The Positives And Negatives Of Trying To Keep Hens

Whilst trying to keep hens can be a wonderful activity for the family, and whilst I personally consider that chickens make wonderful pets, there are some negatives to always keeping chickens as well as positives.

Lets consider the benefits first. Not surprisingly the most significant positive to maintaining chickens would have to be all those tasty free range eggs simply laying there waiting around that you just find every breakfast or evening. There is nothing like enjoying your personal wholesome, and yummy free range eggs which were laid that day simply for you. No chickens needed to go through living in a little cage to lay them for you personally, and you should feel great about having a refrigerator jam-packed filled with healthful food.

Secondly chooks can make fantastic pets despite the fact that they’re just birds. Youngsters really adore them. Ours will happily pick them up and carry them around for hours. It’s quite a joy trying to keep chooks, and when you allow them to roam free all around your back garden it is rewarding observing all of them out your kitchen windows when you cook supper.

In addition, if you permit all of them to free range around the house they will clean up a whole host of pesky insects which, if left on their own, would possibly eat your back garden. It was our chooks that assisted save our backyard from 2 summers of hopper plague. You should see how many hopper one chicken can certainly consume in one day.

Fourthly it’s quite possible, unlike for most domestic pets, to provide for your hens so that you do not need to make plans for them every time you go on vacations. As I have huge automatic containers for feeding and watering we are able to go on vacations leaving the chickens to their own devices and have never ever lost a single yet, even though on trips.

Now to the disadvantages. Like all pets chickens could certainly get sick and pass away. We have had occasions when the kids have discovered a deceased hen in the chicken coop, and this is distressing for the kids. While this obviously is applicable to all pets it is more common when you keep your own chooks. This of course is because you tend to have quite a number of hens, whereas many people may have one or at most 2 pet dogs or pet cats. In our situation with fifteen hens it is more frequent. And of course chooks have a shorter lifespan than some pets such as puppies or cats.

Second of all despite the fact that chooks will pick up quite a few of the nasty insects round your garden they do so by scratching, and this can certainly scratch up the soil of your yard beds. They will also peck at your fruit and vegetables if you grow your very own and they especially adore pecking at tomatoes. You will need to safeguard your fruit and vegetables or some area of your yard.

Thirdly, like for many other domestic pets, there can be some work involved, such as frequent cleansing of the chicken coop
. Chooks poop all over the place and the house, as well as feeding and watering storage containers, must be washed. You will also need to study a little more about pest avoidance as chickens can easily be prone to such problems as mites.

Fourthly while getting fresh free range eggs is fantastic it doesn’t happen all the time. Chooks tend to go off the lay throughout the chilly winter months, and older hens lay fewer eggs than young ones. Because of this there can be times when you are having to pay for chook food but still purchasing eggs.

I think however that the advantages of keeping chooks far outweighs the disadvantages. They are one of the few family pets that are productive in addition to just being a family pet, and for anybody thinking about attempting to keep hens as domestic pets my answer is always to go for it. Not many folks have regretted getting hen chickenschooks.

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