Julia Hilton (left) and husband Nayt Keane (with their son, Everest) make up one of many Mount Pleasant households that have taken advantage of a new bylaw allowing Vancouverites to keep chickens.

Credit: Jessica Barrett

NEWS: Chickens come home to roost

By Jessica Barrett

After nearly a year of controversy, a much-publicized bylaw allowing Vancouverites to keep chickens was quickly and quietly passed by city council on June 8. While it has given urban-fowl enthusiasts cause for celebration, the news has likely rattled opposing voices who fear the move will make for neighbourhoods overrun with disease, noise, and abandoned birds.

For one Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, however, the law — which allows up to four hens to be kept in a backyard coop — has merely legitimized a hobby that has become the heart of the community.

“It’s really brought the community together, in the sense that you’re talking with people that are three blocks down that have chickens [also] — people that otherwise we probably never would have had a reason to talk to before,” says Nate Reister, a fresh-faced 25-year-old carpenter. The backyard of the large Quebec Street house he shares with wife Asia Warner, 24, her parents and a handful of renters, has been home to several pullets (young hens) since mid-April. Overlooking his homemade coop, Reister points out some of the heritage breeds comprising his flock: the all-white Americanua, which will lay turquoise eggs when mature; the Wellsummer, whose eggs will be a dark chocolate brown, like the bird itself; and the speckled Brahma.

While most of Vancouver is still adjusting to the idea of urban chickens, backyard coops have been a fixture in this neighbourhood for years. Reister estimates there may be as many as 15 coops in a roughly 10-block radius near King Edward and Main, where the community has formed a co-op to purchase feed and bedding in bulk, all with few complaints from non-chicken-hosting neighbours.

The secret to keeping the peace, Reister says, is an unofficial policy of open and inclusive dialogue with neighbours, which should be a priority for anyone interested in keeping hens. “We’ve made it a point to talk to our neighbours. And anybody who considers getting hens, that’s what I tell them first, is talk to your neighbours, because they’re your biggest ally if you’re going to have hens,” he says, noting that provisions in Vancouver’s new bylaw make it possible for hens to be removed due to neighbour complaints, even if the owners are in compliance. One owner has already been ticketed after a neighbour called the City complaining of wandering hens two days before the bylaw passed.

Although Reister and Warner let their chickens range with supervision, Reister recommends gauging the tolerance level of neighbours before letting them roam. “Our neighbours have actually come into our yard and helped us chase our pullets around when they had escaped. They were laughing, and that totally turned them on to the chickens.”

On a walk around the neighbourhood, Reister, Warner, and friend Duncan Martin, who keeps chickens at his Nanaimo Street home, point out several other coops visible from the laneways winding through the area — one blessed with single-family homes on relatively large lots where houses can sell for upwards of $1 million. Elizabeth Campbell Wride, a realtor handling a large house on nearby Columbia Street, says she welcomes the new bylaw. The fowl-friendly neighbourhood is a selling feature for eco-conscious urbanites, she says. “It’s much more upscale to be able to be green and grow your own chickens and eggs.”

Reister and Warner’s hens are too young to lay eggs, but around the corner, Julia Hilton and Nayt Keane can’t keep up with the free, fresh, organic eggs they get daily in their coop. Keane explains they jumped the gun on the bylaw (they figured it would eventually pass) and bought their chickens — a collection of ornately plumed Crested Polish and big brown Red Stars — more than a year ago. “One day Julia just decided: We’re going to go get chickens, today,” says Keane. “It’s something we’d talked about… But we just dove right in, went out to Maple Ridge, Fort Langley, Aldergrove, and got all these chicks.”

The driving impetus behind the move was financial, says Keane, pointing to a significant vegetable garden in progress beside the coop. He and Hilton aim to grow as much food as they can on their own land, limited as it may be. “We love to get stuff at the farmers’ market, but we’d much rather grow our own food everywhere,” he says.

Keane admits their endeavour in urban agriculture did draw a complaint from one neighbour, but in general the community has taken a shine to their birds. “These birds are a bit of a celebrity; every kid in this neighbourhood knows all their names, or has their own names for them, and they’re here every day or every other day,” he says. “And people we don’t even know, they’ll stop on their bikes or they’ll just drop by and look at the birds.”

An added benefit, says Keane, is that his birds help teach kids in the community where food comes from — a lesson he’s particularly grateful his two-year-old son, Everest, is learning firsthand. “[He’s] witnessing where eggs come from, seeing animals as part of our lives and helping us make food. It’s a lovely relationship.”

reporter@westender.com