Whilst managing hens can easily be a wonderful hobby for the household, and whilst I personally consider that hens make wonderful pets, there are some disadvantages to maintaining hens as well as positives.

Whilst maintaining chooks can certainly be a fantastic hobby for the household, and whilst I personally consider that chooks make wonderful pets, there are some negatives to managing chickens as well as positives.

Lets take into consideration the pluses first. Certainly the greatest plus to attempting to keep chooks would have to be all those tasty roam around eggs just laying there waiting around that you simply get your hands on every afternoon or night. There is nothing like cooking your own nutritious, and tasty free range eggs that were laid on that day simply for you. No chooks needed to suffer coping with a tiny cage to lay all of them for you personally, so you can easily feel great about having a fridge crammed filled with healthful foods.

Next chooks can make great pets despite the fact that they’re just fowls. Youngsters just adore them. Ours will happily pick them up and carry them all over for hours. It’s quite a delight keeping hens, and when you permit them to free range around your garden it is satisfying observing all of them out your kitchen window when you make supper.

Third, if you make it possible for them to roam around at home they will thoroughly clean up a whole host of pesky insects which, if left on their own, could possibly eat your garden. It was our chickens that helped save our back garden from two summers of hopper plague. You should see how many grasshoppers one chook can feed on daily.

Fourthly it’s pretty simple, not like for most animals, to provide for your hens so that you do not need to make arrangements for them every time you go on vacations. As I have substantial automatic storage containers for feeding and supplying water we are able to go on vacations leaving behind the chooks to their own devices and have never ever lost just one yet, whilst on trips.

Now to the disadvantages. Like all pets chickens may get sick and pass away. We have had occasions when the children have found a dead chicken in the chook coop, and this is distressing for the kids. Whilst this obviously is applicable to all domestic pets it is more prevalent when you keep your own chickens. This of course is simply because you have a tendency to have quite a few hens, whereas a lot of people may have one or at most 2 pet dogs or cats. In our situation with 15 chickens it is more frequent. Of course hens have a shorter life than some pets such as puppies or cats.

Second of all despite the fact that chickens will cleanup many of the nasty bugs around your back garden they do so by scratching, and this can scratch up the earth of your garden beds. They will also peck at your vegetables if you grow your own and they particularly like pecking tomatoes. You might need to safeguard your fruit and vegetables or some area of your back garden.

Thirdly, like for many other pets, there is some work required, including frequent cleansing of the chicken coop. Hens poop all over the place and the coop, as well as feeding and water containers, must be cleaned. You must also learn more about pest avoidance as chickens could certainly be susceptible to such challenges as mites.

Furthermore while getting fresh new roam around eggs is fantastic it doesn’t occur on a regular basis. Chickens can go off the lay throughout the cold winter months, and older chooks lay fewer eggs than young ones. For this reason there might be times when you’re paying for chook feed but still purchasing eggs.

I think nevertheless that the positives of always keeping chooks far outweighs the negatives. They’re one of the very few family pets that are productive in addition to just being a family pet, and for anyone considering managing hens as pets my reply is always to do it. Not many people have regretted keeping chickens.

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