Have you been thinking about sprucing up your backyard? Or maybe you want to adopt more sustainable and environmentally friendly practices?
Well, believe it or not, a chicken coop can help you achieve these goals!
At first, this might seem like a wacky idea, especially if you have been raised as a city dweller. But if you stop and think a bit more deeply about it, you’ll quickly find there are several reasons why having one can bring a lot of benefits to your family life.
Still not convinced?
Well, allow us to give you some food for thought.
Here are five reasons why chicken coops are a fantastic addition to any family-friendly backyard.
Before outlining these reasons, it’s worth confirming what exactly a chicken coop is.
Well, a chicken coop is essentially a home for your chickens, i.e. an enclosed and secure shelter where they can live and sleep.
While they come in various sizes and designs, most include nesting boxes, which provide a space where hens can lay eggs. They also tend to have roosting bars to perch on and a fenced area or outdoor run where they can forage and roam during the daytime.
The best-designed coops make it easy for you to clean, collect eggs, and provide the flock with food and water. Additionally, they provide the chickens with protection from both the weather and predators like snakes to ensure they stay healthy and safe.
You can find some good examples of chicken coops from Somerzby.
Now you know what a chicken coup is, here are five reasons why you should get one for your family-friendly backyard.
Perhaps the biggest and most obvious benefit of getting a chicken coup is that you can have fresh eggs every morning.
As a food, eggs are incredibly good for us, and there is nothing quite like cracking a freshly laid one open for breakfast that came from our own backyard.
Eggs you buy in a store just can’t compete with the freshness and flavour of those that come from chickens you’ve raised yourself. Moreover, as you know exactly what your chickens have been eating, you can be confident you’re consuming eggs that are free from additives and chemicals.
Perhaps best of all, as fresh eggs are laid every day, you will always have a regular supply of them. This means you’ll never struggle for a breakfast or lunch option, and you’ll never need to quickly run down to the local supermarket to pick some up because you’ve run out.
Like many items at the supermarket, the cost of eggs has shot up significantly in recent years.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a dozen eggs would have set you back $0.76 in 1973. Today, it is more likely to cost between $5.40 and $8+ depending on whether you are buying free-range or caged eggs.
Subsequently, if you consumed a dozen eggs a week laid in your chicken coop, you could save the tidy sum of between $280.80 and $416 a year.
Best of all, if you had any spare, you could even sell them and make a little extra cash in the process to help out with the cost of living.
Another good reason to keep a chicken coop in your backyard is because you can feed the flock your food scraps.
While this won’t help them to meet all of their nutritional needs, it will provide diversity to their diet and reduce wastage in your home.
If you have any leftover food items like fruits and vegetable peels, pasta, and rice, don’t throw them in the bin. Instead, boil them into a hearty mash to feed to your birds once it has cooled.
Not only will the chickens love it, but you will be able to teach your children about sustainability as well.
Just be mindful that you can’t give all your food scraps to your chicken because the likes of meat, eggs, avocado, onions, and some pips and seeds are not good for them. Similarly, junk and processed foods are off-limits, too.
Did you know that chickens are excellent natural pest controllers?
They love to forage and will happily gobble up insects such as mosquitos, slugs and beetles that can wreak havoc on your garden.
If you are tendering a veggie patch or cultivating flower beds, letting chickens freely roam around your backyard will go a long way towards keeping it insect-free in a way that doesn’t require you to use chemicals.
You also won’t get bitten as much by pesky bugs!
You might think chickens are a lot of work, but actually, they are pretty low-maintenance once you’ve got the basics done.
All they really need is a secure coop, food, fresh water, and a bit of space to roam around. Once they have got that, they are happy.
Unlike some pets that demand constant attention, chickens are quite independent. So, the only other thing you need to do to maintain them is clean out the coop every now and then.
