East Vancouver is a mecca for backyard chickens.
According to the City of Vancouver’s food policy department, 164 Vancouver households have registered backyard chickens and 107 of them are on the East Side.
The city doesn’t keep track of exactly how many chickens there are in total, but each household is permitted four chickens — hens to be exact, no roosters allowed.
Assuming every household with chickens has registered with the city as required and no one is keeping more chickens than the bylaw allows, approximately 428 chickens reside east of Ontario Street.
“It is like a little symbol of food sovereignty,” said Vicky Baker, who keeps three chickens in her yard.
“I know what they are fed, I know how they are during the day. It is to be closer to the food system.”
Beyond access to fresh free-range eggs, other advantages include educating her three children about where their food comes from and getting to know her neighbours.
Baker opened up her coops a few years ago and invited neighbours and passersby to stop to chat. Since then, other neighbours have gotten chickens.
Someone else organized a bike tour of each of the backyard coops and over 60 people participated.
According to Baker, the birds have created a tight knit community.
Chicken keepers get together for social events and to help each other out doing feed runs or sharing advice.
But caring for chickens is not all happy clucking.
For Baker, the many unforeseen ethical decisions involved have been challenging.
“Trying to, in my own mind, conceptualize the difference between pet versus commodity. So, if they get sick for example, and it costs $60 to deworm them, but it costs $8 to buy a new chicken, what route do you take?”
In the past she spent a lot of money nursing her chickens back to health, but it is an issue she still struggles with and something potential chicken keepers should consider carefully before getting birds, she said.
Fellow East Vancouver chicken keeper Duncan Martin builds and sells backyard coops (dailyeggs.com). He said in spite of the challenges of owning farm animals in the city, more and more people seem interested.
Martin attributes the concentration of chicken keepers in his part of the city to simple word of mouth and a strong community desire to be closer to food production.
The positive offshoot of that collective desire is a stronger bond between members of the community.
“It brings generations together,” he said. “A lot of elderly in the city grew up with chickens and now young kids are growing up with them so they kind of have a connection there.”
Martin built two coops for the students at the East Side’s Spectrum Program high school.
The students take care of the chickens themselves doing everything from composting to cleaning the coops, feeding the hens and caring for the chicks. The eggs collected are used for the school’s sustainable lunch program.
Head teacher Frances Alley said keeping chickens has been great for the students.
“They love it, they absolutely love it,” she said.
One student is taking a chick home at night and another student will take all the birds home over the summer.
Alley said none of the youth had been exposed to farm animals prior to the program.
The night before the Courier paid the school a visit a recently hatched chick died, which created another opportunity for the urban youth to learn about nature.
“That is life isn’t it,” Alley said.
To learn more about Spectrum chickens, go to speggtrum.tumblr.com.
For information on the city’s backyard chicken program, go to vancouver.ca.
