Save Money By Keeping Your Own Chickens.

Keeping my own chickens has been a long time wish of mine. I finally found time during the summer holidays a year ago, and built a medium sized chicken coop. The plans I bought over the internet made the process really easy. The ad for the book about how to build a chicken coop said that a 15 year old could build it. That would be about right. It was really easy to follow the step-by-step plans. I can use a hammer, a saw and a screwdriver and that’s about all you’ll need by way of tools.

I want to tell you a bit more about my hobby of keeping chickens – I do it just as a hobby, not professionally, and see if I can help you to make some decisions if you’re thinking about keeping chickens in your backyard.

There was a time when chicken was a meal for a special, celebratory occasion. Today of course chicken is very common and hardly special at all. Chicken factories produce so many millions of birds that the availability and price of the meat has come down. The way chickens are raised in batteries is also a major reason why I keep my own brood, in my own suburban backyard.

If you’ve ever seen a battery hen in a chicken factory you will know what I am talking about. The cruelty these birds have to endure for their whole life is nothing short of a disgrace and a blot on our conscience. I had seen enough cancerous, deformed and deranged hens, picking at their own and others flesh out of sheer madness, that I stopped eating chickens and eggs for quite a while until free range products became readily available.

Then I discovered that free range did not always mean what I thought it meant – what it is supposed to mean – and I decided to keep my own chickens in my own chicken coop.

I did not intend to go on a crusade against chicken farms here so let me tell you of some other very good reasons to keep your own chickens.

An obvious benefit is the eggs that one will harvest. The eggs from a truly free-range chicken are nothing short of spectacularly delicious. The yolk is not that washed out colour of a battery egg from a chicken pumped full of estrogen and growth hormone. Instead, it’s a bright, vivid yellow/orange colour with an absolute burst of flavour.

I know some folk who made the mistake of giving their birds names so they will never slaughter their chickens for the table. I keep my birds anonymous so that I am not emotionally distraught when I slaughter them. The meat is quite different to a supermarket bird. It’s plump and has a taste that is just outstanding. The skin crisps up quicker. I don’t know exactly how and why but it’s just markedly better tasting than a supermarket bird. I think it’s the chicken feed and whats in it the has a long term effect on the quality and taste of the meat.

The freshness of the meat and eggs from your backyard brood is a contributory factor to the improved taste of course, but the biggest influence on the taste of the products is the absence of chemicals in the birds diet. Chemicals fed to battery raised chickens destroys the natural taste of the eggs and the meat. The chemicals, by the way, also find their way into your system and so you have also probably ingested female hormones and steroids with every egg and piece of chicken you’ve ever eaten. The fishmeal additive in the chicken feed of factory birds affects the flavour of the meat.

In times like these when most people are trying to save some household costs and also trying to be more environmentally responsible, building a chicken coop and keeping your own chickens is a fairly substantial step in the right direction and it’s very easy to do. So, I guess the environmental impact is another good reason to have your own birds.

The fertiliser produced by the chickens is fantastic for your garden. Gardeners can save money using a non-phosphate laden fertiliser that comes naturally from the chickens.

Since the kids moved out there is often leftover food in our refrigerator that goes to waste. Well I should say used to go to waste because the chickens love leftovers. Onions and garlic are not good for them but all other foods are welcomed by them. Not just leftovers but all the scraps from meal preparation as well. They are little fertiliser factories taking the scraps and the peels and turning it into fertiliser that enhances the plants and vegetables we have growing. It’s lovely to see the cycle of nature as it should be. They’ll trim the grass for you too. Like little lawnmowers!

If you keep your chickens as pets then you will get all the benefits that all pets give their owners. For me – well I don’t see the chickens as anything other than foodstuff.

If you build the right chicken coop for your intended number of chickens and for the location then your chicken coop becomes a pleasure to maintain. The chicken coop should be large enough, well ventilated and comfortable for the birds. You’ll get more eggs from a happy, contented brood.

Is it difficult to build a chicken coop. It’s not that difficult if you have basic skills. If you know how to use a hammer and a saw, you’ll be fine. That’s about it. The plans I eventually bought are step-by-step type plans so it was easy to follow. I was fortunate to choose a book of plans that also had other very valuable and useful information in it. Such as: where to place you coop, how to ensure that it doesn’t get too hot in the chicken coop and how to construct a coop that is easy to clean. Also, the book  contained advice on how to choose the correct type of bird for your area.

This is very good value from a book that only costs about $30. I bought all the material required for my chicken coop at a salvage yard selling recyccled timber and so on. I built a medium sized chicken coop for well under $200 and there is a local (major) hardware outlet that sells what I think is a lesser product for over $950. I saved a packet. My $200 investment was returned to me in under 6 months just on the value of eggs produced. By the way I keep 10 hens and I get 6 to 8 eggs every day. If you promise not to tell the taxman, I’ll let you know that I sell 2-3 doz eggs a week and although I charge almost double the supermarket price, I have no shortage of eager customers!

You can buy the book that I used on the internet for only $29.95. Just click here. I really found it to be very useful – exactly what I needed. You get it as an instant download, as soon as you pay. The online payment process is 100% secure.

That’s it. I hope that this information was of some help to you and I hope you enjoy building your chicken coop as much as I enjoyed the task of building mine. It’s a good thing to do and the upside is substantial. Enjoy the project!