Why Chickens are Easy to Keep

I wish someone had told me that keeping a small flock of 3 to 6 chickens was almost as easy as owning an outdoor cat. People seem to enjoy owning chickens and for good reason: they are useful and easy to care for!

Why Chickens are Easy to Keep

Chickens are fluffy, social feathered friends who lay the protein-rich eggs we love. If you have wanted a backyard flock of your own, let me share why chickens are so incredibly easy to keep!

Chickens Live Outside

Once you have built or purchased a sturdy-made coop, the chickens live outside. The coop design will vary by geographic area, with northern coops needing insulation and southern coops needing much more airflow. Ideally they will have a large run or get yard ranging time so they can eat grass, wild seeds and bugs.

Why Chickens are Easy to Keep — A barnyard full of different breed chickens!

Food is Not Expensive

Chickens need about ½ cup of food each day. Unless they are locked up 24/7, this food does not need to come from a bag. They love bird seed and dried meal worms are their favorite treat.

how much does a chicken eat per each day hen bantam rooster scratch peck feed purina commercial food — Adult laying hens only eat about a half cup of food each day. Bantams (miniature chickens) consume even less.

Eating greens is what gives you those gorgeous orange yolks

Chickens love to eat grass and weeds, which your yard is already growing for free! They also love eating spiders, cockroaches, lizards and small snakes so if possible, let them out to handle your pest control. These natural foods promote rich, golden orange yolks.

Welsummer hen free ranging pasture fed Why Chickens are Easy to Keep — A Welsummer hen free ranging over pasture grass. She will lay eggs with deep orange yolks, thanks to the grass, bugs and weed seeds that she is consuming. Hens who eat sweet or hot pepper seeds from your kitchen scraps will also produce rich colored yolks.

Your kitchen scraps can help feed a small flock

If you regularly eat fruits and vegetables, you are probably generating enough strawberry tops, lettuce bottoms, melon rinds, bell pepper seeds, veggie ends and other discards that could be turned into eggs. When combined with free ranging, your birds will eat less commercial feed and enjoy better nutrition from the fresh foods. (Afflink)

Chickens will GLADLY consume all your kitchen scraps and leftovers. Yes, you can even feed your chickens meat and leftover chicken. They are natural omnivores.

Chickens Recycle Their Own Egg Shells

Chickens need calcium to continue laying eggs with thick, healthy shells. While she does get some calcium from grass and greens, feeding egg shells to your flock is a great way to ensure everyone gets the calcium hens need. Offering flaked oyster shell is another wonderful way to supplement calcium. (Afflink.)

Give hens the egg shells along with kitchen scraps! It will keep them laying well. Breed Shown: Midnight Marans

Amazon will Deliver Chicken Food and Supplies For You

My favorite organic brand is Scratch & Peck Feeds, which can be delivered right to my farmhouse door. Poultry grit, flaked oyster shell, shell & grit cups, chick waterers, chick feeders, hen hydrators and hanging feeders can all be ordered as needed for a backyard flock. (Afflinks)

Watering is Easy

Chickens quickly learn how to drink from a watering nipple, which allows you to select from any number of waterer options that keep clean water always available. Once the waterer is hung, you do the refilling and the chickens get what they need. That’s it. Most hold 2-3 days worth of water for a small flock so weekend trips away are not an issue.

Clean Up is Quick

Using 4 to 6 inches of wood chip mulch on the floor of your coop makes clean up easy. Simply turn the top mulch-and-poop layer over with a rake to bring clean mulch to the surface and allow the waste to break down naturally. This mulch can also be removed and composted to create a beneficial fertilizer for bedding plants or a garden. Add fresh mulch once a month or as needed.

Odor Control is Simple!

If you are worried about chicken poops smelling, invest in a bag of Sweet PDZ Horse Stall Refresher. It is granular zeolite, a natural mineral, which absorbs any ammonia smells instantly and drops any hen house odor to ZERO. Use 1 cup for most backyard coops and 2 cups for a coop and run larger than 16 feet long. Sweet PDZ (which is made of the mineral zeolite) is 100% garden safe and actually GOOD for your garden soil’s aeration so it is safe to compost the chicken droppings with the Sweet PDZ (zeolite) granules.

Breeds Shown: Buff Orpington (gold, on left) and Red Cochin (in front with the feathered legs)

Chicken Poops are Good Compost

Chickens and vegetable gardening seem to go hand-in-hand. And why not? They are pooping fertilizer! Let droppings and coop litter decompose for 3-6 months before using in your garden beds. If using mulch in your coop, mix the chicken poop + mulch with grass or any green garden weeds/clippings to create the perfect balance of green + brown to produce a rich compost.

My chicken coop and run are next to my vegetable garden. The girls love it when I throw garden weeds and fallen tomatoes to them!

Nest Boxes are Easy to Make

My favorite nest box is a plastic tote bin with a hole cut in the lid. The tote is then turned on its side, with the cut out lid facing forward, and filled with straw. The hens can easily enter and it accommodates up to three hens (who seem to like piling all in at once). The entire thing can be removed from the coop to be scrubbed clean and in a pinch you can use the tote as a crate for a sick, injured or broody chicken. We fill ours with straw, which we buy from the feed store. A bale lasts for months if it is kept dry. Plastic milk crates also make fantastic nest boxes that can be hosed clean and dried in the sun every few months if they get dusty or pooped on.

Chickens really are not picky about what type of nest box you use. They will lay an egg in just about anything lined with straw!

You Get Eggs

There is nothing more exciting that getting that first egg. Easter Eggers are even more fun because you don’t know what color each hen will lay until the first egg shows up in the nest box. Fresh laid eggs with deep orange yolks from chickens who eat grass and greens have a delicious, natural buttery flavor that store bought eggs simply cannot match.

Colored eggs are the best! Click the image to learn what breed laid each egg.

Grocery Store Shortages No Longer Affect You

Everyone else may be scrambling to find eggs while the grocery stores are sold out but it has no impact on you. (Except for a number of friends calling to ask for eggs!) The peace of mind and backyard food security is wonderful!

Yes they are! I feed and water my flock in the morning, collect eggs in the afternoon and they put themselves to bed (go to roost) at night. During the day they scratch and peck for seeds and bugs while waiting for me to bring them kitchen scraps from lunch and dinner. We have almost zero kitchen waste and enjoy the most delicious breakfasts, baked goods, and rich quiches with eggs from our flock!

Chickens are Fun!

Watching bugs and your kitchen scraps being gobbled up (and sometimes squabbled over) by big, fluffy, happy, clucking hens is relaxing and enjoyable. I truly wish someone had told me years ago how easy chickens are to care for each day. The hardest part is always setting up a sturdy coop to protect your flock from predators. Once shelter, food, grit and water are done, the routine of daily care is simple.

Two standard coturnix quail eggs next to a brown chicken egg.

If your neighborhood does not allow chickens, seriously consider keeping Coturnix Quail! Their coops are just as cute, the eggs bake and taste like chicken eggs but they are perfectly legal to keep in every state and HOA because they are legally classified as game birds, NOT poultry, and the hens are silent!

I Promise, Chickens are SO EASY!

Whether you want to keep a cute, tiny coop with just 3 hens or a flock of adorable miniature chickens (bantams), they are delightful, simple to care for pets. You’re going to love owning laying hens!