Should hens be laying eggs in Barrie’s backyards?
Coun. Ann-Marie Kungl wants to find out and hopes city council will consider a pilot project on allowing backyard hens before the summer break, which begins in July.
“Hundreds of votes were cast by residents through the City of Barrie online user voice system in support of backyard hens,” she said, referring to a forum suggestion on the city’s website to make Barrie a sustainable city by allowing backyard hens for household egg consumption.
It received 515 votes in favour.
“This initiated a staff report on the subject and at that time staff did not recommend proceeding,” Kungl said. “I referred it back to staff (in March 2020) to ask to include broader examples of where similar programs were operating, including Orillia.
“I think there is enough resident interest and great learnings and resources from the City of Orillia to at least start a small-scale pilot (program),” she said. “Orillia has seen great success and extended their pilot program until 2023.”
Keeping backyard hens or chickens — called domestic fowl — is prohibited in Barrie’s residential zones.
“(I) am aware it will require a change to our bylaws,” Kungl said. “We have clearly heard from residents that they are interested in this opportunity to have egg-laying hens. I think this is a great initiative in support of food security.”
Food security is having reliable access to an adequate quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
The city’s forum suggestion page says the benefits of raising backyard hens include fresh, healthy and homegrown eggs, free of pesticides and antibiotics, reduced municipal solid waste, as hens eat table scraps and other organic waste, and reduced backyard pest populations as hens consume weeds and bugs.
Backyard hens also provide opportunities to teach children about food sources and responsible animal care, the suggestion page says.
And hens are people friendly and non-aggressive, so they make good family pets.
But a staff memo dated March 30, 2020, says hens create noise and odour, roam into other yards and attract rodents, predatory animals and other pests to neighbourhoods.
Andrea Miller, Barrie’s general manager of infrastructure and growth management, says backyard hens are being looked at from another perspective as well.
“You (council) did ask us to take a look at this from a zoning perspective and we indicated we would look at it as part of the update to the comprehensive zoning bylaw,” she said on May 10. “So when that comes back, next year, we will certainly tackle it… but we are not intending to do anything from a zoning perspective before that.”
