Whilst attempting to keep hens can potentially be a fantastic activity for the family, and whilst I personally consider that chickens make wonderful pets, there are some disadvantages to always keeping hens as well as positives.
Whilst trying to keep chooks can potentially be a fantastic activity for the household, and whilst I personally consider that chickens make wonderful pets, there are some negatives to managing hens as well as positives.
Fresh and Ethical Egg Supply
Lets think of the possible benefits first. Certainly the most important plus to keeping hens must be all those tasty free range eggs just lying there waiting around that you just collect every afternoon or evening. You’ll find nothing like cooking your own healthy, and delicious free range eggs which were laid on that day simply for you. No chooks needed to put up with living in a tiny crate to lay them for you personally, so you should feel great about getting a refrigerator crammed filled with wholesome food.
Next chickens make superb domestic pets despite the fact that they are fowls. Kids really adore them. Mine will happily pick them up and may carry them around for hours. It can be rather a joy keeping chooks, and if you permit them to roam free all around your back garden it is gratifying watching all of them out your kitchen’s windows when you cook an evening meal.
Nature’s Pest Control Squad
In addition, if you make it possible for all of them to roam around around the house they will really clean up a whole bunch of pests which, if still left on their own, could possibly eat your back garden. It was our chooks that assisted save our backyard from 2 summers of hopper plague. You really should see how many grasshoppers one hen could certainly consume daily.
Fourthly it’s pretty simple, not like for most domestic pets, to provide for your chooks so that you don’t need to make plans for them every time you go on holidays. As I have large automatic storage containers for feeding and supplying water we are able to go on trips leaving behind the chickens to their own devices and have never ever lost one yet, whilst on trips.
The Tough Side of Chicken-Keeping: Loss and Lifespan
Now to the negatives. Like all animals chickens can easily get sick and die. We have had instances when the kids have discovered a dead hen in the chook coop, and this is distressing for the kids. While this obviously is applicable to all domestic pets it is more common when you keep chickens. This obviously is simply because you have a tendency to have quite a number of hens, whereas most people will have one or at most two dogs or pet cats. In our situation with fifteen hens it is more frequent. Of course hens have a shorter life-span than some domestic pets such as puppies or cats.
Secondly despite the fact that chickens will pick up many of the unpleasant bugs around your back garden they do so by scratching, and this can potentially scratch up the dirt of your yard