[welshlass181]

I've just tried to look on the Defra site to find out if there is a land to chicken ratio of how many i am legally allowed to keep.  The land is about 1h and i want to know how many i am legally allowed to have.  I am from Carmarthenshire in South West Wales.

All opinions welcome

P.s would it make any difference if i wanted to keep ducks too?  Would this be included in the quota or not?  Sry but the Defra site is a bit of a confussion atm  (and yes i meant confussion and not confusion lol)

[BlueDaisy]

I don't think there is a legal limit? You could have as many as you want.
The problem would be if you wanted to call them 'free-range' which I think requires them to have 4 square metres for each bird. I have no idea what that translates to in terms of hectares and also no idea about ducks.
If you have more than 50 then you must register with DEFRA.
What some people like to do is split their land up so that one part is getting rested while another part is getting trashed by the poultry

[moorlander]

Is there a 'Contact Us' page on the defra site? If so you could ask them the straight question. Agree that their site is far from user-friendly.

Paul

[princesspiggy]

i think "best practice" and "legally allowed" are different. ducks would be included and i think they need more land than hens as they are messier.

[benkt]

In these kinds of questions, I usually refer to the soil associations 'organic standards' which I (possibly nievely) assume provide a reasonably humane answer.

Download the 'Full set of standards for producers' from
http://www.soilassociation.org/Whatwedo/Organicstandards/Standards/tabid/353/Default.aspx


The short answer from there (for laying chickens) is given as 10birds per m2 inside space and 1000 birds per ha outside space.

[jacob and Georgina]

i read in this months edition of smallholder magazine that 500 hens per 2 acres was the recommended maximum as any more and the ground would suffer, so you could aim for something like this. 

[welshlass181]

Dnt like the idea of hens living on a a4 sized space what i want to do is have a large moveable hen house and enclosed run with elect mesh going around to stop pesky foxes from eating them.  I've been offered ex battery hens FOC and as many as i can take as they get replaced once a year, anyway, I've originally asked for 20 but might go up to 40 as we're finding out about small pig farm subsidies to see if we can make it work for us.  Nothing set in stone yet as we've got the pigs as tools to turn the field at the moment.  We'd like to be as self sufficient as possible with veggie patch, fruit trees and bushes and the chickens, ducks and the eggs. 

[DominicJ]

Under 50 chickens, as long as it doesnt look like animal cruelty, you can pretty much do what you want.
The "Free Range" standard is now 2000 birds per hectare I think.