[chickadee11]

I've always fed left over food (not chicken or egg/mayonnaise obviously) to my chickens but just found out that it is now illegal!

My old flock would have been very sad, they used to get very excited every day in case I had any left-over lunch to give them when I got home from work and particularly loved pasta and sausage.

My new girls won't know the difference as I only just got them.   Am I allowed to say on here that I think the world is over-regulated!?

[Prod]

Yes

[ANHBUC]

We are all entitled to our own opinion so yes you are allowed. 

Most people are already aware that it is illegal to feed anything which has been in your kitchen to your poultry but we are obliged to point it out.  We have to be careful not to appear to be inciting people to break the law whether we agree with it or not or the site owners can find themselves in trouble.   

[chickadee11]

I understand.   

I'm not sure when it was brought in but I haven't had chickens for bout 10 months and wasn't aware until a colleague told me yesterday. 

It is a bit annoying (to put it nicely) when something that people have been doing for hundreds of years is suddenly outlawed!  But anyway who am I to criticise the mighty Defra. Shame they didn't spend their time regulating abattoirs so we didn't all end up eating horse meat instead of worrying about the eggs I'm eating from my own chickens!  Rant over 

[ANHBUC]

I believe the laws were brought in after the BSE outbreak and are intended as a prevention.  It is easier to have one law for all which is clear and concise rather than ones with ifs, buts and maybe's.   

[Prod]

It's a weird world tho isn't it?  I mean I live in a very rural area surrounded by farms whose owners must follow the DEFRA rulings regarding feeding their livestock, yet one guy regularly feeds any dead lambs to his working dogs which are kept outside in all weathers.........

[GrannieAnnie]

It certainly is a weird world Prod, but I suppose working dogs are not livestock.  After all, we don't eat the dogs and they don't lay eggs!

[Mbmyco2]

Could some one explain this regulations just in case i know some one who may or may not have 4 chickens and may or may not be feeding them with all the leftovers from their kitchen including well lets not say that cos they may or may not be doing it.

it for a friend of a friend from down the road and round the corner

[ANHBUC]

Joyfull wrote to DEFRA to get clarification, have a read of their REPLY   

[barley]

Don't get me started on battery hens    shame someone in high places dosn't stop this awful practice 

[pepsi100]

I can remember my grand dad giving them scraps (he used to cook it up then mix in this spice stuff0 this was back in the 50-60's

When my Dad kept chickens, they were kept in small boxes, never had access to the garden, until they stopped laying, then they just wandered around

When I was at school, I can remember the 'slop man' coming and picking up all the waste food from schools (there was quite a mixture there)

The pig farm was over the back from us, we used to be able to get our fresh pork from there, pick a pig and it was yours, went back the following day, all wrapped in newspaper

Now everything is regulated, pigs only gt bagged food, hens can only eat bagged food (and greens from an allotment)

Things have really changed, sometimes I wonder if they are for the better, but I do think things have got to saturation point with regulations

(how can I buy 2 for 1 chickens from Thailand, but pay twice as much for a chicken raised in the UK?)

[GrannieAnnie]

We too had the pig swill man come to the house where we had an extra dustbin that Mum put all our leftovers in.  Stunk to high heaven when you lifted the lid! yuck! 

With the price of animals feed and bedding etc, it is cheaper for the shops to bring chickens etc in from abroad where the regulations aren't as strict as ours and the feed and everything else isn't as expensive as it is here!

Wrong I know, and I think it should be stopped.  But the 'powers that be' will do what they do.  But we, the consumer has a choice.  We buy the cheap stuff from abroad, or the cheap eggs from battery hens, or we pay a bit more for quality and British grown and if we don't have much money, eat less of it.

We can't really afford to buy our meat like we do, but it is good and tasty and I know how it spent it's life, so I make it last longer than I used to!

[pepsi100]

I did see the chicken farms in Thailand, while not as good as our free range, they keep them in huge barns, they move them between barns for cleaning out, its quite a sight to see, thousands of birds moving along a alley between barns,they still use the same equipment we use here for slaughter though

The droppings are spread over the land after lying for 3 months or so, but the run off affects the rivers and streams (a big white cloud in the watwr)

They had the 'bird flu out there a few years ago, this made them clean up their act (hence they keep them in barns away from wild birds who they suspect passed on the infection)

But the annual wage there is a lot lower than here in the UK, I think this is what its based on, but it makes a bit of a mockery of this carbon foot print though

I saw a lot of chickens running around the street in villages in India, would these be classed as 'free range' ?

The council gave us one of these'pig swill' bins last year, I dont think they have ever been emptied, the foxes beat the bin men

[GrannieAnnie]

My daughter's council did the same thing a few years back.  It is a brown wheelie bin and you put everything in it that is compostable.  garden waste, kitchen waste, including meat and bones!  poo it smells to in the summer. 

But I thought they weren't supposed to compost food waste?  Mind you, there compost heaps and treatments plants get so hot don't they?

It's good to hear about Thailand treating their chickens a bit differently and yes you are right too about the wages.  What a difference to here!

[pepsi100]

My compost heap gets wrecked every month/six weeks, I uncover it, the hens eat everything that moves in it, then scatter it for me, all I gotta do is dig it in 

I think the effluent that flows into the rivers affects the fish, the cat fish have got huge there now, some are over 150 pounds

I'm all for recycling, but its got to be done with a bit of thought, I sort all my plastic and paper, anything that can rot goes on the heap (I tried paper, it just got soggy and stayed there)

But I think its a bit of a waste of time sorting it, the bin men just sling it all on the same truck  but I still try and do my bit (tesco isnt happy with me, I unwrap my stuff and leave them the wrappers (why wrap a lettuce, spuds, cabbage, okay some stuff has to be in a bag, but I try and buy loose veg (or go to the farm  )

I have now got round the rules DEFRA has set out, I got a hexy burner, I heat up a bit of pasta, rice in the shed, mix it with some layers mash, grit, oyster shell, then they get it and the closest its got to the kitchen is seeing it through the window, so they still get a treat, even the water comes from the outside tap  all the bags are taken through the kitchen unopened