WESTLOCK – Nichole Stadnyk loves her chickens and says they are a part of her family like any other beloved pet.
That’s why the long-time Town of Westlock resident is organizing a letter writing campaign and encouraging all chicken lovers and supporters to write letters to the town’s CAO Simone Wiley regarding the town’s proposed Urban Chicken Bylaw 2023-07, before she speaks at the next council meeting July 10.
Stadnyk is asking the town to remove the following sections from the proposed bylaw, noting the lines are particularly “intrusive and devastating to residents” should they be included. They include Sections 3.1(a), 3.4 (b) and 3.5 (c) which states 'poultry but does not include female chicken', 'the maximum number of chickens that may be kept' and 'the applicant confirms in writing they will have no more than four chickens at any one time'.
Stadnyk became a chicken owner three years ago while she was homeschooling her 12-year old son Kaleb during the pandemic and has done a lot of research on them and their benefits. Today, she is an owner of nine chickens, who not only provide food for her family in the way of eggs, but also serve as companion animals like any cat or dog.
“It was a way for us to be able to connect with another animal that had a personality and they helped,” said Stadnyk noting she suffers from anxiety. “They offer a lot of enjoyment and they’re really not hard to take care of.”
Stadnyk said chickens are trainable and imprint on their human owners and in her case, her heritage breeds provide beautifully coloured eggs. “My son and I bake and do a lot of projects and we use a lot of eggs and we’re just two. There’s large families in town (with) six or eight residents and two eggs a day is not an uncommon amount to consume if they’re available.”
She briefly spoke at the June 12 council meeting where she proposed doing a six-month research project to gather feedback from residents about chickens and considered asking council at the time about adding a grandfather clause to the proposed bylaw so that people who currently own them, particularly those who have more than the proposed limit of four, would not be negatively impacted. “I think there doesn’t need to be a limit because those nuisance aspects are covered in the other areas of the bylaw. It’s common sense,” she said. “I wanted to be fair to our town resources but I also feel that it needs to be fair to the residents.”
Stadnyk is encouraging residents to engage council and take the time to attend the meeting, get involved and understand the process. “I think everyone at the end of the day also needs to remember that they (councillors and town staff) are human beings so let’s engage,” she said pointing to some negative feedback about the town on social-media. “I think we should work together as a team … we shouldn’t be us against them.”
She is prepared to speak to councillors and ask them to seriously consider her requests and reconsider some aspects of the proposed bylaw, and noted that because they can be tweaked or changed, this proposed one should not be so harsh.
“I empathize with them that they have a big workload, but I don’t agree that such a heavy-handed initial bylaw should be imposed on residents,” Stadnyk concluded.
