Advice on chickens on allotment

[Jay-ell]

Prerequisites for chickens on allotments:-

• No cockerels, geese or ducks

Good job the fowl can't read

[Baldy]

Yeah - rabbits not bees...

We'll probably make the 'expert' head of the 'Fox and Fowl Sub-Committee"

contact the RSPCA after confronting the stock holder

that's part of the issue - there have been a few too many confrontations already this year and thats just been about weeds / plot neglect etc.

Ho hum - if it all gets too much I guess we can hand the running over to the council

[Nicos]

Not being thick...but does hen welfare come under RSPCA or RSPB?

[Jay-ell]

RSPCA as its domestic animals. Although they don't have any special legal powers they do have welfare inspectors who work along side the police

[Snadger]

Yeah - rabbits not bees...

We'll probably make the 'expert' head of the 'Fox and Fowl Sub-Committee"

contact the RSPCA after confronting the stock holder

that's part of the issue - there have been a few too many confrontations already this year and thats just been about weeds / plot neglect etc.

Ho hum - if it all gets too much I guess we can hand the running over to the council

With us, if the council get complaints from locals about noise, smell, poor housekeeping, rats etc they can put a complete ban on livestock if they so wish, unless we conform to their requests.
Same with fires, if they so wish, they have the authority to ban fires completely . We are allowed to have fires from Novenber to April at present.

[Alison]

We have 2 or 3 plots with chooks, one of which has a cockerel and also ducks. We also have no committee. It had never occurred to me that there was anything to be concerned about although the only issues have been with Mr Fox who visited last week and got a couple. Actually we do have chicken problems but they aren't ones from his site, they're kept behind a neighbouring garage and free range all day which caused a lot of damage to crops as they made a bee line for any hole in fencing.....

[sparrow100]

Also on Committee & we have 3 plots with chickens on our site. The main issues that have come up for us are the size of coop, the cleanliness of the coop and tenants sneakily adding to their flock hoping that we wouldn't notice...We have an exploding population of foxes on site, so coop security is probably about to become an issue.

We're not as generous as Snadger - we restrict to 4 chickens/plot. Will send you PM with the detailed stuff. None of us on the Committee, as far as I know, keep chickens ourselves. We'd get RSPCA involved with any welfare issues other than obvious neglect/inadequate coop size.

[alldigging]

The council has an animal welfare officer who can come out and assist if you think chickens are poorly kept.
Ours turned up at ours - and I'd been expecting him as we have an issue with one person disliking almost everything that happens on site - and was lovely. he wrote to confirm the chickens were well kept and that there were no issues. The AWO said about 80-90% of his work is neighbour disputes.

Concerns over rats are an issue - chicken food is a good feed for them. If you find rats are an issue they need dealing with properly. Good food storage both in and out of the coops is essential. Metal food bins for proper storage ideally. Treadle feeders can reduce spilt food.
Water is essential too - so it's important to make sure people get this right.