Urban Hen Movement
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This is a project of Thompson Rivers University Eco-Committee
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Why Urban Hens?
Growing our own food is one of the best ways that people can make an impact by become more sustainable. Vegetable gardens are a great start to producing food in your backyard but by raising egg-laying hens people can introduce a home grown protein source into their diet. It creates not only food security but food sovereignty on an individual, community and global level. It may be a small, innocuous thing to have a chicken or two or three in your back yard, but it is the principal of it that makes it important. It is having the right to provide yourself as much of your own food as possible. It will improve food security in the city. It is about allowing people the dignity to legally become as sustainable as possible in a world that is quickly moving in the other direction. It is about individuals realizing that eating locally will make a difference. It is about the freedom to use land to its full extent to feed people. And it is about empowering Kamloops citizens to become more self-reliant, more food secure, and more able to step outside in the morning and collecting their fresh, very nutritious and very local eggs.
There is a unique intrinsic satisfaction that comes with occupying one’s time and energy collecting fresh food from the land you live on. What better way to start making a positive individual and social change than in your own back yard at, literally, the grassroots level?
Read a short report on the benefits or email Bonnie Klohn at b_klohn@yahoo.com for more info.
The History of the Movement in Kamloops
The visit to city council-
Currently if you have an acre you can have 30 hens and if you have less than an acre the city denies you the right to have any hens at all. A 10 minute presentation was given, outlining the great oppotunity this is for the city to become more sustainable and the request to put in place either a sliding scale by-law, or to allow 3-6 hens to landowners in Kamloops, who had the space and wanted hens. (The power point and by-law variation requested is also available to look at by emailing b_klohn@yahoo.com) Although even when all the benefits of raising backyard hens were brought to the attention of the city council, the results were disappointing. City councilors dropped the word sustainability from their conversation quickly after the presentation finished and turned down a motion to write up a new draft by-law. They were concerned about smell, avain flu and wasting staff time drafting a new by-law because according to a few counillors, raising chickens is innocuous.
So through media coverage (CBC, and the local newspapers) a few people from the community joined in trying to raise awareness about this and a public meeting was held on April 7th.
There were about 15-20 people, including a city councilor there. We spoke about the benefits, challenges and solutions that urban hens represent and what sort of a direction we wanted to take and what our goals were.
The Peace Walk
One of our Urban Hen supporters has a chicken suit, so for the annual peace walk this year we were there with our petitions, fliers and life sized chickens.
The Urban Hen Movement in the Future
We decided in our public meeting that this summer we will try to raise awareness about the issue, and then in the fall we will meet again, as a group and talk about a structure for a possible pilot project. We would then return to council and ask the city to let us do a pilot project for 6 months or so. Then if that goes through, write up reports etc from those projects and go back and present again to the city requesting a by-law variance.
Since the meeting there have been contacts made in the 4H program, and with a liason person at TRU. This provides a great knowledge resource base about raising hens and a possible partner for funding.
Other possibilities include keeping a coup near the up-coming TRU community Garden or other community gardens in Kamloops.
Action items- What you can do
1) Write a letter to the editor. Send letters to the daily at letters@kamloopsnews.ca and letters to the weekly to editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
2) Write a letter to the city council. Send it to info@kamloops.ca addressed to Mayor and council and they will all recieve it.
3) Talk to your friends and everyone else you know about this.
4) Dress up as an Urban Chicken. We have a chicken suit that we can use at farmers markets etc. We also have a petition, so if you want to be an urban chicken contact Bonnie, and if you see an Urban Chicken, sign the petition.
5) Be a pilot project family- this won't be until fall but if you are interested in becoming a pilot project family, let Bonnie know. (once again email at b_klohn@yahoo.com)
And thats it
Omelets For Everyone!!
