Meet the Millwey Gang

As part of his Chicken Out! campaign to move us away from intensively reared, cheap-to-buy chicken, and convert us to free range produce, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall set up two small-scale chicken farms one an intensive factory farm and the other a free-range unit. Hugh also invited people on a local estate to become involved in the campaign, and join a chicken-keeping group on an overgrown allotment plot.

This allotment site is on the now famous Axminster Millwey Estate, where Hugh and his volunteers started from scratch, working hard as a group to clear the ground. It isn’t far from the Country Smallholding office, so I got in touch with one of them, Ian Hall, also known as Herman, one of the many locals who responded to Hugh’s invitation. We arranged to meet on-site one afternoon, and most of the other members of the gang were there Dave, Nelly (apparently everyone calls him that) and Sherilyn and Leanne Brooks, whose mum Linda is still an active member, as well as Ian.

The Millwey chicken gang are fewer in number than they were (four families from the original group of 15 people) but, as Dave said at the end of the TV programme, they want to carry on with the chickens, having become committed to poultry keeping and the notion of being able to produce their own food.

At the moment they have 12 birds - nine Black Rocks and three Buff Orpington crosses. The latter, which came from Hugh, are rather shy and retiring in spite of their size. The birds are laying around six eggs a day. As well as their raised chicken houses, supplied by Forsham Cottage Arks, they have shelters made from wooden pallets covered with tree branches, and various ramps to climb on.The run is spacious and well fenced (Nelly did much of the fencing, I heard) and, although they’ve had no problems with foxes, they’ve had a few visiting rats. The plan is to get some more meat birds but, as Herman explained, they’re waiting to see what the council decides about the future of poultry keeping on the allotment. None of them had been allotment holders, let alone chicken keepers, at the start of the project, but their hope is to apply and get official permission in April. Maybe we can branch out into turkeys, said Herman.

On the afternoon of our visit, the weather was glorious. You should have seen it last week, in all that rain, said Dave. The straw strewn across the ground makes a big difference... When I was there, Herman was planning to clear out the woodshavings in the chicken houses for use on the compost heap and was wondering how the chicken manure would benefit vegetables.

The care of the birds is a task shared amongst the group the rota takes account of work, school and other commitments. It’s clearly brought them together, this joint venture, and Ian tells me the effect on the estate generally has been very positive the campaign has got more people talking to each other. The cost of feed and bedding, they reckon, comes to about £1 per week per family. Not only are they selfsufficient in eggs, the whole experience has been a good lesson in The Good Life, as Herman put it. We think much more about the origin of our food now and about our needs, there are no more Turkey Twizzlers for us!