Why Does A Chicken House And Some Chickens Keep The Family Happy?
The kids have been pestering you for weeks about getting a pet. You consider getting a dog but you know that the barking will annoy the neighbours. And you also know that you don’t want a dog pooping all over the garden. Cats are nice but they scratch furniture. Have you considered keeping chickens as the ideal way to provide low maintenance pets for the kids?
There’s a whole host of reasons why chickens make wonderful pets. They don’t bark, and provided you don’t buy a rooster the neighbours won’t complain about the noise. They don’t smell and they don’t dig holes under the fence. They’re cheap to feed, need very little work and are fun day at around. Kids just love chickens, mine spend hours playing with them.
And on top of that you have an added bonus. Eggs.
When it comes to buying a pet so few people think about getting chickens. If your council allows you to have chickens at home, and most do, it’s certainly worth considering. However before you buy those first few chickens there’s one thing that you will need. A good chicken house.
Chicken houses need not be big if you only have 3 or 4 hens. It will need a good sheltered nesting area where they can lay their eggs as well as perches for them to sleep on at night.
A simple henhouse is relatively easy to build. Some treated timber suitable for outdoor use, some wire mesh and some material to cover parts of the chicken house where the chickens can have some shelter from the weather and you can get started with a hammer and nails. They will need a nesting area as well as some horizontal rungs to roost on at night.
For a small number of chickens, say 3 or 4, it is not necessary that it be particularly large. For 3 or 4 chickens it’s perfectly possible to build a hen house with handles on one end and wheels on the other so that you can move around the garden. During the day most people allow the chickens to free range in the garden eating those pesky bugs that have been attacking your vegetables and flowers.
It’s the perfect handyman project for you to do together with the kids. Buy some materials, grab a hammer and nails, round up the kids and spend the afternoon building a fine chook house for your soon-to-be chicken collection. The kids will love it.
So if you’ve been looking for a solution to being pestered by the kids for pets consider chickens. It’s a good way to you to show the kids how well you can build a chicken house, and you’ll have happy kids, happy chickens and lots of eggs for dinner if you do.
Then all you need to do is learn how to make omelettes and you’re happy as well As the kids.
