Does anyone keep chickens?

I doubt you will notice the chickens, especially if they don't get a cockerel (although be warned, my sister has about 10 chickens and one of them was sold to her as a hen, but turned into a big fat rooster ?)

If they put decent fencing up, your garden will be fine, and it's worth offering your services to let them out in the morning and lock them up at night if your neighbours want to go away for the weekend so you can get free eggs.

Did they say how many they were getting? Not that it really makes much difference. My sister started with 3, and now has 10, alond with 3 bee hives and 2 (very rapacious) ducks...

Our neighbour below us kept chickens for a while. They had a cockerel that crowed every twenty seconds or so all day! Finally someone must have complained as they got rid of the cockerel (or had a roast I guess)

However the novelty soon ran out with the remaining hens and I think a fox had them in the end. They would escape into my next door neighbours garden now and again and they did smell a bit in the summer, but they don't look after any of their pets so that was down to hygiene

I guess it depends how big your gardens are, which will dictate how close they will be to you.

Its nice they have asked your opinion though.

We used to have chickens and they are great pets and relatively hassle free but if your bedroom window is close to where the chickens are going to be kept you may get woken up in the summer by them clucking away first thing - for ours they generally did this when they were waiting to go out and its only in the summer that you hear them as they get up with the sun. It's not too much inconvenience though considering you have to put up with dogs barking and cats p00ing all over your garden if you live next door to those. Plus there's nothing like the taste of lovely fresh eggs.

They shouldn't cause you a problem unless they don't clean them properly I wouldn't have thought. They may make a bit of noise but its no different to someone having a dog, its just a different noise.

We are getting chickens on Saturday.

Thanks for the replies everyone. You all kind of just said what I was thinking! Our gardens really aren't that big and our bedroom window will overlook their garden so we'll probably hear them to some extent in the summer but as long as there isn't a cockeral we should be ok!

You don't keep Chicken, Chicken keeps you, and he's going to kick your ass.