Is recession to blame for missing chickens? (From Swindon Advertiser)

Is recession to blame for missing chickens?

9:10am Tuesday 5th May 2009 in

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A FARM boss believes the recession is driving thieves to steal his livestock.

Tim Finney, the managing director of Helen Browning’s Eastbrook Farm, in Bishopstone, which runs the Royal Oak pub, became suspicious when he started finding fewer eggs at the end of each week.

His fears were realised when he counted his chickens and found 40 out of 150 had disappeared.

“I started noticing fewer and fewer chickens when I entered the coop each morning, and then egg production was hit, so I set about counting the chickens, which is not an easy task, and I found many were gone,” said Tim.

“For someone who is not into farming it may not sound like much but at an egg a day for each chicken it doesn’t take long to hit your pocket, if you think it’s £1.80 for a half a dozen.

“For all I know these thieves are eating them, but I would suspect they are being kept somewhere. Their strength is really laying eggs, not for meat.“ Tim said another small landholder in the village had also reported missing chickens.

It comes a week after the Adver reported residents’ concerns about deer poaching on the Front Garden.

Residents contacted the paper after finding a severed deer’s leg on the nearby bridle path and hearing gun shots.

Neil Pullen, a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust officer, said: “Times are tough at the moment so if they (the deer) are being poached I would say that people are looking for a cheaper way to find food, especially venison.

“That is my expectation, if it is poaching then people are going out with a gun looking for free food.”

Duke Potter, a cattle farmer from Dauntsey, said he was planning to chain his gates.

He said: “The price of beef has gone up considerably. There was a spate of rustling, stealing cattle, 10 years ago.

“I was telling my wife the other day that we had better start locking up our gates again.”

Denise Plummer, who is a dairy farmer near Chippenham and the Wiltshire delegate for the National Farmers’ Union said: “Rural space is now becoming more of a target for anyone that wants to steal anything at all.

“The hype from the media gives people with that sort of tendency some sort of excuse.

“I can imagine that people could well say ‘well, we’re not well off and we’re not eating that well so that somehow gives us the right.’ “This is an example of an escalation of problems because people are on hard times, but that is no excuse.

“This is an on-going problem – diesel is often going missing from farms and the same with tools, people just feel like they can help themselves.”

The chicken thefts have not been reported to the police.

But Andrea Faircloth, the superviser for the rural policing unit, said: “We had a spate of this sort of crime 12 months ago in Warminster and Chippenham.

“I think farmers in general do take precautions but further measures would include putting alarms in their coops.”