Chantal Meagher and Phil Calvert stand on the back deck of their Rockland home and watch construction workers erect a third chicken coop in their neighbour’s backyard.
There were only five hens ambling about in the sunshine on Thursday but their neighbour, Wei Tu, told the Times Colonist she plans to bring in 100 by Saturday.
“A few chickens is not a big deal,” Calvert said. “But 100 is a problem.”
Meagher worries the chickens will bring rats and vermin and become a public health issue.
Tu operates a 35-unit rooming house in a heritage home at 1322 Rockland Avenue which she said is primarily occupied by low-income tenants. With the intention of providing her tenants two fresh eggs a day, Tu purchased the chickens from a farm in Duncan.
Tu said the 2.2 acre property, part of which has been covered over with dirt, is big enough to support that many chickens.
City of Victoria councillors on Thursday agreed to amend the animal control bylaw to limit the number of backyard hens to 12. The new rules require the person keeping the hens to live on the property.
Coun. Pam Madoff said councillors agreed on the dozen-hen limit after she spoke with urban farmers who said that’s the optimal number for feeding a family.
“One of the main things to consider is we’re in an urban setting, not a rural setting,” Madoff said. “Once you get to 100 you actually become a farm.”
Tu said if a family is able to have access to 12 hens, her tenants should have a proportionate number. The businesswoman, who owns Tenor Tile & Carpet, does not live on the property.
The new bylaw has not been passed, so if Tu brings in the chickens this weekend, she will not be running afoul of any rules.
Meagher and Calvert were already worried when they saw a row of open-air compost bins erected on the other side of the black chain link fence that separates their property from Tu’s. Two weeks ago, the wood and corrugated metal chicken coops started going up.
Meagher said she believes Tu is trying to “weaponize” the property to make it deliberately unpleasant for neighbours.
“It smacks of the cattle battle,” Meagher said, referring to the controversial cattle feedlot in a residential Gordon Head neighbourhood which was set up after the owners, Gordon and Don Alberg, were unable to subdivide the property.
Just over a decade ago, Tu applied to rezone the property so she could build two four-storey, 11-unit condo buildings and six townhouses. That rezoning application was turned down by the city.
Tu told the Times Colonist in 2006 that the development would pay for badly-needed restorations to the heritage mansion.
The two-and-a-half-storey mixed Queen Anne and Tudor-style mansion was built in 1894, making it older than the B.C. legislature buildings. The 8,000-square-foot mansion, with 10 fireplaces, was built for Hewitt Bostock, founder of the Province newspaper. Socialite Kathleen Agnew donated it to the Anglican Church Women of the Diocese of B.C. who operated a nursing home between 1950 and 1998. In the early 2000s, the mansion was home to a self-proclaimed baron from Oregon who convinced the Anglican women to lease it to him for $1 a year. The lease with Baron George von Bothmer zu Schwegerhof was cancelled in 2004 when he failed to secure permanent resident status in Canada.
Tu said she’s been “working hard to ensure we don’t make problems for the neighbours.”
Meagher said that in the time it takes for the animal control bylaw to pass, the chickens will already be in their place and will be difficult to remove.
“It’s not about opposing backyard chickens,” she said. “It’s about being reasonable.”
