The Advantages And Minuses Of Trying To Keep Chickens
Whilst trying to keep chooks can easily be a wonderful activity for the family, and whilst I personally consider that hens make wonderful pets, there are some negatives to maintaining chickens as well as positives.
Whilst keeping hens could certainly be a fantastic pastime for the household, and whilst I personally consider that chooks make wonderful pets, there are some disadvantages to always keeping chooks as well as positives.
Lets think about the positives first. Needless to say the most significant positive to keeping hens must be all those delectable roam around eggs simply laying there waiting for you to pick up each afternoon or night. You'll find nothing like feeding on your personal healthy, and tasty free range eggs that have been laid that day just for you. No chooks had to endure coping with a small cage to lay all of them for you, so you could certainly feel good about having a refrigerator crammed packed with wholesome foods.
Second chooks make great domestic pets despite the fact that they're birds. Children just love them. Mine will contentedly pick them up and may carry them all over for hours. It's rather a pleasure keeping chickens, and if you permit them to free range all over your garden it is satisfying watching them out your kitchen window when you cook dinner.
In addition, if you allow all of them to free range around the house they will thoroughly clean up a whole host of pesky insects which, if left on their own, could possibly eat your back garden. It was our hens that assisted save our garden from 2 summers of grasshopper plague. You really should see how many hopper one chook can easily feed on per day.
Moreover it's perfectly possible, unlike for most pets, to provide for your chickens so that you don't need to make plans for them every time you go on vacations. As I have huge automatic storage containers for feeding and supplying water we are able to go on trips leaving the hens on their own and have never lost one yet, whilst on trips.
Now to the problems. Like all pets chooks could certainly get sick and pass away. We have had instances when the kids have discovered a deceased chicken in the chicken coop, and this is distressing for the kids. Whilst this obviously applies to all pets it is more common when you keep your own hens. This obviously is because you tend to have quite a number of chickens, whereas a lot of people may have one or at most 2 pet dogs or cats. In our situation with fifteen chooks it is more frequent. Of course hens have a shorter life-span than some pets such as dogs or pet cats.
Secondly despite the fact that chickens will cleanup many of the unpleasant pests round your yard they do so by scratching, and this should scratch up the earth of your yard beds. And they will also peck at your vegetables if you grow your very own and they particularly like pecking at tomatoes. You might need to protect your fruit and vegetables or some section of your garden.
And, like for many other pets, there's some work involved, including regular cleaning of the chicken house. Hens poo all over the place and the house, as well as feeding and watering storage containers, ought to be cleaned. You must also study more about pest prevention as chooks could certainly be prone to such challenges as mites.
Furthermore whilst having fresh free range eggs is fantastic it doesn't happen on a regular basis. Chickens tend to go off the lay throughout the cold winter season, and more aged hens lay less eggs than younger ones. For this reason there may be times when you're having to pay for hen food but still purchasing eggs.
I think nevertheless that the positives of maintaining chooks far exceeds the disadvantages. They're one of the few domestic pets that are productive in addition to just being a pet, and for anyone considering keeping chickens as pets my reply is always to do it. Very few people have regretted getting chickens.
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