VAL BOURNE says she really can give up her chickens - but not just yet

In a recent poll, chickens were one of the five most desirable additions to a garden and this makes me happy. I feel some satisfaction because I left my established plant-packed garden in Hook Norton primarily because I wanted to keep chickens again.

As I write, my Silver Sussex bantam cockerel is in full song as he chivvies his two hens into action. I also confess to three Barnevelder hens and two feather-pecking Speckled Sussex bantam hens. The peckers' are in Spring Cottage's version of the sin bin.

If I sound like a founder member of Chickens Anonymous, I can give them up - just not yet. Practically, they keep us supplied with eggs. But they also cluck contentedly and that's priceless. When we got our chickens I swore I would get up and tend them daily. I fell at the first hurdle. The flat-bottomed ark was too heavy for me to move. The larger Barnevelder house was even heavier. So it fell to the heavier, bigger one. That's my story.

My Barnevelder hens are Rubenesque, docile ladies. They get up late, sunbathe when it's warm and go to bed early. When it's wet they shelter from the rain like Pauline Prescott after a visit to the hairdressers. But they lay large brown eggs that are perfect with soldiers.

The Silver Sussex bantams are rugged. They stay up as late as possible and they stay out in all weathers. On windy days they point their noses, sorry beaks, like supersonic Concordes.

However, my bantams want to emigrate to Australia and they burrow and dig in their quest. They are pretty to look at but their small beige eggs can be sparse at certain times of the year. The Speckled Sussex bantams are good layers but aggressive individuals. Lesson number one is: research your breeds.

Of course the vision was that these feathered friends would roam our garden ridding us of pests and fertilising as they went. They do both, but they also strip your plants and upend your vegetables in their enthusiasm. The turning point came when I saw five bantams sending up snowdrop buds like hail on a winter wind. After sharp words they were confined to barracks permanently.

But this can be equally problematic for the gardener. For whenever chickens are in residence the fox is never far away, which is a worry, and the rat is much closer. Now rats are intelligent creatures. A humane trap works, but only once or twice and then your average rat learns to treat it as a roundabout.The less humane break-your neck' trap, liberally dosed with peanut butter, has to be covered to stop everything else getting near. Our rats, for there is never one, ignored the traps until they had been disabled and placed in the shed. Then they walked through the open door and licked the springs clean.

So this year, we (that's the royal we) made portable chicken houses to keep away rats. The bantam house is in effect a wheelbarrow with arms and one central wheel. The Barnevelder house has two wheels and levers which raise one end off the ground. The chickens stay in one place for 48 hours and then they are moved. In the winter the bantams return to the fruit cage where they see off weevils, raspberry beetle and vine weevil among others. It's a good, old-fashioned British compromise all round.