Cambridge resists backyard chicken coop idea
Posted Mar 26, 2019 11:00:00 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Many municipalities including the City of Kitchener, have decided to allow residents to keep backyard chickens.
The City of Cambridge however, is not yet ready to do the same.
Cambridge Ward 5 Councillor Pam Wolf, said even if it is legalized, chicken coops are not likely to become very popular in the city.
“Staff are estimating that we would maybe have 25 coops in Cambridge, so it would be interesting to see if that happens. But out of all our city, 25 is not an awful lot. So I don't think we would have the problems that people think this would generate.”
She said she will be putting forward an amendment that suggests that the city should try out a pilot project to test out backyard chicken coops.
“If we want to try the bylaw project, we need like a zone change or a bylaw change to our animal control bylaw. So that's what I'll be proposing, and we'll see how the rest of council feels about that.”
She said the resistance may come from people who are afraid that backyard chicken coops can become noisy, smelly or a health concern.
“People that want to do this know how to take care of the chicken. Property size has to be a certain thing, the coop has to be so far from property line, the coop can only be a certain size, we're only recommending four chicken and no roosters. A lot of the problems that people perceive would be mitigated by the rules that we set up with the bylaw.”
Wolf said that even if it is legalized, backyard coops are not likely to become widespread throughout Cambridge.
