Urban chickens
get another year to roost
By HEATHER MCLAUGHLIN
26 Apr 2012 03:10AM
A Fredericton woman
whose one-year experiment with urban chicken-keeping hasn’t ruffled any
feathers amongst her neighbours has received a one-year temporary use variance
to continue keeping three hens for a second year.
Hazel Richardson
said Wednesday she was pleased to hear the city’s planning department will lay
out a definitive process to allow other urbanites to keep backyard hens in
residential zones as part of a review of the city’s umbrella zoning bylaw.
The planning
advisory committee a year ago approved pilot projects, one on either side of
the St. John River, and neither experiment appears to have caused alarm.
Initially,
residents expressed concerns to the committee about the notion of allowing
chickens to be kept in backyard pens for home egg production. Those fears
ranged from the possibilities of odour and noise to disease transmission and
threats from predators.
“They are going to
look into how the bylaw is going to be changed, so you know what size of
property, the distance from neighbouring properties and that kind of thing,”
Richardson said. “The city have been very good to work with. They’ve been very
clear and transparent. I set out to do the pilot to show whether there would be
issues and there haven’t been any reported.”
Richardson, who
lives at the lower end of Hanwell Road, built a backyard chicken coop and
screened it with lattice at the request of her immediate neighbour. Other
nearby residents were surprised to learn that Richardson and her family are
scrupulous about the removal of chicken manure, distributing it to gardeners
who take away quantities for composting, while they also retain small amounts
of the chicken waste for their own garden composter.
The city’s planning
department confirmed Richardson’s experiment has gone well over the past year.
“There have been no
complaints from the neighbours regarding any of the initial concerns for having
a backyard hen operation in a residential zone ... Many neighboring residents
did not even know that she kept hens in her backyard until The Daily Gleaner
published an article about it,” said a report handed to the committee Wednesday
evening at its meeting.
The northside
hen-keeping operation is ending of its own accord as the property owner in that
case is moving to a more rural setting.
http://www.telegraphjournal.com/tjonline/thedailygleaner/10140343-266/committee-planning-backyard-richardson.html.csp
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