Draft·October 20, 2026·AI Assisted

Chickens in Ottawa: A Short History

Ottawa has kept chickens for far longer than it has banned them. Livestock wandered Bytown's streets, the Central Experimental Farm spent half a century teaching Canada how to raise laying hens, and Ontario asked households to keep hens during the First World War. The single city-wide rule that bans backyard flocks dates to 2003, when the newly amalgamated city replaced eleven sets of animal rules with one.

Livestock in the streets

Early Bytown was a working town, and its animals lived in it. After Bytown was incorporated in 1847, the job of its Chief Constable, Isaac Berichon, was to keep order, prosecute by-law breakers and impound escaped livestock. Nearly twenty years later the problem had not gone away: three months after Ottawa formed a uniformed police force in 1866, the Ottawa Daily Citizen praised it because "the absence of pigs, geese and cows, which were wont to obstruct our sidewalks is manifest" (Today in Ottawa's History).

The complaint then was animals loose in the street, and the answer was a constable and a pound, the same tools the City uses for loose chickens today.

The Farm that taught Canada to keep hens

Poultry work began at the Central Experimental Farm in 1887, a year after the Farm was founded. Its first manager, A. G. Gilbert, was a journalist who had taken up raising chickens while working at the Department of the Interior. He ran the poultry plant until 1913, and for years it was the only government source of poultry advice in Canada. His assistant Victor Fortier built a cotton-front poultry house in 1907 that, by the Farm's own account, "has done more to revolutionize poultry housing in Canada than any other type of house" (Fifty Years of Progress, 1936).

In April 1913 the work became a full Poultry Division under F. C. Elford, who led it until 1937. Its egg-laying contests started in Charlottetown in 1918 and spread to every province, with an international contest at the Central Farm in Ottawa. Average production in the contests rose from 122 eggs per bird in 1919–20 to 180 in 1934–35, and the records became the basis of official registration. The Farm noted that Canada was the first country to standardize the contests and register birds on their results; about 21,000 certificates had been issued by 1936.

The breeding work outlived the contests. The Ottawa Meat Control strain, developed in 1955 from white commercial meat chickens, was kept as a control: an unselected flock that later broilers could be measured against. A replicate of it, the Athens Canadian Random Bred, is still maintained at the University of Georgia and may be the oldest pedigreed control population of meat chickens in existence (Poultry Science, 2016).

Hens for the war effort

In 1917, a wartime campaign called "A Vegetable Garden for Every Home" turned backyards in cities, towns and villages into vegetable plots. Ontario's record of the war notes that homeowners were also encouraged to keep hens for eggs (Hopkins, 1919, via Wikipedia). A century ago, hens in a city yard were part of the war effort.

Eleven by-laws become one

On 1 January 2001 the old City of Ottawa merged with Cumberland, Gloucester, Goulbourn, Kanata, Nepean, Osgoode, Rideau, Rockcliffe Park, Vanier and West Carleton. Each had its own animal rules. Old Ottawa had a 1980 by-law "respecting the keeping of certain animals and birds"; West Carleton had one "to prohibit the keeping of certain animals and fowl"; Kanata regulated "the keeping and running at large of animals".

By-law 2003-77, passed on 26 March 2003 and in force on 1 April, repealed all of them. It defines livestock as "any domestic fowl (including chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl, etc.)" along with horses, cattle, goats and swine, and section 74(1) says no one may keep livestock anywhere in the city "unless the area is zoned for that purpose or is lawfully used for that purpose" (By-law 2003-77). From then on, a hen in a suburban yard was treated the same as a cow.

Section 74(2) lists the places exempt from the rule. The Experimental Farm is on it, alongside Carleton University, Lansdowne Park, Rideau Hall and the University of Ottawa.

Advocates have long said hens were legal in Ottawa until this harmonization (Urban Hens Ottawa; Ontario Landowners Association). The texts of the repealed by-laws are not online, so that claim could not be checked for this page, and the titles above suggest at least some of the old municipalities already restricted fowl. What is clear is that 2003 replaced a patchwork with a single rule, from the Glebe to Constance Bay: hens only where the zoning allows agriculture.

A ban that keeps being tested

The first organized push came in 2010. Lyssa Rhodes of Kanata petitioned the City to allow backyard coops, hoping to keep two to four hens herself; 150 people signed online. Neill Ritchie of Ritchie Feed and Seed argued against it: "Just going and throwing up a shack and putting some chickens in it doesn't make you a farmer" (CBC, 2010). Around the same time, Coun. Alex Cullen pushed for a motion to change the by-law, then withdrew it to give advocates more time to make their case. In June 2011 the group CLUCK Ottawa re-formed as Urban Hens Ottawa.

In August 2013 Bylaw gave Erika Tar and Andrew Elliott of Constance Bay days to rehome three hens kept in a pen behind their rural home. A spokesperson said "Ottawa's climate is not conducive to keeping a chicken coop in a back-yard somewhere", and Coun. Scott Moffatt, of the agriculture and rural affairs committee, said he did not expect council to amend the by-law. Cullen, by then out of office, said the bureaucracy would stick to the letter of the by-law "unless there's some political direction" (CBC, 2013).

In 2016 Dr. Paul Holtom, a 94-year-old Second World War veteran in Stittsville, built a coop and bought six hens. After two complaints and a $600 fine he gave them up. The City's reply: chickens can be kept only where the zoning permits agriculture, and "there are no plans at present to amend this provision" (CTV, 2016).

The pandemic brought a surge. Calls to Bylaw about loose chickens more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, and a petition started in 2021 to amend section 74(1) has since gathered more than 1,800 signatures. In 2022 officers found two chicks in Nepean's Borden Farm and could not trace the owner; in 2024 an Orléans family had to rehome hens that laid about seven eggs a day, and an 11-year-old wrote to the mayor. In 2025 Manordale residents asked to be a pilot neighbourhood. The full record of who is keeping hens now is on the proposal page.

Timeline

1847	Bytown's Chief Constable is charged with impounding escaped livestock.
1866	Three months into Ottawa's new police force, the Daily Citizen praises the absence of pigs, geese and cows from the sidewalks.
1887	Poultry work begins at the Central Experimental Farm under A. G. Gilbert.
1907	The Farm's cotton-front poultry house is introduced and spreads across Canada.
1913	Poultry becomes a full division of the Experimental Farms; F. C. Elford takes over from Gilbert.
1917	A wartime campaign, "A Vegetable Garden for Every Home", encourages Ontario homeowners to keep hens for eggs.
1919	Federal egg-laying contests expand across Canada, with an international contest at the Central Farm.
1955	The Ottawa Meat Control strain of chicken is developed; a replicate is still kept today.
2001	Eleven municipalities amalgamate into the new City of Ottawa.
2003	By-law 2003-77 repeals their animal by-laws and bars livestock, including chickens, outside areas zoned for it.
2010	A Kanata resident petitions the City to allow backyard coops.
2011	CLUCK Ottawa re-forms as Urban Hens Ottawa to campaign for an amendment.
2013	Bylaw orders a Constance Bay couple to rehome three hens.
2016	A 94-year-old veteran in Stittsville is fined $600 and gives up his six hens.
2021	Chicken calls to Bylaw double; a petition to amend section 74(1) is started and later passes 1,800 signatures.
2024	An Orléans family has to rehome their hens; an 11-year-old petitions the mayor.
2025	Manordale residents ask for a neighbourhood pilot.