do i need a licence for keeping chickens ?

[milkgoddessmakesthefinestmilk]

i fancy growing my own veg and keeping chickens for meat and eggs

do i need a licence

do most of you just keep the chickens for the eggs, or the chicken meat too

how the hell do i kill a chicken?

No,keep ours for both and dh wrings their necks. Well kind of pulls very quickly which breaks it and kills them instantly.

numptys hi,

is no to i don't need a licence?
what do you do about the feathers? is it just a case of pulling the feathers off/out?
how long does it take to defeather it

do you find they taste nicer?

how much would you say it costs you, eat a chicken?

is the pulling the necks easy, how can i learn how to do it?

No to licence. As long as your'e not selling them. Taste much much better and you know exactly what went into them and how they lived. Not sure where you'd learn about killing them tbh. Never added up the costs - buy the food once a mnth or so when i get everything else but layers pellets are about 6quid a bag. They are free brange and eat ad lib from a big hopper thingy. You pluck the feathers,doesn't take long once you get the knack. Tbh i have never killed one - dh has always done it. Again,more of a technique rather than brute force or anything like that.

Yes, the inspecktors chick up on you once a year.

You need a license from defra if you keep over 50.

I would recommend you try to see if there is a chicken keeping course anywhere near you. The ones near me cover how to kill them and I'm sure you want to know you are doing it correctly before you have a go. They usually run for one day on a saturday down here - might be worth asking your local adult education centre about them.

There is a national list of courses here but it is by no means comprehensive. If there is nothing close to you on here then that doesn't mean there aren't any. Our local ones tend to be run and managed by the Yarner Trust or other lentil weaving groups. .

oh thanks for the info, and link yes a course would be great for me, perfect in fact

bbm my neighbours got one of thos omlets for a rabbit!
there is a course near me and its v cheap, i might make some good links with others too

can you sell the eggs?

There is some sort of rule about only selling them at the gate,so to speak. And then you have to be careful how you word it. Prob more info on the courses about selling etc.

You can sell your eggs directly to the consumer (ie. at your gate or at school etc) but not to a shop. Though I'm not sure what the deal is with having your own stall at a farmers market - anyone?

Home-reared chicken tastes lovely but they are generally smaller than what you buy in the shop. Pulling chicken necks takes very little force, it's more technique. Bleeding/gutting them is fairly straight-forward too. But there is a necessary order for doing things in which you'll need to learn from somewhere, so yes, do go on the course unless you have a friend or neighbour who knows what they're doing.

We have dual-purpose birds, the girls lay lots of eggs and we eat the boys. But you could keep separate breeds for each purpose though.

One other thing - if you keep your own cockerel for breeding (and you can buy fertile eggs via the post and use an incubator to hatch them, so it's not essential but will add to your costs) you'll need to check that close neighbours won't mind the noise, there may even be local byelaws about noise & smell. And they are seriously noisy because they crow all bloody day and not just once at dawn.

Our current 'head boy' even crows at night.

You'll probably find a lot less breast meat and a lot more thigh if they are free range. I do.

thanks for the info, so i was sort of thinking of getting a few, maybe 4-6 and letting them breed and atting the eggs and chickens and giving eggs to friends family or perhaps selling them to neighbours?
yes actually i sell them.

prhaps i could get away with putting a sign up outside my house
"fresh eggs for sale" im sure ive seen signs like that before

id like a couple of pigs too, but id i guess they need a whole field?
better start with the chickens first.

now what sort of house should i get for them?

and what about cats?
we have one mind you hes useless at hunting bless him, fat old boy !

Cats are fine with grown-up chickens but might be tempted by free-range chicks.

2 pigs need about 1/2 acre of well draining soil or 1 acre if you're on crappy clay (like us) and a shelter full of straw.

Chicken house - are they going to free-range? If so, you'll need just a house. If you are visited by the fox you will either need electric fencing, or a permanently well fenced area (that goes about 1-2ft into the ground) or a properly built run. A henhouse for 4-6 chickens will need about 2 nestboxes.

MN chicken-keepers like FlyteSoFancy and Smiths Sectional (sorry, no time to link to the websites). They also like those ruddy Eglu things but they are not going to big enough if you're going to start breeding from 4-6 hens - unless you get an Eglu for each brood. Which would not be cost effective in terms of meat/egg production.

do you have any pigs don?

thankyou for the info ill search for those companies

Unfortunately, DH is resisting pigs at the moment. Lots of local friends have them though - they get them as weaners, feed them up and approx. 6 months later they go to the abattoir and miraculously return packed in boxes as chops, bacon etc

I have a useless acre of scrubby woodland and gone-to-seed paddock that pigs would love. We've had sheep. Pain in the arse!

why are sheep a pain in the ass?
did you grow up on a farm? you know a hell of a lot

i would definaltey get some if i had your land

Sheep escape a lot. They need shearing and dipping which is rank. They get fly strike (you don't want to know about that). Foxes (and possibly badgers) leave bits of new lamb around the fields/garden/DCs trampoline etc. And now there is bluetongue virus. So no more sheep for us.

I grew up with horses, chickens etc but I've learned a lot in the last few years from 'being in charge' of my own animals and managing our own land. It's fitted in really well with having DCs (to the point that I have a baby due in 10 days time and chicks due to hatch in an incubator in 7 days time)!!!

So get your chickens and see how you get on.

i didnt know sheep where so difficult!

ive heard about woman that say work together ovulating at the same time but having chicks the same time baby is due! that great

best of luck for the birth of your dc, how are you doing?

oh i don't have the space for sheep and pigs..

i didnt know sheep where so difficult!

ive heard about woman that say work together ovulating at the same time but having chicks the same time baby is due! that great

best of luck for the birth of your dc, how are you doing?

oh i don't have the space for sheep and pigs..

Dh is keen to get a couple of pigs to fatten up but I'm resisting at the moment . I just know dd and I would get too attached to pigs.
Sheep are stupid, and we've eat the chickens no problem. We've even had a cow and eaten her, but pigs they're different.
Shame really as you get a lot of different cuts off a pig, and pork is a big favourite. I'll have to see if we can harden ourselves .

frog, yeah esp sausages and bacon, yum yum !
did you milk the cow too?

No, we only had her a few weeks. She'd been wandering free on a friends land and had just come to us for the final fattening, killing and butchering. We had her strung up between some trees near the yard.

id like a few chickens a few pigs and one or two cows.

although i do not have the space....maybe one day ill live on a farm....