Like a 'horse' and 'carriage'; 'fish' and 'chips'; 'sticks' and 'stones' and 'drunk' and 'disorderly' it seems that 'chickens' and 'gardeners' are a match made in heaven.

Gardeners keeping chickens may just be a stereotypical cliche I've accepted all these years and so I'm determined to find out if many people have their own brood, what type of chickens they keep, and why do they keep them?

As suburban blocks become smaller and smaller and housing density increases one can see the writing on the wall that the backyard chicken coop may not be with us for too much longer. In this article [since moved] the lines are already being drawn in one city in the US.

The city codes of Kent require that a gardener wanting to keep chickens must reside on a block larger than half an acre or more.

Even here in Busselton, a sea-side town of 25,000, finding a block that's bigger than 500sqm is hard enough let alone half an acre.

We don't currently have any chickens, although we have had them in the past. We've even had ducks and their offspring for a while as well. However, we would like to have them in the future so if our shire changes the code on keeping chickens we won't be too happy.