Chickens are often seen as simple poultry animals but have we ever wondered that they can be a lot more?
Our egg-providing species is a very misunderstood species and has excellent potential to be our pets. Your backyard can be an excellent place to raise these clucking companions. There are many advantages that you will see once you start raising chickens as your pets.
Free garden maintenance
Once you start keeping a flock of chickens in your backyard you will start to notice that they are helping you maintain your garden in some very unique ways. Chickens often strut around the garden looking for insects and pests that you would not want in your garden. They will eat up spiders, crickets, beetles, earwigs, ticks, and so on. Even their poop is known to be a very good fertilizer full of nitrogen.
Healthier eggs
If you’ve never had a fresh egg straight from a chicken then you really do not know what you’re missing out on. The eggs that you get from the market are nowhere close to being as tasty or nutritional as the ones your backyard pet hen will lay.
The eggs your pet will give you will have a yolk that will be a dark yellow and will taste much richer than any other egg you will buy from the market.
Low maintenance
Hens and roosters might seem like they need a lot of care but that is true only when they are very young and small. When they start growing up all they need are little snacks for chickens, a coop, and little cleaning at least once a month. Apart from that, you do not need to show any extra care. You can literally go away on a vacation and have someone check in once a week to restock food and water.
Setting the body clock
You must have heard the rooster crow early in the morning. They do this because they can sense light much better than humans. It is said that they can predict the sunrise almost an hour before it actually happens. Once you start waking up at the crow of a rooster you will realize that your body clock slowly gets conditioned to wake up at this time. Soon you will not need the rooster to wake you up as your body will do the needful automatically.
Excellent companions for children
Children are often only used to being around the usual pets like cats and dogs and when they are taken near chickens they get frightened beyond their wits. This kind of prejudice can be slowly taken away by exposing them to farm animals like chickens.
Having chicken as a pet means that they will be able to understand that all animals should be treated the same and will also learn a thing or two about avian life-forms and the cycle of life. Chickens are also intelligent animals and can be trained to make good companions for children.
People still do not treat chickens as animals that can make a good pet. In reality, chickens are quite intelligent and have other characteristics that will actually make them a very desirable pet. Only once you start raising them in your backyard will you understand them completely.
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