This weekend my dad and I have been carrying on with the extension and one job that needed doing was to move the chickens by the house. In doing this it gives us much better access to the garden to and to move building materials around.
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| Moving the coop |
This got me thinking about the pros and cons of having the
chickens next to the house. I've had chickens living there in one form or another for the past 4 and a half years. It was located about 15ft from the house and was big size, easily accommodating 20 or so chickens.
Pros -
Easy to feed your chickens kitchen scraps (if you did that, I don't of course as it's illegal in the UK..)
Easy to keep an eye on the hens - more likely to spot/hear problems
Less likely predator attack - as the predator is much less likely to go so near to the house.
Easy to collect the eggs - I have been known to run out and grab an egg half way through baking a cake.
Quicker to feed and check water - well it's less far to walk anyway!
Easier to enjoy their company!
Cons-
Noise - chickens even without a cockerel are noisy creatures. I personally like the noise they make but some people don't.
Smell - there is a little bit of smell that goes with a large flock of birds, but cleaned out regularly it's not too much of an issue.
Flies - this year this has been a major issue, we've had loads of lies in the house and we're sure it's from the chicken pen.
Not on fresh ground - in a fixed pen like we had by the house you can't move your hens around to give them fresh grass, although they had loads of weeds as a constant supply of greens.
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| Chickens on new grass |
What do you think - anything you'd add to the list?
Do you keep your chickens near to the house?
