Story:

By: Meghan Lett

If you’re cold, they’re cold: the struggle to keep urban chickens warm during winter

There’s a lot to worry about when it comes to getting through winter and for some Calgarians, the fates of their chickens are added to the list.

Since spring of 2023, Calgary has allowed households to keep two to four backyard hens. In larger flocks, they keep each other warm with body heat. But with smaller city flocks, it’s not enough to cut the chill.

Chicken-keepers have to get creative to keep their birds frostbite-free during the freezing months. For some, it’s a stressful learning curve.

“Every second we had snow or the temperature would dip, I was up panicking all night,” said Tracey Doyscher.

Doyscher and her family got chickens in April 2023. During the first winter, she’d sometimes go out in the middle of the night to check on them. After seeing their breath in the air, she’d move the hens into a pen in the house for the night.

“Before we got them, I didn't think about them other than being egg laying machines. And now it's like, I know they have personalities,” said Doyscher.

This winter, the family chose to rehome their hens. Their coop will undergo renovations in order to make it a warmer shelter. She hopes the next batch of chickens will live out their full lives under her care.

“I think we’ll fall in love with them too, just as easy as our last ones,” said Doyscher about their future hens.

Kelli Kirkham, another urban chicken keeper, went through much troubleshooting to winter-proof her setup.

“I’m proud of what I’ve done,” said Kirkham. “I’m not going to win any awards in like, carpenter’s magazine weekly, but it’s pretty solid.”

Most setups are comprised of a coop and chicken run. The coop is a little house with roosts where the flock spends the night. A chicken run is a fenced-in space outside the coop where the hens can run around.

Last winter, Kirkham tarped the top of her run. But the weight of the snow pushed it down and created holes and leaks.

This winter she built greenhouse panels on the top, created a pitch for drainage and plastic wrapped the run. The roost also has two radiant heaters and one infrared heat lamp.

“They're spoiled urban chickens,” said Kirkham. “They’re quite happy.”

Despite all this trial-and-error, new owners don’t go in blind. Before acquiring your birds, the city requires you take a training course.

Monique Webb runs Urban Hen Training - one of two available courses. It’s online and serves chicken-approved municipalities across the province.

The course was born out of the pandemic. Webb teaches at a school in the town of Morinville, where she had begun working on a chicken-raising program.

Then COVID-19 hit. The program was cancelled. And with people stuck at home, raising backyard chickens suddenly took off. Webb decided to move her course online.

“We called it our project joy,” she said. “Chickens saved my life in a way, because it came to us at such a difficult time. We just focused on this project and these chickens and it kept us joyful and happy.”

She describes the process of learning about chickens with others as “vulnerable.” She explains it’s because you have to admit you don’t know everything, but you work with each other to learn.

“You share that vulnerability together, and then your friends and family are asking you questions, and you become this expert, in a way, and share that knowledge with other people,” said Webb.

“It's a bonding experience, the two of you together, or the family of you together. And there's great power in that too.”