Serena Perone is sitting on her haunches in her backyard playing with Popcorn, a mechanical toy chick, as its beak pecks away at the deck, mimicking a real chicken. The nine-year-old Coquitlam girl actually wants to have the real thing in her backyard but the city won’t let her and she hopes to do something about it.
Her interest in chickens started at school, where her younger brother’s pre-school class was taking care of chicks.
“Me and my friend were playing with them and when I got home, I asked my mom if we could buy chickens. And she said Coquitlam doesn’t allow them. So I wanted to change that,” said Serena, a Grade 4 student at Queen of All Saints school, on her family’s back porch in the Harbour Chines neighbourhood. “When I was holding it, it felt sooo soft and it was looking at me.”
So she wrote a letter to the Tri-City News asking for help in her crusade.
“At first, I just wanted them as pets because they’re, like, cute,” said Serena.
But now she also wants them for their nutritional and organic value.
“When they run around, the eggs taste better and they’re healthier,” she said.
Perone isn’t the only person wanting backyard chickens and if a petition is successful, maybe the little birds could be all over the Tri-Cities.
Tira Znidarsic, a Port Coquitlam mom and her friends who live in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam, are seeking bylaw amendments that would permit backyard chickens in each of the three cities.
Pointing to cities such as New Westminster that allow chickens, Znidarsic says as long as people abide by the rules, “I don’t see why we can’t do it here.”
Her Backyard Chickens petition is available at change.org.
Cities have been slow to allow chickens because of concerns about noise, pests and wild animals.
But Znidarsic said properly cared for, all these problems can be managed, and she said chickens make good pets and their eggs are healthy.
“I’ve wanted chickens since I was a child,” the mother of two young daughters told The Tri-City News.
Meanwhile, Marina Perone said she figures her family could take care of up to four chickens, one each for Serena and her three younger brothers, Daniel, Sebastian and Gabriel.
“At first, I thought, ‘I’ve got four kids! What am I going to do with chickens?" Perone told The Tri-City News. "But then I thought, you know, it might be a good pet project for them and takes a bit off the grocery bill.
"And it could be good responsibility for them to take care of an animal and clean up after them, and give them love and attention to make sure they’re taken care of. And to see that you can’t just go to the store and grab whatever you want, it has to come from somewhere.”
If they do get them, it’s up to Serena, though, to take care of them.
“That’s the deal if we get them," Perone said. "They’re going to be her responsibility."
She said a friend in Surrey used to have chickens at home.
“The chicks seemed to like to pick up the weeds and the bugs, and they’ll leave the plants. They said they’ll help take care of your garden. Then their poop is fertilizer for the garden,” she said. “There’s a bit of maintenance where you have to clean out the hay now and then.”
Serena, who says she wants to open her own restaurant when she grows up, likes eating eggs in all sorts of styles: scrambled, over easy, in an omelette or frittata. One of her favourite meals to make is fox toast, which is scrambled eggs on a piece of toast with berries strategically plunked into them to make it look like a fox. Serena also likes to eat chicken.
“But I don’t want to eat those chickens,” she said emphatically about her potential backyard chickens.
Coquitlam prohibits residents from keeping any poultry or livestock in a dwelling unit. They’re only allowed on land designated for agricultural use and those properties are usually at least an acre and where some agricultural use is compatible with the neighbourhood. There are some municipalities in the region, including Vancouver, that allow chickens to be kept in backyards.
“Like many cities, Coquitlam has considered whether to expand the zones in which the keeping of chickens is permitted,” said a city spokesperson in an email to The Tri-City News. “Some municipalities that have allowed backyard chickens in more urban residential areas are reporting unexpected challenges. Staff here in Coquitlam will continue to monitor the challenges and successes of programs in other municipalities.”
A 2017 staff report to council said some of those concerns included noise, potential illness, unsightliness and attracting rodents and biting insects or ticks that can transmit disease.
“In Coquitlam, there is the added concern of attracting predatory wildlife such as bears, coyotes and cougars,” said the report. “[A]s recently as [2016], a bear accessed an unauthorized chicken coop in southwest Coquitlam, creating a significant public safety concern. Property was damaged, some of the chickens were killed, and the bear had to be destroyed as a result of this incident.”
