Why Are Chickens The Ideal Family Pet?

There’s no doubt that having a pet is a fine hobby for a family. But pets are not without their problems. It can get very expensive buying some pets and paying for the veterinary bills, extremely difficult to know what to do with some of them when you go away on holidays. Cats can devastate the local wildlife and dogs will bark at the neighbours and terrorise visitors.

But the perfect pet may well be chickens. They aren’t expensive to buy and they aren’t expensive to feed, they won’t bark at the neighbours, they don’t get sick often and if you organise it right you can go on holidays for a week or 2 quite easily.

And as well chickens are productive. They will provide your fridge with wonderful free range eggs from which you can cater to the family with healthy tasty food like fresh omelettes. There’s good reasons why you could consider that chickens are the perfect family pet.

And whilst it is true that you can’t sit a chicken on your lap to pat at night we still find that adults and particularly children adore chickens.

But as is the case with other pets you need to research a little about keeping chickens before you buy your first one. The primary consideration is where you will keep them. They live in a chicken coop, which is occasionally called a henhouse or a chicken house. There are many chicken coops available for sale although the cheapest way to get your coop is to build it yourself.

Your chickens will sleep in the chicken house at night however they much prefer to roam around outside of the coop during the day time. It’s perfectly possible to let your chickens free range around the garden during the day cleaning up the bugs, though you may get a little scratching and pecking of your flowers.

If you have tomatoes planted you do need to protect them as they love to peck ripe tomatoes.

Or else you can provide a dedicated chicken run around the hen house where they can roam during the day.

You will need to learn about feeding your hens. There are certain minimum requirements for protein and calcium which are important to meet if you want to get eggs, and so you will need to source some high protein foods, some shell grit to add calcium to their food and you will need to find appropriate appliances to deliver food and water.

And when holidays come it’s quite possible to provide your chickens with a large reliable supply of food and water and to go away to enjoy yourself.

So start learning about keeping chickens, and in particular about housing and feeding them and head out there and buy your first chicken. I absolutely guarantee that your children will love you for providing you with their chickens and you’ll probably love it yourself.

And when you have it all sorted and have bought your chickens sit back and enjoy your omelettes.