The perfect pet for adults and children is chickens. They are lots of fun to have around, clean up nasty bugs in the garden and give you lots of wonderful free range eggs to eat.
Many people assume that keeping chickens is just something that you can do if you live in the country. However nothing could be further from the truth and there are plenty of people living in the middle of suburbia who have the delight of keeping pet chickens, and eating fresh free range eggs.
Of course you need to check out the rules and regulations from your local council to see what you are and are not allowed to do when it comes to keeping chickens. For instance many councils don’t allow the keeping of roosters in built-up areas because of the early morning noise, and also have in some instances regulations about how many hens you can have and about the building and positioning of chicken houses.
Once you’ve researched the regulations and found out what you can and cannot do then there is no reason why the average suburban dweller cannot keep backyard chickens.
I am often asked how many chickens to have and what breed of chickens to buy.
Of course this is, in both cases, a matter of personal choice, however as a general guideline you will find that a good layer will produce around 300 eggs per year. Or roughly 5 to 6 eggs per week. This will subside during the winter.
You can use this figure to decide how many chooks to keep depending on how many eggs you want.
But it’s rare that you will have too many eggs because there are always plenty of neighbours who will happily buy your free range eggs from you.
On that basis, for the average family, 3 or 4 hens is usually sufficient, though more is more fun.
And what type of chicken to buy? There are many breeds, and there are different ways to select your hens. Do you want wonderful looking chickens or are you just looking for hens that will produce as many eggs as possible? In our case our choice of breed is determined by both considerations.
Because there is no doubt there are some wonderful fancy looking chickens available. Our kids love fancy chickens and so we have some wonderful pure white silky bantams. They don’t lay large eggs so are really there for their looks.
They look wonderful.
We have Isa Browns for their egg laying capacity. They do not sit on eggs very well and this means they are producing eggs for more days of the year, so are excellent layers. But they won’t hatch chicks for you.
If you have chicks it’s just wonderful and the kids love it. But the downside is that you will have to find something to do with those roosters, and unless you want to find that your small brood of 3 or 4 hens grows to 10 or 15 you will also have to find something to do with the hens.
However these are small problems when compared to the delights of keeping chickens as pets, and also of having those wonderful, tasty and fresh free range eggs to eat every day.
Find out more about keeping chickens at Peter’s website at http://www.chickenhouses.net.au