There’s a reason the little slide on Evie Smith’s swing set stays so clean.
Evie likes to polish it every day, using a feather duster she calls Dorothy.
Evie is not sure whether Dorothy, a barred rock hen, actually likes going down the slide — but she doesn’t seem to mind.
Evie’s mother, Kristina describes Dorothy as a true friend with benefits. Besides entertaining Evie, Dorothy and her coop mates provide the family with a steady supply of fresh eggs, eat weeds and bugs in the garden and generate a small but steady supply of high-nitrogen fertilizer to help the plants grow.
“(The neighbours) all love it. I haven’t had any complaints,” said Kristina, who has had her chickens for about two years.
“The feedback here is, they love hearing them clucking.”
The healthy patches of kale and Swiss chard growing beside the henhouse was testament to the effectiveness of hens as garden helpers when the Smith family hosted a crew of the curious on a tour of urban chicken coops in Red Deer on Saturday.
Organized by local members of CLUCK ‑ the Canadian Liberated Urban Chicken Klub — the tour was set up to help dispel myths and answer a few questions for people curious about the potential and the potential for problems with backyard chickens.
People who oppose the notion of urban chickens often raise noise as an issue, assuming that where there are hens, there has to be a rooster, said tour organizer Deborah van Delden, who also keeps a few laying hens in her yard.
Yes, a crowing rooster makes a lot of racket when the sun comes up in the morning, said van Delden.
Hens lay eggs regardless of whether there’s a rooster around, the same as any other warm-blooded female, including women, said van Delden. No hen keeper interested in enjoying fresh eggs is going to want a rooster fertilizing them, she said.
Roosters are not allowed in any of the urban centres where people are now allowed to keep a small clutch of hens, she said.
Noise is never an issue at night. The hens shut down completely when it starts to get dark and stay still until after the sun rises in the morning, said van Delden.
Four or five hens is plenty, said Eileen, who set up a small chicken coop in her backyard about two months ago. Still new to the backyard chicken scene, Eileen asked that her last name be withheld. She doesn’t think her neighbours know about her chickens and she doesn’t want to encourage complaints.
Deb Ganske came to the tour to out of curiousity.
“It’s interesting, actually. I guess I had no clue on what to expect. You hear people saying they’re smelly and they’re noisy, and I haven’t seen that at all,” said Ganske.
“It seems like they’re quite easy to look after. They’d be good pets.”
Van Delden said she didn’t hear any negative comments from the 25 or so people who joined the tour, bearing cameras and notepads to record the experience.
She and other CLUCK members are still waiting to see what kind of a proposal the City of Red Deer comes up with for dealing with urban chickens.
While the issue was brought forward earlier this year, the discussion seems to have disappeared recently, said Smith.
That means a number of those who now have chicken coops in their backyards will probably still try to keep their activities to themselves, said Smith and van Delden.
Others said they are considering setting up henhouses, but will wait for city counsel to come up with a bylaw before making the move.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com