It's been a successful pilot project year for the Urban Hen Bylaw, which allows up to ten residents to apply for licences to keep up to 4 hens in their backyard, as long as they meet certain safety conditions, and ensure their chickens are properly taken care of.

At Monday's City Council meeting, Council decided to approve those licenses until December 31st of 2018, and to possibly allow for more than 10 licences to be granted in the future, depending on the demand.

Michael Minchin is the Corporate Services Director, and he says it was initially started as a pilot project which was based on a similar project launched in Red Deer back in 2014.

"We did look at creating 12-13 (licences) based on a model similar to the City of Red Deer, where there is one per so many thousands of population. Council wanted to keep that at 10 and treat it as a pilot project, (we) brought our review back tonight to say, the pilot project has been fairly successful, as I said I think we have 9 licences out of 10 right now. There's been some additional interest expressed, but until we go and do the renewals to see how many those from last year want to renew, we will wait for it to come back to Council later in the year to see if we will extend that number."

Minchin says they have not received any formal complaints from residents about anyone’s chickens.

If you would like to apply for a hen licence, you can contact the City of Lacombe.