Keeping some chickens at home could just be the best decision you’ve ever made. There’s plenty of reasons why, but the 2 main reasons are that kids absolutely love chickens and that they will produce eggs for you every day so are they are productive.
However before you start buying your first brood of chooks you do need to spend a little time considering how you will house them. Chickens are generally housed in what is called a chicken coop, chicken house or henhouse.
Whether you buy or build a chicken coop doesn’t matter, it’s perfectly possible to build one using simple second-hand materials that you scrounge from the neighbours, and is reasonably cheap to build. A good chicken coop is really just a garden shed with a number of modifications.
There’s some things you must have in a good chicken coop. Nesting boxes are essential because this is where the chickens lay their eggs and, if you allow them to build up, will sit on them. Nesting boxes should be not much larger than the size of a chicken, (if they’re too big you’ll find 2 chooks fighting for occupancy at the same time).
Make sure the nesting boxes are quite dark as you will find that if they are not dark enough your chickens will lay their eggs somewhere darker, like in the corner of the shed.
And you will need perches as well. Chooks sleep off the ground standing up, and if you put a bar around 75 millimetres by 50 above the ground they will perch there to sleep.
And you will of course need to provide both water and food, generally inside the chook shed, though this is not essential.
But if the food or water is placed under the perch it will become fouled with droppings.
Once you’ve made the decision to keep chickens you are also committed to some regular work, namely cleaning the chicken coop. It will need a soft material on the floor of the coop, I generally use sawdust. It soaks up the droppings well but needs to be cleaned out from time to time. Put it on the garden as it makes wonderful fertiliser.
The best part of keeping chickens is collecting eggs every day. Organic free range eggs taste better than supermarket eggs and you’re never left with too many as you will always find neighbours happy to buy them from you.
So you can see there are good reasons for keeping chickens. As well as being wonderful companions for the children they also provide something useful for your fridge.
And there’s no doubt that kids love chickens, ours absolutely adore them.
So spend a little time researching keeping chooks and consider the type of chicken coop you will need, whether you will build it or buy it, where you will put it and how you will clean it, then get yourself some chickens. You won’t regret it.