All Pets Web – Not Just Dogs n Cats

We all love eggs. They’re wonderful to eat, nutritious and make a great omelette. And we all love pets. So why not satisfy your roots for pets and for eggs by keeping chickens, and eat omelette every day?

As all kids love pets they will also love chickens. I have chickens and I have kids and the kids are delighted with their chickens. They feed them and pat them and give them names. Chickens are cheap to feed, and if you let them out in the garden during the day they’ll eat those pesky bugs that are feasting on your flowers. They are also relatively easy to keep and don’t make lots of noise as long as you don’t get a rooster.

But before you buy some chickens you do need to think about housing them. You will need a good chicken coop to house your chickens. Let’s consider the ins and outs of chicken coops.

Of course you need to decide how many chickens you are going to have in your chicken coop. 3 or 4 hens is really quite sufficient to the average household, and if you are keeping this number than a simple portable chicken house that can move around the garden is quite sufficient.

There are also regulations in some places governing the keeping of chickens as well as the size of chicken houses and you should check this out first.

The cheapest way to get your own chicken coop is to build it yourself. If you’re handy with a hammer and nails it shouldn’t be too difficult. Some treated pine, some chicken wire and a few odds and ends and you can have your own chicken coup built during an afternoon.

There’s some essentials when building a chicken coop, including a nesting box where the hens will lay their eggs.

At night chooks need to roost to sleep, so they need some perches above the floor of the chicken house to do so.

There is a simple A-frame design that is easy to build and quite adequate for 3 or 4 chickens. Run rods from one side of the chicken coop to the other for the chickens to roost on at night and put some cover over this area so they are not roosting in the rain.

If you put handles on one end and wheels on the other it is then easy to move around the garden, and you move it every few days to fertilise different areas of the lawn.

You can always allow your chickens out of the henhouse during the day. Make sure however that they all return at night and the door is closed in case of foxes. Your chickens will clean up your yard of any nasty bugs.

Kids love keeping chickens and most of them love eating eggs, but remember that this basic work to do before you get started on your new hobby of keeping chickens. You’ve got to decide how many to have and either buy or build a good henhouse to house that number of chickens safely and uncomfortably.

All you have to do is get stuck into a simple handyman job building your chicken coop or buy a good one and then you can be comfortable knowing that you always have a fridge full of eggs.