Matthew J Redsell
P.O. Box 18
Port Burwell , Ontario
NOJ 1T0
Sept 15, 2008

To: Paul Groeneveld, Fire chief Municipality of Bayham.
Copies of this have been sent to those who support having chickens in the back yard in Bayham and posted on the internet on my site www,continuo.com.

You visited my home today to inform me that chickens where not allowed in Port Burwell and to take a picture of the so called Chickens. You also neglected to read me a copy of the law nor did you have a copy of it with you.

I feel very strongly that unless you come up with some very good reason for the law other than “that is the law”, I am along with many others of the municipality going to fight this. However if you are willing to consider the reasons for chickens and display your well thought out arguments for enforcing the law then perhaps this issue can be resolved.

Attached below is a sampling of the material I have collected on raising chickens in ones back yard. I have also a number of people from 10 year old Jazmin who visits the chickens every day after school to a practicing Veterinarian from St Thomas who are willing to confront this law that has no basis what so ever for enforcing.
Please read the definition as supplied by Bayham Municipality below:

2.124 Livestock shall mean farm animals, kept for use, for propagation, or intended for profit and includes dairy and beef cattle, horses, swine, laying hens, Chicken and turkey broilers, Turkeys, goats, geese, ducks, Mink and Rabbit but excluding animals such as pets raised or housed for recreational or hobby purposes.

My reading of the above says that chickens kept as pets as a hobby is fine. But if this is not your interpretation then anyone having a rabbit as a pet is now breaking the law.

Chickens have existed in cities since the dawn of time, and they still exist all over the world. Benefits to raising hens in the City of Toronto include:
1. Fresh, healthy, delicious eggs, free of pesticides and antibiotics.
2. Chickens eat table scrapes, reducing municipal solid waste.
3. Chickens produce a rich fertilizer by-product, high in nitrogen, eliminating the need for petrochemical fertilizers.
4. Educational - teaches children where our food comes from and demonstrates responsible pet ownership.
5. Great pets - Chickens are people-friendly. Their behaviour is interesting and entertaining.
6. Chickens eat bugs, reducing our backyard pest population.
Bird flu is a contagious disease caused by the Influenza A virus. This virus (H5N1) is an aquatic virus which thrives in a wet environment such as a factory farm setting. Backyard chickens are far less likely to become infected and spread this disease:
The virus requires a moist environment to survive (manure-saturated factory farms provide the perfect wet environment). Backyard sunshine will kill the virus very quickly.
Backyard chickens have a robustimmunesystem, making it less likely that they will get infected in the first place. Contrast this with factory-farmed chickens, raised in an unnatural environment with no sunlight, no exercise, no fresh air, utilizing antibiotics and pesticides.
Factory farms keep the birds in close contact with each other, increasing thelikelihoodof the virus quickly spreading to the entire factory population.
Source: Dr. Michael Greger

In a survey of 21 cities in Canada only four allowed chickens: Brampton and London in Ontario, and Surrey and Victoria in British Columbia. In contrast, the U.S. allows chickens in 53 cities.”

In Niagara Falls, for example, rules for keeping chickens include minimum property size of 30 by 12 metres, no more than 10 chickens per yard and no roosters.)

Websites, including backyardchickens.com and TheCityChicken.com, offer direction and inspiration to city farmers.

Did you know that eggs from hens raised on pasture compared to factory-farmed hens contain more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff?
1.1/3 less cholesterol
2.1/4 less saturated fat
3.2/3 more vitamin A
4.2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
5.3 times more vitamin E
6.7 times more beta carotene
Source: www.motherearthnews.com

Waterloo city council recently agreed to study a proposal from Matthew Bailey-Dick and a new organization he had formed, the Waterloo Hen Association. "We didn't want to quietly do our own thing on our property," says Bailey-Dick, a Mennonite peace educator and father of three young children who doesn't yet raise chickens. "This is a community issue and an opportunity to realize they can contribute to practical food security.

Chickens are omnivores and will feed on small seeds, herbs and leaves, grubs, insects and even small mammals like mice, if they can get them. Domestic chickens are typically fed commercially prepared feed that includes a protein source as well as grains. Chickens often scratch at the soil to get at adult insects and larva or seed. Incidents of cannibalism can occur when a curious bird pecks at a pre-existing wound or from over-crowding. This is exacerbated in close quarters. In commercial production this is controlled with chick "de-beaking" (removal of 2/3 of the top half and 1/3 of the lower half of the beak). This "de-beaking" process is very painful for the chicken because their beaks are filled with nerve endings.
Domestic chickens are not capable of flying for long distances, although they are generally capable of flying for short distances such as over fences. Chickens will sometimes fly simply in order to explore their surroundings, but will especially fly in an attempt to flee when they perceive danger. Because of the risk of flight, chickens raised in the open air generally have one of their wings clipped by the breeder — the tips of the longest feathers on one of the wings are cut, resulting in unbalanced flight which the bird cannot sustain for more than a few meters.

Chicken eggs vary in color depending on the hen, typically ranging from bright white to shades of brown and even blue or green (Auracana varieties). Chicken eggs vary in color depending on the hen, typically ranging from bright white to shades of brown and even blue or green (Auracana varieties).
Chickens are gregarious birds and live together as a flock. They have a communal approach to the incubation of eggs and raising of young. Individual chickens in a flock will dominate others, establishing a "pecking order", with dominant individuals having priority for access to food and nesting locations. Removing hens or roosters from a flock causes a temporary disruption to this social order until a new pecking order is established.
Chickens will try to lay in nests that already contain eggs, and have been known to move eggs from neighbouring nests into their own. Some farmers use fake eggs made from plastic or stone to encourage hens to lay in a particular location. The result of this behaviour is that a flock will use only a few preferred locations,rather than having a different nest for every bird.

Hens can also be extremely stubborn about always laying in the same location. It is not unknown for two (or more) hens to try to share the same nest at the same time. If the nest is small, or one of the hens is particularly determined, this may result in chickens trying to lay on top of each other.
Chickens are domesticated descendents of the red junglefowl, which is biologically classified as the same species.

Chickens as pets
In Asia, chickens with striking plumage have long been kept for ornamental purposes, including feather-footed varieties such as the Cochin and Silkie from China and the extremely long-tailed (Phoenix) from Japan. Asian ornamental varieties were imported into the United States and Great Britain in the late 1800s. Poultry fanciers then began keeping these ornamental birds for exhibition, a practice that continues today. From these Asian breeds, distinctive American varieties of chickens have been developed.

Today, some cities in the United States still allow residents to keep live chickens as pets, although the practice is quickly disappearing. Individuals in rural communities commonly keep chickens for both ornamental and practical value. Some communities ban only roosters, allowing the quieter hens. Many zoos use chickens instead of insecticides to control insect populations.
Growing chickens can easily be tamed by feeding them a special treat such as mealworms in the palm of one's hand, and by being with them for at least ten minutes daily when they are young.

As for "avian influenza, commonly referred to as "bird flu"... There has never been an incident of bird flu detected in backyard chickens in the United States of America. Avian influenza is most commonly found in commercial birds in 3rd world countries. As for other food born threats to the American public: Every food threat ever faced in this country came at the hands of commercial growers.

As for noise: Chickens are far less noisy than dogs and chickens never howl at the moon or chase cars all night long.
Backyard chicken farmers don't want to become commercial chicken growers. We detest the steroid filled chickens and chicken products as well as the horrid conditions used by many, though not all commercial growers. We detest the fact that the commercial chicken industry lobbies Congress to deliberately confuse the meaning of terms like "free range", "organic" and "free roaming", and that the products they sell are none of the three no matter what it says on the carton. We detest the way thousands of birds are stuffed into the smallest of spaces and in some cases shackled to the floor for their entire lifetimes which for some growers is measured in weeks rather than the years our backyard chickens enjoy.

We detest that fact that while backyard chickens can lay eggs from 5 to 8 years, commercially raised hens are laid-out after only 2 years through the use of artificial lighting, steroids and chemical feeds whose long term effects on humans aren't yet known.

We enjoy the fact that chickens rid our yards of fleas, tics, grass destroying grubs, Japanese Beetles, mice, rats, slugs and a myriad of other vermin. And they do so without the need for neonicotinoid pesticides which are currently destroying all of the bees in North America and putting our ENTIRE food supply at risk.

Backyard chickens save taxdollars by eating things (table scraps, etc.) that would ordinarily go into our garbage cans and on to landfills where the city pays by the ton to bury our garbage. and the only byproduct of backyard chickens is organic pesticide free fertilizer for our yards and gardens.
As for smell: Backyard chickens, when properly managed don't smell. If you can smell your neighbor's backyard chickens them please contact your local ASPCA and not the city as your neighbor is abusing their chickens.

I can't attest to the idea that eggs from backyard chickens are healthier than six month old "fresh" grocery store eggs but I can without a doubt tell you they look and taste far better than any egg sold in the local Grocery store!!!

Sincerely,

Matthew J Redsell