Chickens at home

Keeping chickens at home is really easy – and what a great way to start you day, with fresh, home grown eggs. Garden chickens or backyard chickens are a great way to teach your kids about animal care – chickens make good pets – they are friendly, intelligent and highly social creatures. If they are petted often enough they will even come when you call. With my home chickens, when I feed them,  I click my tongue, like when geeing a horse, over and over. The chickens soon learn to come running when ever I click. Chickens will eat almost anything, and if you allow them to free range they pretty much look after themselves. Pet chickens will eat lizards, snakes and even small mice. They will also eat grass and weeds. If you keep them cooped in a chicken run you may have to move the space they live in every now and then so that the vegetation can recover! You can supplement their diet with layer mash and you will get more eggs. The hens should be kept in a chicken coop or hen house – that way collecting the eggs is easy – I would not keep a cock – they are noisy, and worse, you will have fertilised eggs – unless you want baby chicks. Although if you have kids this is such a nice thing – chicks are always a hit. As long as you collect your eggs every day, fertilised eggs are not a problem – it when they have been left for a few weeks and the hens have been sitting on them – then you definitely don’t want to crack one open for breakfast! The bonus of poultry farming at home is that you know your eggs are fresh, and free range – green poutry farming can fun, and organic eggs are the bonus.

If you have a vegetable garden, all the veggies that er over – or not great for the table, can be fed to the chickens – all you table scraps will also be well received – as chickens are not vegetarians they will love scraps of meat, and even cooked eggs. Chicken dropping make great compost – and if you are a gardener you will appreciate this – just make sure it is properly composted before you use it on the garden. Most breeds of chickens do well at home – some better than others – be sure to get layers – chickens bred to lay eggs, and try and avoid chickens that have been debeaked – they will battle to forage naturally – that is of course if you plan to let the chickens free range - bear in mind that if you keep them cooped you will need to buy all their chicken feed. You will need some kind of chicken coop or hen house. The size of your chicken house depends on how many chickens you plan to keep.

While many dogs will not chase backyard chickens – it may be an idea to keep them apart – if you get a puppy and chicken ta the same time, they two breeds can become great friends – my dogs, unfortunately, would just love to munch on a fresh chicken – so whilst they do free range they are still in an enclosure. Don’t let your pet chickens at home into your veggie garden – they love vegetables and will make short work of your carrots and spinach – in fact just about anything you grow.