I have always fancied keeping chickens. I didnt think I would be able to as I live on a housing estate however as a mobile dog groomer I am amazed at the number of my customers who do keep them even living on housing estates and terraced houses. This has of course got me thinking about whether I could keep them. I am sure I have seen posts on here from people who keep them too.

Is keeping chickens generally allowed in gardens? do neighbours complain about noise. or smell? is there much waste from chickens? I have a dog kennel that is not used and I was wondering if it would be possible to convert that into a chicken coop. It is 12ft x 6ft. it has a 4ft x 6 ft sleeping compartment and an 8ft x 4ft run. it is on my patio so has paving slabs as a base not earth. Would this be suitable  or would a purpose built chicken coop be a better option? thanks very much. Also do chickens need to be let out into the garden loose? just wondering as I have artificial grass now. If this would not be suitable for keeping them I will leave it and wait until my lottery winnings allow me to buy a small holding :)

I live on ex local authority estate and it was in the tenancy covenants that you could keep up to x number of chickens but not cockerels in the council housing. 

Those who have bought have no restrictions that I know of and there certainly was s cockerel around in the last few years.

Biggest problem with keeping poultry or aviary birds for that matter is Rats.  They attract vermin.

Check deeds and council, but it's still a bit of a grey area.  My deeds state clearly that I am not allowed chickens or other poultry, waterfowl or any other livestock, but I have no limit on domestic pets - however two doors down from me, in a house from the same build (post-war pre-fab, early 50s), they have chickens and ducks.  That is also still a council house (mine is private) and they've never had an issue with being allowed as far as I know.

I asked on the Gardenlaw forum a few years ago as I would like some someday, and was told that it would be up to the original builders/owners? of the houses to enforce the deeds and over 60 years on from the build, that is very unlikely to happen!  The biggest problem as Brainless says is rats, if you do get them then neighbours could complain to environmental health but even then, I imagine you'd be given chances to address the problem.  You can discourage them of course - keeping the living space clean, keeping food in metal containers (rats will chew through even thick plastic) and off the ground, suspended food hoppers, that sort of thing.

That is my biggest concern - I'll have to wait til Remy's gone whatever happens as he'll get obsessive and bouncy and he can't be doing that with a slipped disc, but I live alongside a golf course so I'll have to be super careful about encouraging rats and discouraging foxes!

Re. the run - should be fine from what I've been told, I am planning on doing exactly the same thing with an old kennel and much the same size too!  Biggest problem is mites - wood is a good "substrate" for them apparently so you'd have to be vigilant about treating it to keep them at bay but size-wise I think a kennel and run is a damn sight better than the vast majority of purpose-made coops.  I plan on letting mine out, but I also plan on training Willow to herd them back in for me :-P

I've kept hens for about six years now, I've had a bit of a problem with rats , but living at the back of a farm with a stream running through the garden, that was to be expected.
You can minimise the risk by bringing in any hen feed at night, as your set up would be on concrete, the risk would be minimised even further as there would be less chance of them taking up residence under the coop. There's really no more risk than if you kept guinea pigs or rabbits, as long as you keep your set up clean, the rats won't hang around.
Your kennel and run sounds fine for three or four hens, hens need a surprisingly large area if they've to be penned, although concrete isn't an ideal substrate for them, people do keep them successfully on it.
They would be happier with a surface they could scratch and dust bath in, so if you went ahead, I would suggest a baby bath filled with compost and sand that they can pootle about in, as well as divots of grass and what ever else you can think of to keep them amused.
The kennel would need a bit of work to make it suitable, but only the addition of a roosting bar, which should be about a foot of the floor, be an inch to inch and a half square, and have rounded corners. A couple of boxes in there would also be good for egg laying, but not essential. There would also need to be some sort of pop hole you could close at night.
Obviously the kennel would also need deep bedding , I used chopped hemp rather than sawdust which can cause respiratory problems .
They don't make a lot of noise, although you do get a bit of bragging from them when they've laid an egg, some hens are noisier than others, I've had some that loved the sound of their own voice.

I live in a Victorian terrace and our neighbour two doors down has chickens. The only rule on the terrace is no pigs! (Weird!). I used to breed show bantams when I lived with my parents - and never had any problem with neighbours, but we lived in the middle of nowhere!

That kennel sounds ideal, but you need to allow access to, or put it on soil/grass. As they need to bath themselves to keep condition and keep the bugs down. A great purpose built chicken run is the eglu (although you'll need a mortgage for one :P ). You can move it around so they won't ruin one patch of grass. A grass alternative is bark chippings.

As for cockerels, no one ever complained about mine, but if your worried their really isn't a need for one anyway! Hens will lay without the need for a cockerel.

There's nothing better than fresh eggs! They help make super yellow cakes :D

> I live in a Victorian terrace and our neighbour two doors down has chickens. The only rule on the terrace is no pigs! (Weird!).

In one place I lived, there were clauses in residents' deeds of many houses, that they were not permitted to house circus animals [species list included lions, tigers and camels among others]. Because, in the early part of the 20th century, a travelling circus visited several times a year and actually boarded out some of the animals with local residents.... for a while! It was on the deeds of the house a friend of mine lived in, and is probably still there in many others.

I think that's the sort of thing it is. In the Victorian times people had pigs to eat all the waste - so it must be a clause to stop people buying pigs and chucking their waste (toilet and food! Ewww) out into the gardens!

> I think that's the sort of thing it is. In the Victorian times people had pigs to eat all the waste - so it must be a clause to stop people buying pigs and chucking their waste (toilet and food! Ewww) out into the gardens!

And during WW2 - 1939-45... food rationing continued long after the war had ended.

Your set up sounds fine and the concrete actually works out berttef because you can pressure wash or hose the area down once a week to help keep the smell down. If you keep a coop on soil, the earth can go sour from too much poo and you will need to continually move it to allow the ground time to recover. The idea that they won't have access to grass etc goes belly up because they will eat/scratch and kill it off anyway. The concrete also makes it easier to scrape poo when doing daily poo picking and if you don't already have one, invest in a composter as it makes geat natural fertiliser.  If you aren't green fingered, someone who is, will happily take it off your hands. It cannot be used 'neat'.

We kept 45 chickens at one point and 5 of them were Cockerels.  We kept 5 different asaitic, dual purpose breeds  and we only stopped because the costs were getting too much. The feed alone doubled in price from when we started to stopping. If you want eggs all year round your best best is a hybrid hen as most pure breeds stop laying as the days shorten. Some also go broody at the drop of a hat and if you don't have fertile eggs/want chicks can be a real pain. You will also need at least 3 to lower the risk of bullying and loneliness should one die.

To make their lives enriched, you can grow grass in those growbag type trays and keep swapping them as they destroy each one. The baby bath for dust bathing is a fab idea. You can hang cds from the roof as they like to look at themselves and also hang tasty treats like brussel stems etc.

Its a lot of fun keeping the girls and someday I will keep a trio again.

>> I think that's the sort of thing it is. In the Victorian times people had pigs to eat all the waste - so it must be a clause to stop people buying pigs and chucking their waste (toilet and food! Ewww) out into the gardens!
> And during WW2 - 1939-45... food rationing continued long after the war had ended.

Yes, I believe that the war effort had at least half the pig in some cases & the rest was shared with the village/those who contributed to it's daily feeding. This was covered on War Time Farm with Ruth thingy & the other 2 historian farmy men.

>In the Victorian times people had pigs to eat all the waste -

During the war people were encouraged to do so, in small London terraces too..

Before the days of sewers, pigs were the 'waste disposal units'. They still are in many third world countries, even for the posh hotels ...

thanks for the fantastic replies. day off today so making a start on cleaning out the kennel :)

You'd have to check your bylaws re what you keep on your property BUT PLEASE no Cockerel ... http://www.poultryclub.org/poultry/guidelines-for-keeping-cockerels/
We lived out in the country and next door had a 'free range' Cockerel - NIGHTMARE!!   During that first summer we moved in when we had our windows open during the night, he was literally outside our front shouting his head off at first light (anything around 4 am, if not earlier).    We were renting and rather than speaking directly to next door (also renting) we talked about this to our landlady who talked to the guy.   Pretty soon it 'disappeared'.   I hope to a more suitable home rather than the stock-pot.   But I'm not joking, the noise he had was ridiculous.

I'd suspect any hens you had would prefer to be able to scratch the ground, whether in a pen, or not.  Artificial grass wouldn't allow that.   Any smell would have to be kept to a minimum of you have close neighbours or they'd have ground to complain to your local council.

Maybe on balance it would be better to do this when you have more land?

ps   Yes to the risk of mites (we went to stay with some friends who kept chicken and I was covered in itchy bites the next morning) and rats (said previous neighbours had rats running around big time - and so did we to the point I had to call in the Rat Catcher!!).    Also I'm old enough to remember Pig Bins - located in the streets in London for people to put their veggie left-overs/potato peelings etc. into.   I can remember walking down there with mum regularly.

When I was at school in the 70's all the dinner leftovers were taken by a local farmer to feed the pigs !

And people go on about recycling now - we did it automatically back then. Boxes at shops/supermarkets for your shopping, milk bottles, glass pop bottles from the pop man etc.

Re mites, they certainly are a consideration, especially Red Mites which are every chicken keepers worst nightmare as they are so hard to kill, I've even heard of people having to burn coops to the ground as they just couldn't shift them, and they will snack on people and other pets.
They love the wee nooks and crannies in a coop, and come out at night when the hens are at roost to feed on their blood, given enough time, they can make hens so anaemic they can die.
You can however minimise the risk, and so far ( touch wood ) I've never had a problem with them, the biggest preventative you can do, is make sure your kennel doesn't have roofing felt, this is The Dorchester hotel for mites as the space between the roof structure and the felt, is the ideal living conditions for them.

They are the worst! We've only ever had one red mite infestation and it was a good week of solid cleaning, disinfection and moving chooks from one pen to the other cleaning as we go to try and eradicate them!! We ivomec-ed (medication for cows!!) the chickens and since they haven't been back!

For lice, the chooks can be frontline sprayed or spot on-ed with small furries variety. Worming can be done with something called flubenvet which more effective than verm-x. To keep redmite at bay you will need to make a diatomastic earth/fairy liquid slurry and paint the coop with it regularly. There are some great chicken keeping forums and you may wish to join them.

Cockerels have crows at different pitches - the bigger the breed the deeper the crow and much less annoying than banties. In theory a single lad will crow less as there isn't any competition. The plus side to having a boy means your girls won't wander and will go to bed as soon as he tells them to!

We lived out in the country and next door had a 'free range' Cockerel - NIGHTMARE!!   During that first summer we moved in when we had our windows open during the night, he was literally outside our front shouting his head off at first light (anything around 4 am, if not earlier).

We're in the countryside, have one neighbour about 100 metres away. When they got a cockerel at first I was bothered by the noise any time of day and very early morning. Wouldn't dream of complaining though -it's the country, and it's far nicer to hear natural sounds like this than noisy people, music or cars like in a city. :)  I mentioned the cockerel to friends on Facebook and those that either keep them or live near them said after a while you get so used to it you no longer hear it. Turned out to be totally true. I never hear the cockerel these days, unless I deliberately listen out for him. Likewise when I house sat for a friend who had chickens, including two cockerels, I never once heard them early morning. And I sleep with the window open 365 days of the year.

Believe me, there's NO WAY you'd have grown used to the racket this bird was making, right under our bedroom window!!!

> after a while you get so used to it you no longer hear it.

Yes - next door have a noisy cockerel quite near us, but we got used to it. Now they have moved it further away and replaced it with three sheep who 'baa' quite a bit, but we are used to that now - unlike their noisy wind turbines and their GD that barks constantly when they are out  !! :) But these noises are preferable to the neighbours :)