Poultry

Recently the Chief Vet in Scotland published guidance to allow gatherings of “Galliformes” also known as Chickens, Pheasants and Turkeys. These would be permissible under a new general licence which had a range of conditions attached.

The Festival has always been keen to run poultry shows; poultry is an integral part of smallholding and is often the first thing on everyones list. We have over the years run a number of shows but the onset of Avian Flu coupled with the Covid pandemic meant that it has not been included for the last 5 years.

So we were keen to look at the possibility of adding a show into this years Festival. However we have unfortunately concluded that we simply cannot add a poultry show into the event this year, much as we and our members would like to. The logistics and costs are prohibitive, mainly because it would in effect require us to start again and change things for example like the planned layout with its implications for Health and Safety and crowd management.

We are really sorry to all those who expressed a wish to see the return of the poultry show, and we commit that in 2026 we will do everything we can to return the poultry show to its place as a fundamental part of the Smallholder Festival.