Why Urban Hens?
Growing our own food is one of the best ways that people can make an impact by become more sustainable. Vegetable gardens are a great start to producing food in your backyard but by raising egg-laying hens people can introduce a home grown protein source into their diet. It creates not only food security but food sovereignty on an individual, community and global level. It may be a small, innocuous thing to have a chicken or two or three in your back yard, but it is the principal of it that makes it important. It is having the right to provide yourself as much of your own food as possible. It will improve food security in the city. It is about allowing people the dignity to legally become as sustainable as possible in a world that is quickly moving in the other direction. It is about individuals realizing that eating locally will make a difference. It is about the freedom to use land to its full extent to feed people. And it is about empowering Kamloops citizens to become more self-reliant, more food secure, and more able to step outside in the morning and collecting their fresh, very nutritious and very local eggs.
There is a unique intrinsic satisfaction that comes with occupying one’s time and energy collecting fresh food from the land you live on. What better way to start making a positive individual and social change than in your own back yard at, literally, the grassroots level?
Read a short report on the benefits or email Bonnie Klohn at b_klohn@yahoo.com for more info.
This is a project of the Thompson Rivers University Eco Committee
For some great articles on building your own coops and general chicken care