CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Backyard Chickens Bylaw Debate

Elmdale, Saskatchewan, is considering a bylaw amendment allowing residents to keep up to four hens in their backyards; roosters would remain prohibited. Owners would register their birds for $25 annually, house them in a coop at least three metres from any property line, and refrain from selling the eggs. The amendment follows an eighteen-month pilot involving 40 households in two neighbourhoods.

Councillor Dana Whitford, the amendment’s author, deems the pilot a success. “We had three complaints in eighteen months, and two concerned a single coop that’s since been relocated. Parents tell me their kids finally understand where food comes from.” With grocery bills soaring, hens offer families a modest measure of control.

“The hens are tolerably quiet,” says Gerald Haines, who lives beside a pilot household. “It’s what they attract.” Since his neighbour acquired chickens, rats have colonized his garage for the first time in twenty years. He professes no hostility toward hens as such. “But who’ll enforce these rules? We’re a city of 60,000 with two bylaw officers.”

Dr. Anita Sharma, a local veterinarian, has mixed feelings. Hens can be rewarding, but newcomers underestimate the work. The rats are drawn not to the birds but to spilled grain and open feed bags, the owner’s responsibility. A coop must stay above freezing throughout a prairie winter, and although hens can live eight years or more, laying declines sharply after the third or fourth. Each spring, shelters in cities permitting backyard flocks absorb birds whose owners have lost interest. She wants new owners to complete a short course before registering.

Ben Toews, whose family has operated an egg farm outside Elmdale for three generations, laughs when asked about backyard competition. Four hens yield perhaps two dozen eggs weekly in summer and scarcely any in winter. “Tally up feed, a heated coop and the registration fee, and those are the costliest eggs in town.” Few enthusiasts, he adds, picture cleaning a coop at twenty below. His genuine concern is disease: careless hygiene could transmit illnesses such as avian influenza to wild birds and eventually to commercial farms.

A public hearing is set for May 14.

Having kept three hens through the pilot, I find most of the worries in this article 6. Choose…well foundedoverblownnew to mecarefully researched. Mr. Haines blames chickens for his rats, yet as Dr. Sharma explains, the remedy is 7. Choose…more frequent coop inspectionstidy, sealed feed storageregistering every flocksetting coops three metres back, something any conscientious owner already practises.

Mr. Toews is right about one thing: these are hardly bargain eggs. Between feed and 8. Choose…the annual registration feemoving the coop backkeeping the coop above freezingthe course Dr. Sharma recommends, my winter months cost more than any supermarket carton, and I pay gladly.

I also endorse Dr. Sharma’s call for owners to 9. Choose…pay a higher registration feemove outside city limitsget their neighbours’ consentlearn the basics first; my first winter taught me plenty the hard way. Above all, newcomers must accept that their birds 10. Choose…will outlive their laying yearsmay carry illnesses to farmswill draw rats to spilled feedmust stay three metres back. A hen is a long commitment, not a breakfast plan.