I met Lyn for the first time a week or two back. She was standing in Woodbridge's Market Square and literally wringing her hands about the neighbour's chickens. She had taken down a fence to expose the country view and the poultry, from next door's small holding had taken to swarming over her garden, pecking, grubbing up, destroying and then leaving without laying any eggs. Seriously bad one way traffic.
We made an evening appointment and I followed her to Charsfield, a small village in a pretty crease of Suffolk. Glass of wine in hand, we surveyed the problem. And it was bad - the chickens had made mud runs down the boundary bank. The culprits had gone to roost but I could see them in my mind's eye yelling whooopeee and screaming in on their backsides.
How to put a stop to this? No fence permitted as the view is Lyn's top priority. The solution is actually quite simple. We will put in posts and wire and train espaliered apples (or pears) along that side of the garden. As the trees get established and trained and pruned we will grow them as 3 tiers of branches. If we put chicken wire up to the first tier which will be about 45cm off the ground, the view won't be spoiled and the chickens won't get in any more.
I met Lyn for the first time a week or two back. She was standing in Woodbridge's Market Square and literally wringing her hands about the neighbour's chickens. She had taken down a fence to expose the country view and the poultry, from next door's small holding had taken to swarming over her garden, pecking, grubbing up, destroying and then leaving without laying any eggs. Seriously bad one way traffic.
