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.
Don't forget to visit my website Chicken Coops Australia about chicken Houses to learn more about how to track down the best chicken coop for keeping your chickens happy.
Want To Keep Chickens At Home? First You Need A Good Chicken Coop.
We all love eggs. They're wonderful to eat, nutritious and make a great omelette. And we all love pets. So why not satisfy your roots for pets and for eggs by keeping chickens, and eat omelette every day?
Kids just love chickens. Mine happily spend hours feeding them, picking them up and patting them and collecting the eggs at the end of the day. Chickens are cheap to feed and easy to keep. Provided you have only hens they don't make much noise and if you allow them to free range in the garden they will eat those nasty bugs that feed on your vegetables.
But before you head out to buy yourself some chickens you have to consider how you will house them. Let's talk a little about chicken coops .
Of course the first thing you'll need to consider is how many chickens you wish to house. If you'd like a box of eggs a day you'll need plenty of chickens, however for most families 3 or 4 hens is sufficient. If this is the case a simple movable chicken house that can be trundled around the garden is quite adequate.
There is also another thing that you need to consider before keeping chickens, and that is whether there are any regulations governing the keeping of chickens at your home, or about the chicken house that you are allowed to have.
The fastest and possibly the cheapest way to get a chicken coop is to build it, provided you're familiar with the right end of a hammer and you've got a few nails. It's not that difficult, you need some treated timber, some chicken wire and a few bits and pieces and you can have a chicken coop built in an afternoon.
There's some essentials when building a chicken coop, including a nesting box where the hens will lay their eggs.
At night chooks need to roost to sleep, so they need some perches above the floor of the chicken house to do so.
A simple design that is easy to build is an A-frame design. You can make the perches by running timber rods from one side of the coop to the other. Make sure that the perches are under cover so the chickens are out of the weather when sleeping stop
If you put handles on one end and wheels on the other it is then easy to move around the garden, and you move it every few days to fertilise different areas of the lawn.
There is generally no problem in allowing your chickens to roam the garden during the day, although it is important to make sure they have returned to the chicken house at night and to close the entry door. Even in the middle of the city it is possible to find foxes and foxes while a chicken for dinner.
Kids love keeping chickens and most of them love eating eggs, but remember that this basic work to do before you get started on your new hobby of keeping chickens. You've got to decide how many to have and either buy or build a good henhouse to house that number of chickens safely and uncomfortably.
All you have to do is get stuck into a simple handyman job building your chicken coop or buy a good one and then you can be comfortable knowing that you always have a fridge full of eggs.
Want To Keep Chickens At Home? First You Need A Good Chicken Coop.
We all love eggs. They're wonderful to eat, nutritious and make a great omelette. And we all love pets. So why not satisfy your roots for pets and for eggs by keeping chickens, and eat omelette every day?
Kids just love chickens. Mine happily spend hours feeding them, picking them up and patting them and collecting the eggs at the end of the day. Chickens are cheap to feed and easy to keep. Provided you have only hens they don't make much noise and if you allow them to free range in the garden they will eat those nasty bugs that feed on your vegetables.
But before you head out to buy yourself some chickens you have to consider how you will house them. Let's talk a little about chicken coops .
Of course the first thing you'll need to consider is how many chickens you wish to house. If you'd like a box of eggs a day you'll need plenty of chickens, however for most families 3 or 4 hens is sufficient. If this is the case a simple movable chicken house that can be trundled around the garden is quite adequate.
There is also another thing that you need to consider before keeping chickens, and that is whether there are any regulations governing the keeping of chickens at your home, or about the chicken house that you are allowed to have.
The fastest and possibly the cheapest way to get a chicken coop is to build it, provided you're familiar with the right end of a hammer and you've got a few nails. It's not that difficult, you need some treated timber, some chicken wire and a few bits and pieces and you can have a chicken coop built in an afternoon.
There's some essentials when building a chicken coop, including a nesting box where the hens will lay their eggs.
At night chooks need to roost to sleep, so they need some perches above the floor of the chicken house to do so.
A simple design that is easy to build is an A-frame design. You can make the perches by running timber rods from one side of the coop to the other. Make sure that the perches are under cover so the chickens are out of the weather when sleeping stop
If you put handles on one end and wheels on the other it is then easy to move around the garden, and you move it every few days to fertilise different areas of the lawn.
There is generally no problem in allowing your chickens to roam the garden during the day, although it is important to make sure they have returned to the chicken house at night and to close the entry door. Even in the middle of the city it is possible to find foxes and foxes while a chicken for dinner.
Kids love keeping chickens and most of them love eating eggs, but remember that this basic work to do before you get started on your new hobby of keeping chickens. You've got to decide how many to have and either buy or build a good henhouse to house that number of chickens safely and uncomfortably.
All you have to do is get stuck into a simple handyman job building your chicken coop or buy a good one and then you can be comfortable knowing that you always have a fridge full of eggs.
