KEEPING POULTRY

what is it?
Most people equate the word poultry with chickens, but it also covers ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea-fowl, quail, and arguably even pheasants and pigeons (dictionary definition = the keeping of domestic fowl). All have their particular quirks: chickens are easy to keep, ducks need access to water, and geese are hardy, tough and self-reliant but need a bit more space. Chickens of course are the most common; there are many breeds and varieties available with different characters, some are for show and have incredible ‘hairstyles’, others are renowned for their consistent supply and quantity of eggs, and others make excellent table birds. You don’t need much experience or capital to keep a few chickens in the garden and there are many benefits other than fresh, free-range eggs and meat.
what are the benefits?
There are three main areas in which keeping poultry can benefit the environment. The first is helping to keep food production local; chickens, for example, don’t have to be reared along with thousands of others in huge battery sheds using large-scale machinery to be fed chemically-produced feedstuffs, and then the eggs transported across the country to supermarkets where you have to drive to get them. All this entails unnecessary habitat destruction, pollution and carbon emissions; keep them yourself and you just have to walk outside to feed them and collect the eggs.
Secondly, you know what they’ve been fed andtreated with, and you can ensure that the whole enterprise is kept organic and free-range. And thirdly, you can ensure that your poultry become part of a natural cycle – you can feed them your food scraps instead of sending it to landfill (it’s not a good idea to put cooked food on the compost heap unless it’s enclosed, as it could attract rats), and then put their waste on the compost heap, and also let them roam on the garden in the winter, to enrich the soil with their droppings. Garden pests like slugs and snails are a particular favourite of ducks.
Free-range poultry are happy, healthy birds, it is a pleasure to watch them scratching around or having a good dust bath. They suffer fewer diseases than commercial chickens and can follow their normal behaviour patterns with plenty of space to roam.