Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Fence tax
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I can't help noticing some similarities in our keeping conditions.

 

[kattabelly]

How can their legs be so clean? Ours are so encrusted in mud that one can no longer tell what color their skin is.

Only when they’re in the spread straw do they get clean, and then as soon as they start scratching, we’re back to brown.

They'd just been for a drink/paddle

(He screwed this up the other day and tried walking across the much sparser grass growing in the big corner bath up next to the chicken plot. Luckily he only fell deep enough to get his very lowest leg feathers wet before managing to fly out! I did my best to preserve his dignity by pretending not to notice, even though he'd been tidbitting about the tasty wild water he'd just found moments before )

Most of the time they look more like this

I can tell from miles away which Sussex pullet is which at the moment, because the one who isn't broody is brown on top from squatting for dirty boys (Actually boy, singular - she still thinks Rognvald is an idiot child)

 

[Canadian Wind]

The field has a status problem, something that hasn't been made properly clear to the people who live close by and others who may use, or just visit the place. It's not an allotment. The field is private and belongs to the tenants (the group). It's registered as an agricultural holding basically (farm).
It's why we could, and I can, keep a rooster, or half a dozen and other livestock we can keep within the DEFRA guidelines.
Such places are getting scarce within city boundaries.

Time to put up Private Property and No Trespassing signs, I would think.

 

[kattabelly]

The field has a status problem, something that hasn't been made properly clear to the people who live close by and others who may use, or just visit the place. It's not an allotment. The field is private and belongs to the tenants (the group). It's registered as an agricultural holding basically (farm).
It's why we could, and I can, keep a rooster, or half a dozen and other livestock we can keep within the DEFRA guidelines.
Such places are getting scarce within city boundaries.

Interesting. Obviously not a city here but our site regs say that chickens are the only livestock we're allowed to keep (though they also say they have to be kept on a plot and not allowed to range...). That's very much self-imposed though, rules aren't really a big thing here in general. Lots of people seem to get round needing planning permission just by saying "it was always like that"! If I suddenly decided I wanted to keep a few geese (I don't!) or something, it would only be the other community garden trustees who'd have anything to say about it.

We aren't an allotment exactly. The community garden is run by a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation and the land is leased from a local housing association, who could technically kick us out to build houses though we checked recently and they still have no plans to do that in the near future. It's very much a public space though. There's an open gate from "our" field to the housing scheme playing field next door, where local kids often play and lots of people let their dogs run off-lead, and a local viewpoint just up the hill which is also a popular route for walkers with & without dogs.

On the whole I like it. It's meant to be a community garden and it really does feel that way. A few folk in that housing scheme across the field know me now and they'll stop me in town to say hi, and ask after the chickens or compliment the eggs I give away, or bring visiting friends' kids up to see the chooks. Occasionally people accost me in the street with a stack of empty egg boxes I sometimes swing by the community fridge right before closing to pick up things like free veg and tuna/egg sandwiches for the chickens (someone up the hill has goats who get most of what's left). We've been lucky to not have too much trouble and when it does happen, it's usually fairly easy to address because folk all ken one another.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Occasionally people accost me in the street with a stack of empty egg boxes

This sounds like a pleasant inconvenience. I am always telling people to bring their own if they want eggs. And they are always forgetting.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Time to put up Private Property and No Trespassing signs, I would think.

I wonder if that would be legal, though. As I understand it, the UK (or at least England) has preserved the rights of the people to walk through private land. (I’m grossly over-simplifying this.) One reason that Britain is a walker’s paradise.

Does its agricultural holding status allow it to restrict walkers?

 

[kattabelly]

This sounds like a pleasant inconvenience. I am always telling people to bring their own if they want eggs. And they are always forgetting.

I need to get hold of a broken mini fridge or similar to use outside once the weather warms up, but for now I'm just leaving boxed eggs inside the polytunnel for people to take. If I run out of boxes, I leave them loose and put a "BYOB" message on the community garden group whatsapp. One of the people who asks after my chickens whenever we meet is a lovely, and sensible, older lady who's made a point of telling at least one of her neighbours to save their egg boxes for me (she said something about them being too young and daft to think of it themselves )

I wonder if that would be legal, though. As I understand it, the UK (or at least England) has preserved the rights of the people to walk through private land. (I’m grossly over-simplifying this.) One reason that Britain is a walker’s paradise.

Does its agricultural holding status allow it to restrict walkers?

I think you're thinking of the Right To Roam in Scotland? English and Welsh land access laws are much more restrictive.

 

[Shadrach]

A dry afternoon and wet morning for a change. We all got out onto the field for one and a half hours and had half an hour in the extended run. 10C with 20mph winds.

 

[kattabelly]

If those wattles get one millimetre longer, I'm going to refuse to believe you haven't got Glais on some kind of chicken steroid regime.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

This sounds like a pleasant inconvenience. I am always telling people to bring their own if they want eggs. And they are always forgetting.

One of my church friends and his husband raise free-range layers for eggs to sell to the local grocery chain. I used to donate egg cartons to them until we suddenly found ourselves buried in our own eggs.

It wasn’t until the winter egg dearth that we started collecting egg cartons again.

Now that we have *checks* 31 home-laid eggs in the fridge, I think I can finally unload them again.