We love having chickens on our farm. Sure, we love the delicious fresh eggs they bear us, but there are so many other reasons we love having these birds around.
The most economically compelling reason to keep chickens is to recycle food waste. This composts it into a wonderful organic soil builder for your garden as well. The more kitchen waste you feed your chickens, the more nitrogen rich fertilizer they will give you to compost with.
Hand in hand with that is their natural digging, pecking, and scratching abilities. This helps you to create top notch gardening beds. You can grow more produce in a smaller space, which means less water - which should be important to us all.
Chickens also love to eat all of those nasty protein packet insects in your yard. This is awesome for you because maybe it will save you from a tick bite or two, but it will also protect your precious garden as well. They also love to eat most weeds, making your work load much lighter.
And my favorite reason? Chickens are loveable pets. Increase your stress lowering hormones and form a relationship with these useful and happy birds. Some chickens are even bred as therapy birds. We find the most happiness in caring for our chickens, just getting outside with them each day and exchanging food for eggs and giving them a hello is enough to make all of us smile.
