8 REASONS TO KEEP BACKYARD CHICKENS

Delaware and Barred Plymouth Rock Chickens

CHICKENS ARE AWESOME

Chickens have many functions that are practical and low maintenance. I'm prepared to give you a whole chicken commercial about this turn of the century product that makes your life and  the lands life so much better.

 Except this isn't a product, its a mind and body of its own; and if you do it right... you don't have to do anything but reap in all the benefits.

REASONS TO KEEP BACKYARD CHICKENS

REASON 1: EASY TO KEEP

These little birdies are little to no maintenance. Depending on where you live you might have to put in some heavy fencing, but that's only if you have a lot of predators.

Where I live there's nothing to worry about but neighborhood cats and raccoons. Some people have problems with hawks and foxes...even BEARS! ahhhh

Full Circle Farm Chicken Coop

DAILY ROUTINE

You can make a chicken setup with no maintenance needed. Free ranging your chickens can even eliminate the cost of feed. If the chickens are given a safe space to sleep and perch (and lay eggs) with the right coop design there is no chores needed to keep it running. 

Coop designs differ from no maintenance to a lot of maintenance per week or daily. This is the Best No Maintenance Chicken Coop Design hands down.

Full Nesting boxes

REASON 2: FREE FOOD

Chickens give YOU free food... how is that not a deal breaker? how are you not calling your local feed store for baby chicks yet?!

With the right steps and right breed you can get all your hens to lay eggs EVERYDAY, like my hens. I have 5 hens at the moment and I get 5 eggs EVERYDAY! 

REASON 3: TILLING MACHINES

Honestly, if chickens didn't lay eggs I would still get them. A couple of years ago when I wanted to start a garden I didn't know how to start. I knew you couldn't just throw seeds on the grass but that was as far as my knowledge went. I didn't know how to start.

Hens solve that problem for me. My girls make a perfect garden plot. Their poop fertilize the soil. They eat and worn out the grass if you keep them in a small spot for a long period of time. This tills and aerates the ground providing perfect crop conditions.

Mulch is a perfect source to suffocate the weeds but not your plants and soon it will decompose into rich soil. Manual labor is not fun, so kill two birds (not the chickens... don't kill the chickens) with one stone and have the chickens do it!

By throwing the mulch straight into the chicken area they will spread it out for you! Instead of sweating watch the pretty little birdies did it for you. The reasons your birds will spread it out is because that's how they found their food. They look for bugs and seeds inside the mulch meaning... FREE FOOD.

REASON 4: CHICKENS ARE INEXPENSIVE

If you can't afford to free range there are always other options. Chicken feed by itself won't make a big dent in your pocket, but if you want to lower the price even more it's pretty easy to do.

WEEDS

Save your grass clipping. Cut your weeds. All this is free food. Throw it in with the chickens and whatever they don't eat is heaven for your soil. If you wanted to you could even GROW your own supply of chicken food: sunflowers, wheat grass, chickweed, dandelion, beautyberry, etc.

PROTEIN 

To go the extra mile you can even cultivate bugs for your beauties: meal worms, solider grubs, red wiggler/ earthworms, all easy and low maintenance. Check out easy ways to grow Mealworms or Red Wigglers - Composting worms here!

REASON 5: TURNS FOOD SCRAPS 

By giving your chickens your food scraps you get a sense of peace with the earth for not throwing perfectly good food away. Besides them turning the scraps into eggs like previously mentioned you also get black gold. Black gold is the perfect soil. It's filled in rich nutrients and minerals your plant thrive off, they practically can't get enough of that stuff.

A bag of that stuff sells for $10 at the store! and you get it for free!

Cornish Cross Meat Bird

REASON 6: DUAL PURPOSE

Depending on the type of chicken you get (you'll most likely go for the layer birds to start off with) a dual Purpose chicken is a smart investment. My favorite birds are 10 Best Chicken Breeds.

 You could opt to get meat birds all together. You'll get faster food and not as tough meat. For sustainability dual purpose hens make a delicious chicken broth. Usually after 3 summers a hens production rate will dramatically decrease, leaving you with two choices. Okay three choices. You can keep the bird as she will she be able to produce good dirt, sell her/give her away, or cull her. 

For those of you that don't know culling is when you kill, cook, and eat a bird. Most people just use it for the killing part though. 

Its recommended to slow cook the old hens to make their meat not as chewy. You could slow cook it in a crock pot or make chicken broth. Either way you'll have delicious salad meat or whatever other recipes rumble your tummy.

REASON 7: FREE ENTERTAINMENT

Little pretty feathers and bright red crowns. These gorgeous creatures are the closest thing to Dinosaurs and they sure do look like it. The way they gawk at everything they look at, its adorable. They love dust baths, swishing their wings around in the sand and flinging it on their bodies, adorable. Scratch is their favorite pastime including squawking whenever your around for food. 

Kids go crazy for their fluff butts... or run away in fear... there is NO in between. Kids are so hypnotized with them, I swear if we had them they would dress the chickens up in pretty little dresses... I would too!

Kids playing with the Chickens 

REASON 8: FREE PEST CONTROL

Chickens LOVE food. Their diet consists of grass, seeds, grit, and bugs. Yummy right. I've even seen mine eat lizards!

Gardens and bugs don't go good together. YES the earth needs them, YES their good for the ecosystem, but are they really good when you want to eat a big ripe tomato and you flip it over only to find a big worm enjoying that tomato before you?

Chickens don't completely get rid of that problem but they sure do help! Just remember that they to will enjoy that big juicy tomato before you if given the choice of course.