Chickens occupy a strange middle ground between pets and productive animals. They can be as affectionate as cats, and some will happily sit on your lap to be petted, but at the same time they’re a farmyard animal whose main purpose – for their owners – is to produce eggs and meat.

As such there can be restrictions on whether or not you can keep them. They can be outlawed by either the deeds of your house or the rules and regulations of your local council, so before setting out on poultry-keeping you must first ensure you have the necessary permissions in place.

Yesterday the Blagger flock came one step closer to arrival with an email from the local council’s Environmental Health department stating that it would have no problem with us keeping a couple of chickens in the garden.

There is no reason (or law) why you should not be able to keep two hens in your garden. This Service has the power to deal with complaints of noise and odour. Providing no unreasonable levels of noise/odour are generated there should be no problems.

I note you do not plan to keep cockerels at this stage. I would advise cockerels have the potential to cause serious disturbance to residents in a residential area.

The point about cockerels is an important one, since while chickens are largely quiet and docile creatures, cockerels are noisy, get up with the sun and tend to wake the neighbours as they loudly crow to greet the day.

So the next step is to check the deeds for the house and, if they throw up no unexpected hurdles, there should be nothing to stop the progress of the flock. Or nothing legal, anyway…

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