Garden Poultry

Keeping garden poultry is a rewarding and immensely enjoyable pastime, for most of us it starts with buying a few chickens for eggs but often snowballs to include table birds, ducks, geese and when it gets to that time of year turkeys.

 Here in Britain many of us are fortunate enough to have our own gardens or access to some outside space such as an allotment. Thousands of us use this space as a vegetable garden but very few of us even consider the idea of garden poultry ideas.

Chickens have been kept as garden poultry all over the world for thousands of years! If you go abroad to Europe, Africa, America or even Australia you will discover chickens or chooks in many a back garden so the question is why not here in the UK?

The most popular meat in Britain is chicken; we eat millions of tons of it every year, chicken tandori, roast chicken and stuffing, sweet and sour chicken the list of recipes for this glorious bird are almost endless.

Another food stuff eaten in a similar abundance are chicken eggs, we use them in a whole host of dishes from quiche to Yorkshire pudding and from cakes to cocktails, it sometimes seems hard to find a recipe that does not contain an egg. 

Garden Poultry- Chickens.

You do not need acres of space to start keeping your own garden poultry especially if chickens are to be your first venture, just a reasonable patch of grass for the chickens to roam free and space enough for a house or coup to lock them up at night to keep them safe from Mr fox is all that is needed.

The first decision you will need to make is whether you are looking to keep chickens for eggs or you are looking to fatten up your birds to put meat on your table.

Egg layers are very different from the chickens reared as table birds! Over time many chicken breeds have been manipulated to create species specifically designed to lay eggs or to develop into large meaty birds depending on the requirements.

There are three main categories of chickens; egg laying birds, table birds and dual purpose chickens.

The egg laying birds are descendants of Mediterranean classes such as leghorns and due to the amount of nutrients used in egg production have small bodies which makes them undesirable for meat production.

The table birds on the other hand lay far less eggs and use all of the nutrients to grow much bigger and faster. The dual purpose bird is somewhere in between but not being as good an egg layer and having an inferior meat producing quality they are often overlooked and maybe not the best bet for garden poultry.

Garden Poultry- Ducks.

If you are thinking of turning your hand to duck keeping then you will require a slightly lager space; a pond as is essential for the ducks to keep themselves clean and also for happiness and well being – nothing is happier than a duck in water! You will also need to consider which duck breed suits the purpose you are keeping them for.

Many people keep ducks for the eggs but also breed them to sell as they are becoming an increasingly as garden poultry over the UK as either egg layers but also as pets.

Ducks are widely considered to be a lot more pleasing on the eye than chickens and although often slightly noisy they do make an interesting addition to a garden poultry collection.

Garden Poultry- Geese.

Maybe the most impressive bird in the world of garden poultry is the goose, the closest thing we can keep to a swan, they are inquisitive and full of character. 

Geese require a relatively large space and are great natural lawn mowers; they demand very little in the way of feed just a good supply of fresh green grass.

Unlike ducks a pond is not essential as they like to spend most of their time on dry land grazing but they do need water to keep their feathers clean and in good condition, a plastic, paddling pool or sand pit filled with water is more than adequate.

Unlike chickens geese have not been modified to lay eggs all year so have just one breeding season where the female will lay eggs. Geese make great pets and act as very effective guard dogs. Whether keeping geese as pets, to breed to sell or as a fantastic treat for the table they will soon become the pride and joy of all your garden poultry.