A St-Lazare family hoping to keep their chickens at home made their case to city hall Tuesday night. And some of their neighbours even came along for support.
“I’m the closest person to his chicken coop, and there is no noise,” St-Lazare resident Barbara Krywoszanski told councillors at Tuesday’s meeting.
Krywoszanski lives next to the Thorpe family.
“Yes we had a rooster,” said Krywoszanski. “I called him Wade. He was lovely, to be quite honest.”
But Wade the rooster is gone since inspectors came by the Thorpe’s home last month.
The family didn’t realize they were raising a rooster along with several chickens until it had become an adult.
The Thorpe family was given notice that they needed to find a new home for the fowl and the remaining chickens they cared for.
Farm animals aren’t allowed to be kept on residential property in the off-island town.
The family came to Tuesday’s council meeting to plead for an extension to keep the chickens until St-Lazare revises its bylaw.
“They are pets, really,” owner Richard Thorpe told Global News. “We get eggs from them, but it is something my family really cares about, more than we expected.”
The council hasn’t said if the chickens will need to go until the rules are re-defined.
But the city says it is open to changing the bylaws.
The soonest any new rules would be in place would be in 2019.