A B.C. provincial court judicial justice has found a Vancouver woman is not keeping two guinea fowl hens as poultry and can keep them as her pets.
“The disputant did not keep these birds as poultry either for eggs or meat but kept them for pure joy of companionship,” Vancouver Provincial Court Judicial Justice Zahid Makhdoom said in his Sept. 12 decision.
Arielle Reid disputed a charge laid by the City of Vancouver alleging the hens licensed to her are prohibited in the city under its animal control bylaw.
In March 2022, following a noise complaint, an animal control officer heard, saw and then photographed the birds in a backyard coop.
He located their registration in a database and left his business card for Reid. He kept returning to the property and found the hens.
Reid was issued a bylaw infraction notice Sept. 13. The case went to court shortly after.
Reid told Makhdoom of her ancestry growing up in Jamaica where guinea fowls are routinely kept. As a Peace Corps volunteer from 2013 to 2015, she lived in Mozambique, a West African nation where guinea fowls are also routinely kept as pets.
“She said that young guinea fowl chicks are particularly sensitive to damp environs. They need special care before becoming fully feathered. In the course of hand rearing these birds, they were socialized. Once fully feathered, they were moved to live in an outdoor but secure coop.”
When she received the bylaw violation notice, Reid focused on re-homing “her beloved birds” lest they be taken by the city.
Makhdoom said the issue before him was whether or not rearing guinea hens in city boundaries is captured under the bylaw.
He commented that such animals and the cultures that appreciate them enrich B.C.’s cultural fabric.
“Perhaps it is the sheer force of cultural, normative acceptance that we have a huge number of canines and felines populating the city making ubiquity of dog feces on our otherwise clean sidewalks, adding on the noise pollution and often creating bad blood between keepers of these canines and their victims,” Makhdoom said. “Consider needless ‘murder’ of thousands of beautiful songbirds due to feline choices.”
Further, he took to task the drafters of the bylaw for not enumerating species that could be considered prohibited.
“The bylaw is a model of bland prose bereft of nuance, or concealing within its complex idiomatic layers multiple corollaries or meanings,” Makhdoom said. “The city drafters must be admired for drafting such an easy and accessible read. An enactment so rich in its concision and precision would have enumerated these birds as prohibited.”
“I am of the respectful view that no overt prohibition is set out in the bylaw for keeping of guinea fowls,” he said.
He dismissed the bylaw charge.
