Backyard chicken farmers may seem like a rare breed, but their flock continues to grow.

When Vancouver city councillors OK’d backyard chickens in 2010, just 13 people stepped forward to register hens. At least 220 other residents have since taken up the hobby, and with new registrations coming in at a record-breaking pace, impressions that backyard eggs are just a flash in the pan may be overdone.

Many jurisdictions around the province allow backyard chickens, including the City of North Vancouver, New Westminster, Squamish, Victoria and a handful of other Vancouver Island municipalities.

Their ranks could soon swell with West Vancouver councillors scheduled to hear residents’ thoughts Monday on a policy that would permit up to six chickens per lot in the district. Surrey councillors are slated to debate their own policy this spring.

Jaydeen Williams is an East Vancouver resident who has kept hens in her backyard for a couple of years. She has two birds who produce one or two eggs a day and she plans to get another pair.

“Everyone loves them. Our neighbours love them, people who walk through the alley love them (and) I love them,” Williams said in a recent interview.

“I grew up visiting my grandparents on their farm and it’s a nice memory to have a bit of a farm experience in the city,” she said. Williams is the executive director at Growing Chefs Society when she is not tending to her chickens.

Williams said hens are not hard to take care of, though she did have a brief problem with rodents at a previous residence. That was swiftly remedied with a different type of hen feeder. “Now I have absolutely no problems.”

The City of Vancouver does not keep track of the number of backyard farmers who started raising chickens and then decided it wasn’t for them. But that number may be pretty low, based on Duncan Martin’s experience.

Martin knows chickens. The Vancouver man runs the website dailyeggs.com, where he advertises his handmade and self-designed “Vancooper” chicken coops.

“I’ve seen that the majority — probably high 90s — of my clients are still doing it,” Martin said in a recent interview. “I think they’ve stuck with it because it’s just so easy.”

Most of Martin’s clients are located between Main Street and Boundary Road or west of Dunbar Street. Residents in those neighbourhoods may be surprised to hear that they live around a lot of chickens.

“A lot of people have told me, ‘I haven’t seen backyard chickens.’ That’s really because they’re just kind of subdued and you’d hardly even know that Vancouver allows them,” he said.

Kim Scarrow opened the backyard of her Kitsilano home to a pair of chickens just a few weeks ago.

“I’ve always wanted to live on a farm, I guess,” Scarrow said. “It’s nice to have a pet that produces and contributes back and I eat eggs every morning now.”

While Scarrow likes her hens (“They’re awesome”), they are noisier than she had expected.

“I was a little surprised at how loud they can squawk sometimes,” she said, wondering if it would be a problem in summer when neighbours start opening their windows.