07-14-2015, 09:42 PM
(07-14-2015, 08:32 PM)Smore Wrote:(07-14-2015, 12:20 PM)mpd618 Wrote: How is that at all relevant to whether people should be allowed to do so? That is the question - whether this should be something prohibited by by-law, or not.
People engage in all kinds of arguably "unproductive" activities - fixing up old cars, canning jams, growing vegetables. Sure, you can make claims that economically those things don't make sense. But it does not matter whether they make sense to an economist, it matters whether they make sense to the people doing them - and those people take into account things other than money.
Oh, and our endless suburban expanses are hardly so dense as to make the concept of backyard chickens ridiculous.
This. All this. +1
(07-14-2015, 12:30 PM)tomh009 Wrote: The fundamental question, of course, is whether residential zoning should permit agricultural activity. And if it should, what kind of limits should there be?
All home offices now banned! Commercial in a Residential zone!
No more homework! Institutional in a residential zone!
absurd? yes, but so is claiming 4 hens is an agricultural activity. not more than gardening
A little bit of a stretch that urban chickens is no more than gardening? Keeping live chickens does qualify as an agricultural activity.
Does 4 chickens in an urban setting really hurt anyone? Probably not. But let that slide and that opens the flood gates to bending by-laws. The rules should be straightened and reinforced, whether good for the chickens or not.