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Keeping some chickens at home could just be the best decision you've ever made. There's plenty of reasons why, but the 2 main reasons are that kids absolutely love chickens and that they will produce eggs for you every day so are they are productive.

However before you start buying your first brood of chooks you do need to spend a little time considering how you will house them. Chickens are generally housed in what is called a chicken coop, chicken house or henhouse.

It's quite possible to build your own chicken coop, it's really not a lot more than a garden shed with a few changes. But you can buy good henhouses as well.

There are a few specific things that you will need to install in your henhouse before you get your first bunch of chooks. They will need nesting boxes to lay their eggs, and to sit on those eggs if you let them build up, and it is worth having more than one nesting box even if you only have a small number of hens. Make them small so that only one chook can fit in the nesting box at one time or you will find 2 of them are battling for position at the same time to lay their eggs.

And it's also important that they be relatively dark, as chickens like to nest in dark places, and if they aren't dark they will choose somewhere darker, like the corner of the chicken coop.

And you will need perches as well. Chooks sleep off the ground standing up, and if you put a bar around 75 millimetres by 50 above the ground they will perch there to sleep.

Of course they will need food and water, which you can provide either inside the hen house, or outside, as long as it is sheltered.

If you provide food and water in the chicken coop you will need to make sure that it is not underneath the perch or the chicken droppings will foul the food.

Once you have purchased your chooks you have committed to regular cleaning of the henhouse. You will need to lay a soft material on the floor of the house, such as hay or sawdust. My preference is sawdust, and over time it soaks up the droppings, but beyond a certain point must be cleaned out. However sawdust full of chicken droppings makes a wonderful fertiliser and if you spread it around the garden the plants will love it.

Collecting the eggs every day is a delight that makes up for the cleaning. Your chickens will deliver you a delicious offering each day that is organic and free range and which will taste better than the supermarket variety eggs. And if you get too many try asking the neighbours if they would like to buy some free range eggs will find that they are extremely keen, so you're rarely stuck with too many eggs.

So there's good reasons for keeping chickens as pets for the children. There's many animals that make good pets are very few if any that provide you with a useful product to eat as well.

And there is little doubt that children love chooks, ours wouldn't be without them.

So spend a little time researching keeping chooks and consider the type of chicken coop you will need, whether you will build it or buy it, where you will put it and how you will clean it, then get yourself some chickens. You won't regret it.

About the Author:

Peter has a website all about Chicken Coops where you can get more advice about finding a great Chicken Coop to keep your chooks healthy and happy and laying eggs

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