Patridge bantam chicken poorly foot?

[Dodge]

Did anyone see this article in the papers yesterday?

 

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/53471/Eco-family-face-eviction-for-keeping-25-chickens

 

How can you expect to keep that many chooks in a council terraced house back garden and not get complaints from the neighbours?

 

You would expect that sort of size of flock to be kept on a small holding.

Whilst I applaud them for their self-sufficient way of life, I can't help but think that they have been very naive if they think they can just setup on that sort of scale without any consequences.

[Louise]

Are these the same people who were on Radio 2 yesterday lunchtime

 

I didn't hear the interview

[Janty]

Blimey! I thought that we were bad!

[Mutrix Farmers]

Surely you don't need 25 chickens to be self sufficient.

 

Councils have rules about what you can do with their property and setting up a chicken farm obviously isn't one of them! The garden sounds smaller than mine and I only have room for 3 hens. And they say they have a vegatable garden too? How cramped were the chickens? Sounds like a welfare issue to me!

 

You hear of cases like this where an old lady has 50 cats and claims to love them and only want the best for them. Except in their igniorance they are actually being cruel.

[jackiepoppies]

If I heard the radio report correctly, she said she had an 80foot garden and her chicken run was 30x60.

I can't by any stretch of the imagination think they are using what I would assume to be in the region of 20 eggs a day! If they are selling them, then I would think that would be classed as running some sort of commercial enterprise which I doubt she has planning permission.

Of course, thats not taking into account her 5 ducks and duckpond!

Jackiex

[Egluntyne]

Green issues apart, they were in breach of their tenancy agreement so they don't really have sound grounds for complaint.

[Yolky]

I bet if she had only got 3 or 4 and kept them clean she would have been fine. Poo picking for 25 must be a full time job

[Paola]

I bet if she had only got 3 or 4 and kept them clean she would have been fine. Poo picking for 25 must be a full time job

 

Or maybe that is part of the problem, not enough poo picking going on and that is creating the pong

[dancing cloud]

Am I alone in thinking this sort of thing gives the rest of us more-responsible self-sufficient eco-hen-owners a bad name ? Yes, I'm getting my soap-box out - you have been warned ...

 

They clearly knew the terms of their tenancy when they took the house, so I have no sympathy on that score. I'm sure plenty of other folks would have liked a council house with a garden if it didn't suit their requirements, and would not have turned it into what sounds like a farm. Let's face it, this does not sound like simple self-sufficiency.

 

If they had only kept up to 6 hens, they could reasonably have argued they were pets (mine are!) and would have been allowed to keep them as such. I bet they couldn't even name, let alone identify, each of their 25 and wouldn't be able to bore for Britain about their individual little characters . I know how much poo and noise my 6 little loves can make if they set their minds to it, and I'm not in a terraced house with immediate neighbours, so 25 in a terraced garden does not sound very neighbour-friendly.

 

What are they doing with all those eggs? There's only 4 humans in the household and my 6 ex-batts keep me and most of my office well-supplied, so I can't imagine they need 25 hens to keep 4 people going. The cynic in me says "income stream", though I may of course be entirely mis-judging them!

 

What are they doing with all the poo? With so little garden left, even vegetables can't take that much.

 

My sympathy lies with their neighbours and the hens (and ducks, and anything else they were keeping), and the rest of us that actually think about our pets, rather than just inflict them on others and then whinge about the consequences.

 

Am I really alone?

 

Soap-box being put away now ...

[The Dogmother]

I agree... with all of you. Sounds like an income to me, if they are council tenants then they are likely to be in breach of their tenancy agreement by running a business from the premises.

 

I have an 80' garden, OK, it's long and narrow, but no way would I have that many chooks on it; my current 9 bantams are enough. That stocking density is a bit high.

[Janty]

You would think that they would have checked the terms of their tennancy agreement before getting that many hens. I know that we have a lot of hens but we are not breaching the terms of our mortgage, we checked with the council before we bought any hens and our neighbours love the girls. We are looking after three extra at the moment but once our holiday with the in-laws is out of the way, the three new girls will be setting up home at their spacious new ranch style chicken run with Mum-in-law fussing over them something rotten.

 

Have the couple in the article got hybrids or pure breeds?

I know that we don't get that many eggs from our girls as most of them are pure breeds. Yesterday we got 8 eggs from 17 hens.

I also wondered if they had any cockerels? I didn't hear the radio interview.

 

One quiche and a cake later and they were gone. Oops!

[redhotchick]

I did hear the radio interview. The lady said that the area was by no means built up and that it was "fields as far as the eye can see". The council hadn't made clear what part of the tenancy agreement she was breaking, and the council spokesperson didn't either. Their agreement says "caged animals shall not be limited to 6". The chicken keeper said her husband was home with the children and was fastidious about cleaning the girls out, regularly, a couple of times a day by the sound of it.

Without seeing the set up it's difficult to know if there is adequate space not just for chickens, but for the garden and the neighbours not to be overwhelmed by chickens.

I personally think 25 is a bit many, but if they are quiet and clean they shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe the neighbour gets a whiff of a smelly dropping before it gets cleared up. If they really are kept as clean as they say, it wouldn't be there long.

The lady sounded sensible and reasonable in the interview.

The council have asked them to "reduce their flock".

Edited to say - I'm not sure if they have cockerels, it didn't mention any. That might be a different story....

[Janty]

Some neighbours make a fuss just for the sake of it. Poor Lynn (on the forum) and her husband have just been forced to re-home their three girls due to the noise they make. Their girls are living at my house until after the hols when Mum-in-law is going to be spoiling them. I was talking to my neighbour about this today and he commented, 'What noise?'

[Stevie]

Green issues apart, they were in breach of their tenancy agreement so they don't really have sound grounds for complaint.

 

Excally.Much as i should support them-the house they live in is not theirs and they have very little rights.

 

Its much the same as someone who rents a house privately which has a no pet rule then goes and gets a dog.

[Lesley]

I should imagine the ducks contribute more to the smell problem - ducks do smell!

 

We have 27 layers now (I think!) - all named - and we have enough eggs for us....the rest of the family....and I still have plenty to sell at this time of year....we are drowning in eggs!!

 

They should have just kept a few and I doubt if anyone would have noticed.

[redhotchick]

Green issues apart, they were in breach of their tenancy agreement so they don't really have sound grounds for complaint.

 

Excally.Much as i should support them-the house they live in is not theirs and they have very little rights.

 

Its much the same as someone who rents a house privately which has a no pet rule then goes and gets a dog.

 

From the radio interview it doesn't sound like they are in breach of their tenancy agreement. The council lady couldn't say how and the tenant wasn't clear what the grounds were.

It's probably reasonable to ask her to reduce her flock though.

[Tessa the Duchess]

It's probably reasonable to ask her to reduce her flock though.

 

I think it is totally reasonable. As much as I applaud anyone who keeps a FEW chickens in their back garden I don't think I would like to live right next door to someone that had 25 in such a small space Imagine 25 chickens announcing to the world that they had laid an egg every morning No matter how clean you keep your chickens' housing and run there are always going to be days when everything gets damp and smelly, think of all the flies what do they do with all the poo? I didn't think I would hear myself saying this, but I think they are being rather anti-social and not being good neighbours. They need a smallholding or a larger garden which is not bang next to others.

 

Tessa

[redfrock]

From the radio interview it doesn't sound like they are in breach of their tenancy agreement. The council lady couldn't say how and the tenant wasn't clear what the grounds were.

It's probably reasonable to ask her to reduce her flock though.

 

There is a standard clause in all council and Housing Association tenancies that states along the lines that you must ask permission before keeping any pets and that permission may be withdrawn with only a week's notice if the pets are deemed to be causing a nuisance.

 

It is a difficult one. I turn a blind eye to hamsters and the like, but if someone is in a flat I have to take immediate action for cats and dogs (and am doing so at present). Even in a house they have to request permission before keeping cats and dogs (and I have to deal with a lot of complaints about dogs ). If somebody came to me asking if they could keep chickens, it would be a difficult one. Providing they had a good size garden (and many of my places have postage stamps) I would probably be able to grant permission for the equivalent of a single eglu, but certainly no more. And yes that may sound hypocritical given the number I have, and we all know how addictive chicken keeping is, but that really is the nature of such a tenancy. In my last job I had to withdraw permission from a woman who was keeping ducks because of where she was throwing the pond water and the smell - now I have nothing against ducks and will keep them again in the future, but again she was in a HA property and not doing things as she should.

[The Dogmother]

I nearly emailed you to pop your head in on this thread Claire, but guessed that you'd probably tip up at some stage. *waves*

[chickenanne]

I don't see why neighbours should be forced to put up with 25 chickens next door to them, and the ducks. Really, they are wrong to keep them regardless of if they own the house or not: in a terrace with small garden it just means the people either side have a lot to deal with.

No matter what the neighbours own behaviour is like, 2 wrongs don't make a right - and no suggestion that the neighbours have been unreasonable anyway.

IMO generous of the council to let them keep any from this point on if the ones they have already been shown to be a nuisance.

Fair enough to accept that people nearby will sometimes disturb you or whatever, it's unavoidable. But not to that excessive extent.

[Olly]

can't help feeling that if they really want to be 'eco-friendly' then it would be more sensible to use most of the garden for growing vegetables, and just keep a few chooks.

 

If the run is 60 x 35 and the garden is 80 feet long, there can't be much of it left for anything else! There's only so many eggs you can eat, whereas spuds, onions, cabbages and so on can keep you going all year.