Palmwoods
District News

December
1998

Page 9

Responsible poultry care
By Palmwoods Vet Brett Stone

RESPONSIBLE backyard poultry ownership - keeping a few chooks, ducks or other poultry varieties in the back yard can be very rewarding for a number of reasons.

1). Children learn responsibility of caring for livestock and witnessing the cycle of life.

2). Provide eggs and/or meat if desired for the household.

3). Recycle kitchen scraps and receive high nitrogen manure for compost heap and garden.

4). Breed as a hobby and enter in shows etc.

5). Once set up, the hobby is relatively low cost or self funding with sale of surplus birds and/or eggs.

However in order to keep neighbours and councils on side a few perceived and potential problems need to be addressed.

The following may also be use to refute anti-backyard poultry arguments from well meaning yet misinformed councillors or neighbours.

Vermin control:

This may certainly be a problem where poultry housing and management are substandard and control measures are lacking.

But this can be eliminated with proper attention to the type of housing used and correct feed storage.

Offensive odours:

When poultry are kept on a well managed, deep-litter system and are not over crowded, there is absolutely no offensive smell which could annoy anyone.

Apart from providing adequate space and the correct depth and type of litter, it is important to remove wet spots regularly and either dig these into the garden or compost.

A strong manure odour only comes from large commercial cage farms where droppings collect under cages for extended periods but even then is only evident in very close proximity to sheds.

Noise pollution:

In the case from fowls there is very little noise from the females, and this is confined to a few minutes of cackling after laying an egg.

However male birds often cause a disturbance by crowing in the early hours. There are two remedies for this: use an anti-crowing shelf hinged and let down after the flock has gone to roost, or place the rooster in a special box in a separate shed where measures have been taken to deaden sound by a suitable noise absorbing lining.

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