SUNDRE — Any town residents who might be chomping at the bit to start raising hens in their backyard will have to continue being patient a while longer.
“It won’t be any time soon,” Linda Nelson, Sundre’s chief administrative officer, said on Wednesday, Oct. 26 during a phone interview.
“(But) it will be coming back,” said Nelson in response to follow-up questions, adding she anticipates council could by next spring or summer at the earliest be presented with information for a discussion and debate on whether to adopt a bylaw.
In October 2021, the municipality solicited feedback in the form of questions or concerns from residents with regards to the program that would be regulated through bylaw. At the time, the intent was to introduce a temporary, one-year trial program that would allow interested individuals to raise a maximum of four hens – no roosters – with the understanding they could not permanently keep the animals should the bylaw fail to pass.
“We haven’t moved forward with (the pilot project) yet,” said Nelson. “There was still too much work to do.”
The Bylaw Policy Review Committee has had its hands full coming up with a recommended approach that balances out potential benefits and drawbacks, she said.
“It’s not that we haven’t done a lot of research, because we have, ” she said.
“It’s just deciding what sort of bylaw we want to include it in. It could be in land use, it could be in the animal control bylaw,” she said, adding different municipalities have taken different approaches, mostly through pilot projects.
“We need a little bit more information. I don’t know which way we’re going to do this,” she said.
Asked when the pilot program might be expected to get started, she expressed uncertainty as to whether that would still be part of the path forward.
As raising backyard hens would be regulated through municipal bylaw, “it’s all at council’s discretion,” she said.
“We want to really make sure we have enough information on both sides – pros and cons – for council to be able to make a really good, informed decision.”
In the meantime, judging by the amount of feedback submitted to the municipality – or perhaps rather lack thereof – there are not too many residents losing sleep as they anxiously wait to build a coop and raise hens.
“I think we had maybe one email a number of months ago. But there really hasn’t been anything more,” said Nelson.
“I’m sure that some people will be very interested,” she said. “But there really haven’t been any questions or anybody…chomping at the bit.”
So while the issue certainly hasn’t been forgotten about or ignored, it’s been reshuffled a bit down the list of priorities as the municipality tackles the big task of preparing the next multi-year financial plan.
“We’re in the middle of creating a brand new four-year budget plan and a new five-year capital plan,” she said.
However, the matter of allowing people to raise urban hens in Sundre under certain conditions remains “important to some of our council,” she said.
That’s why it’s crucial to thoroughly research all of the options and bring before members of council all of the pertinent information they’ll need to discuss and debate the issue before making a decision, she said.
For his part, Coun. Owen Petersen – who prior to being elected to the local municipal office had from a resident’s perspective presented to the past council a case in favour of allowing urban hens – seems to agree that taking the time get the bylaw right is more important than rushing through a regulatory framework everyone might end up regretting.
“I would rather have no chickens at all in Sundre than have a burdensome, over red-taped bylaw that nobody is going to be good at enforcing,” said Petersen.
“We already have two animal bylaws in Sundre,” he said. “They are not easy to enforce.”
Petersen also explained he had serious reservations about the draft bylaw and pilot urban hen program.
“I had some big concerns with that being really burdensome; not only to the folks that wanted chickens, but also to the municipality for the [policing] costs,” he said.
“Mostly for licensing. We’d have to have somebody on staff that would be checking people’s credentials; if they’re worthy to have chickens,” he said.
“Just a lot of ridiculous red tape that in my opinion was burdensome. I don’t know if this is exactly why they kind of put the brakes on a little bit, because I was really unhappy with that,” he said. “I think there’s a better way.”
But Petersen nevertheless remains upbeat that the arrival of urban hens in Sundre is less a matter of if and more a matter of when.
“I definitely have some optimism,” he said.
“Ultimately, it’s council’s decision – I am one member of seven,” he said, adding it’ll come down to a vote.
The councillor said he definitely hasn’t forgotten about the issue.
“I certainly would like to see something a lot more simple put forward,” he added.
But with all of the other irons in the municipality’s fire, including preparing for the next multi-year budget cycle, the councillor and urban hen enthusiast doesn’t mind the chicken bylaw ending up “a little bit on the back burner so we can kind of work through this and get it right as opposed to ramming it through and then being stuck with a bylaw that is burdensome.”
He still aspires to start raising a few hens one day in the not-too-distant future.
“The dream is not lost for me,” he said. “I definitely hope to have them in the next few years.”
