Chicken keeping is now one of the fastest growing hobbies in the UK.  One reason is that chickens make lovely and placid family pets as well as representing a major potential saving on the housekeeping budget.

Keeping chickens is also profitable because believe it or not, each chicken you keep (after feeding) can save you about £65.00 each year, so if you were thinking of keeping four chickens, you would save about £268.00 a year.

For this amount of money you could buy 300 free range eggs in the supermarket where the average price of a free range egg is about 27p per egg.  Some supermarkets are charging as much as 35p (and more) for an egg of the organic variety !!

Keeping chickens is fun, relaxing, and low maintenance, and they make productive pets and are a magnet for children.  Hens, like children, are bossy, demanding, endlessly curious and easily gratified.  They are funny to watch, make great friends with you and lay eggs too !!  But be warned, chickens also like to have dust baths, peck at your tomatoes and can make a chaotic mess of the garden.   The upside to this is that when the growing season is over they will eat pests, aerate the soil and leave fertilizer around as well as having a good time scratching in the dirt !! 

They are not as silly as a lot of people think either - they can be trained to answer to their name and will run towards you when you call them.

The major purchase is of course the chicken coop and these are available in different shapes and sizes to suit your garden, allotment, amount of birds you intend to keep etc. 

You will also have to provide your chickens will room to roam and scratch and run around and this could be in a covered chicken run or in the open air if you have the room.  It is however adviseable not to let chickens run loose in a neat garden that is precious to you and your family as chickens love to scratch around and will ruin a cultured garden very quickly !!

The more space you can allow your chickens, the happier they’ll be.  The term “pecking order” originated with hens and they will peck at each other for all sorts of reasons.  However, it is mostly to keep other chickens away from their little treasures, whether that be a glistening drop of rain or a juicy bug to eat !!  If they are given enough space, these little spats are harmless but when chickens get too crowded in their chicken house or their chicken run, they can become ruthless and have even been known to peck each other to death.   How much space your hens need depends on their sizes and breeds and the farmer or the breeder should be able to advise you wisely on this.

Feed and feeders are probably the next thing on the list and then the straw or hay for the nesting area of the poultry house.

All in all,the cost of setting up your hens will soon be raked back by the pleasure, interest and savings that will be gleaned from keepin them.