There are no national rules or regulations in the UK that stop you from keeping small numbers (less than 50) chickens however there are some regulations to check first.
- DEFRA: You are allowed to keep up to 50 chickens on your land without registering with DEFRA, however after the avian influenza outbreaks, a poultry register was set up in 2005 and you are required to register if you keep more than 50 poultry on the premises – so you need to take into consideration any other poultry you have. There is more information on my page: DEFRA: The Poultry Register
- By-Laws: There are occasionally by-laws for certain properties that prevent people from keeping livestock. Check with your local council that this doesn’t apply to you.
- Covenants: There are sometimes covenants put in place by housing authorities and councils to stop tenants from keeping chickens at their property. This seems to be a local decision as there are no national restrictions.
- House Deeds: Again, the deeds of some properties may state that you are not allowed to keep chickens (again, often stated as keeping livestock). If your property is free of restrictions, you should be able to keep chickens without a problem, however do keep in mind that local residents may complain to the council about noise levels if you keep a cockerel.
There are a number of Laws, regulations and requirements that can affect you (in the UK) and I have created a number of sub pages to cover these briefly:
I was wondering, can chickens swim as i have a pond in my garden and i am considering keeping about 4 hens ?
No, they can’t but as long as they can’t fall in, trying to drink from the pond leaning down (if there was no other drinking water available) you should be ok.
do i need a licence to sell eggs to shops , friends & family ?
To sell to shops (in the UK) you need to send eggs to a registered packing station for grading in size / candling to check for blood spots etc and have a producer number for tracability. They will box the eggs for you. It is a lot of work and not really worth doing unless you have a huge amount of eggs.
Selling ‘off the gate’ is far easier and you can read about this on the poultrykeeper site Selling Eggs Off The Gate this is how most poultrykeepers sell spare eggs.
Do you have to keep chickens a certain distance away from your house? I thought there was a restriction to where to put your chicken coop?
There are no restrictions on how close they are to your house.
Hi
We live in a small house surrounded by farm land. We have 3 hens who freely roam the neighbouring fields (which have sheep in) does anyone know what the deal is – the farmer hasn’t said anything but are we being cheeky letting them roam on his land?
Also do we need a license to keep them? There is nothing in our deeds that we know of.
Thanks advice gratefully received!
Technically they are trespassing and you could be asked to keep them inside your boundary. You only need to inform DEFRA if you keep 50 or more.
The farmer might be concerned about biosecurity if he had hens but I think you’ll be OK mixing them with sheep. More of a problem will be Mr. Fox who is bound to eventually drop by.
Are you allowed to keep chickens if you are close to a chicken farm?
I don’t see why not 🙂