders need to unload some extra eggs, my backyard-less self would love to help ;)
December 12, 2011 at 4:30 pm | by @annieclareChickens like to stay close to home, and if one should happen to stray, what’s the big deal? Better than neighbourhood dogs and cats who like to water my flowers. It comes down to responsible pet ownership whether it be chicken, cats or dogs. Have you ever tried a fresh egg?
December 12, 2011 at 9:35 pm | by UrbanFarmerBeautiful photo-montage …
Chickens in the city? Absolutely, positively yes. What a great way for people to reconnect with real food. What a powerful way to teach our children about healthy food. There is so much hunger and poverty here in the city and I support anyone who is producing food here. We have a real crisis here … when it is illegal for people to feed themselves! Clearly shake n’bake knows nothing about animals, his comment is ridiculous, maybe s/he should visit a chicken coop at an organic farm and educate her/himself.
December 12, 2011 at 11:28 pm | by Jaysonquestion.. what happens to the chickens in the cold canadian winter??? I assume everyone doesnt have their chickens in a well insulated shed? or is that 100% necessary if you have chickens in toronto?
December 13, 2011 at 4:56 am | by braydenIn theory, I love the idea of back yard chickens but what about the smell, even once. I can’t trust my neighbours to control their kids. Why would I trust them to diligently maintain the chickens?
December 13, 2011 at 7:44 am | by MAnd, what about the extra garbage produced?
Further, would live chickens and eggs increase the city’s raccoon population even more?
I suspect this is a sentimental issue that sounds great on paper but is truly not feasible in a city of our size. After all, there is a reason back yard chickens were made illegal before.
@ Jayson my comments are from experience living a few doors down from underground chickens which I didn’t have to visit, they visited me. Then I had to go door-to-door asking whose chicken was crapping in my yard which even the owner denied because it is illegal….good thing my tenants kids were not outside to get in contact with the chickens#!* or witness their dog attack it.
December 13, 2011 at 9:32 am | by shake n bakeIf you think that you can raise livestock, then you probably should. If everyone who could have chickens did so, then there would be no need to have tens of thousands of chickens cooped up on factory farms. Imagine living your life in a 6 foot cube cell with no daylight or fresh air ever (until they cram you in a cage and send you off to the soup factory).
Go Toronto Nine!
December 13, 2011 at 1:49 pm | by Tim FisherInteresting debate. On one hand, the benefits of allowing urbanites to raise chickens are obvious – health, education, ethical/moral (each articulated well by people above). On the other hand, while shake n bake’s criminal code analogy is not logically sound, her/his personal experience with irresponsible backyard-chicken-farmers should be given substantial weight. Benefit vs cost. One must wonder if the law is really addressing the costs though. There is probably a bias that the people that would like to engage in the activity but don’t because it is illegal would be, on average, more responsible farmers. And for people that ignore the law and mismanage their livestock, the “underground-ness” of the whole thing makes it more complicated to pursue legitimate complaints. Perhaps a middle ground? An urban farmer registration scheme would be great but too costly. Maybe just legalization with requirements about the chicken enclosure and stiff penalties. An argument that some people will just ignore these requirements can be countered with the argument that those are the people (a subset of the people) that are ignoring the blanket prohibition now. I say subset because I suspect that a large group of people ignoring the current prohibition (such as the ones featured in this article) value this activity, its legitimacy, and its promotion enough to adjust to any requirements that would come with legalization. Also, I just realized how much these arguments mirror a pro legalization of marijuana rant, but I think (hope) that this can be differentiated by the qualitative and quantitative benefits of urban farming.
December 13, 2011 at 3:30 pm | by JGWhat about us apartment/condo dwellers? Do we get to turn our balconies into chicken coops and our lobbies into farmer’s markets. let’s start with chickens then we can move on too other delectable fowl and once we have established the beauracracy to monitor this we can deal with different religion’s use of animals as part of their doctrine…sheep/goats on the front lawn. Stoop and Scoop will be the cry of the opposition. But to his credit I would suggest that we have a 2-3 year test project and set this up in Mihevic’s Forest Hill neighborhoods.
December 13, 2011 at 4:48 pm | by WalterPOThe chicken thing just has to happen!! I’m into freeing chickens from abuse in mass chicken egg slavery!!!
December 13, 2011 at 5:25 pm | by jackie ramsayI’ve met lots of folks with backyard hens, and the slippery slope argument just doesn’t hold water. “Oh,” the Henny Penny’s say, “fist it will be hens, then goats, then escaped cows grazing on my petunias!” Oh the horror! But that’s just not going to happen. Hens are not a gateway animal. No more than everyone who has a cat or dog graduates to owning hens. Hen keepers are a group of dedicated, hen fanciers. Equally silly is Mammoliti’s argument about 1000′s of escaped hens all over the roads. Listen, I’ve seen my fair share of squashed kitty cats on the roads, should cats be outlawed? Do cat vs car accidents cause civil strife, pitting neighbour against neighbour – in truth, it does…sometimes…but it doesn’t mean cats should be outlawed, it means cat owners should take better care of their animals. Just like hen keepers will have to take good care of theirs. Bottom line: most of the hen keepers I’ve met really love their birds, like anyone else loves their pets. No one wants to set up a huge operation in the backyard. They just want what most everyone else in the world has: the right to keep a couple of hens for pest control, healthy eggs, natural fertilizer and amusement. It works just fine in London, UK. Why not here?
December 13, 2011 at 7:37 pm | by signeChickens make awesome pets and it is important to be able to gather eggs that are clean and free of cruelty…Just review 20/20′s undercover video on how some egg production plants operate. I say no more……
December 13, 2011 at 10:21 pm | by Cherie