It is really fun to raise chickens at home and it is not difficult at all to look after them. Chickens are surprisingly friendly and affectionate creatures and they are very calming to watch.

They interact well with small children and other domestic and farmyard animals. Kids readily and enthusiastically learn to look after “their” chickens and to reap the rewards of daily egg collection in return for their newly learned skills in animal husbandry. There is a certain satisfaction in collecting and cooking with your own free range eggs.
There’s also a fair bit of pride involved in gifting fresh eggs to family, friends and neighbors, as well.

And if you raise chickens for meat as well as for eggs, you can be sure that your food supply is totally organic and free of those nasty chemicals that are rampant in shop bought poultry. Chickens are really easy to look after. With a well built coop and automatic feeders and watering system, they pretty much look after themselves. And all of these things – coops, feeders and water’s – are simple to put together in a sturdy and lasting framework. You can make simple nesting boxes out of wood or even cardboard boxes to place inside your coop so your hens lay their eggs where you want them for ease of collection. The floor of your coop can be scattered with pine shavings which you replace as little as a few times a year (and if you put the old pine shavings on your organic garden, your veggies will be very happy!)

Alternatively, your coop can sit on the ground. You can even build a portable coop that you move around the lawn as required, so the chickens always have access to fresh “green pick” and the odd unfortunate grub or worm. You can let your happy hens out to range free throughout the day and close them into your coop at night to keep them safe.

Understanding Chickens Breeds

Your choice of chicken will depend largely on your reason for actually having a chicken, whether it is for eggs, meat or both. You may also just be interested in having chickens as pets and therefore a breed which is more attractive and friendly in nature would be a better bet.

Chicken breeds can be broken down into 2 groups, namely bantam and large, with large being on average 20 to 25% bigger than bantams. These two chickens groups can then be further broken down into classes. Bantams are classified according to various characteristics. Things like cob style and leg feathering  to give an example.Large tend to be classes according to their places of origin , for example : Oriental , English , American or Asiatic.

They can be further broken down into varieties, which take into account things like colour and feature placement. Chickens are also broken down into comb style with the most common comb style being single but I think we should leave it there.

At the end of the day you really need to decide if you want a laying breed or a meat breed, or maybe a combination of both.