Chickens: 9 Reasons Why Your Family Needs This Amazing Bird

Nine (9) Reasons Why Your Family Needs This Amazing Bird

Chickens are one of the most beautiful nature’s gifts to man. When it comes to the provision of good healthy food, its economic viability to the family, chickens are indisputable the best.

 

Chickens are capable of improving the livelihood of the family, both financial and nutritional needs combined together.

 

READ ALSO:Five (5) Solid Ways You Can Create Wealth through Poultry Farming

 

 

These are the 8 powerful reasons why your family needs chickens:

1. Chickens Brings Sense of Peace, Happiness, and Pride

The feeling and happiness of waking up every morning.  To walk to your chicken coop, seeing your birds jumping and flapping their wings all around you. Filled with joy, signaling your arrival, anticipating feed, water, and care.

 

This satisfying feeling of accomplishment and self-sufficiency can only be derived by keeping happy healthy chickens.

 

The symbiotic relationship between the chicken and the owner. A situation whereby the owner takes care of the chickens. And the chickens in turn give farm fresh eggs and good tasty meat to the owner for the overall benefit of the entire family.

 

2. Chickens Brings Unity And Togetherness In The Family

When it comes to teamwork and getting the work done perfectly in record time. Agricultural ventures such as chicken production will always facilitate such a scenario.

 

The unity of the family comes to play. When family members make sacrifices of both their leisure time and financial resources to see to the success of the family enterprise.

 

This act alone will foster unity and togetherness in the family. Because each individual member of the family understands the importance and implication of contributing their own quarter for the benefit of the entire family.

 

READ ALSO: 7 Tips That Will Help You Create a Peaceful and a Happy Home

 

3. Chickens Keeps the Family Busy Especially At Weekend, Chickens Instill the Sense Of Responsibility on Your Children At A Very Tender Age.

To succeed in having healthy beautiful chickens. It requires great care, dedication, commitment, responsibility, and sacrificing most of your leisure time.

 

Even though you delegate someone to the work. you have to be there to supervise and ensure proper execution of the work.

 

Most weekends are always very busy especially for those working in other places. From Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. There will be a lot of cleaning, repairs, and construction work before you realized it the weekend is over.

 

If you want your children to be resourceful and responsible. Keeping chickens is a great way to teach your children, fundamental life principals. Taking good care of your chickens entails delegating certain responsibilities to your children.     

         

Your children will get to know how and where their eggs come from how life evolved.

 

At a very tender age, your kids will really appreciate the sacredness of life. The pain of losing a bird and the joy of hatching new baby chicks.

 

Your kids will learn the intricacies involve in nurturing day-old chicks from hatch to the period of egg-laying, for laying hens. And when your broilers will reach table size, for meat birds.

 

Your kids will learn the valuable life lessons about being patient.       

 

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A child feeding some chickens         

                                                                                                                                                                                                    4. With Chickens You Have a Constant Supply of Farm Fresh  Eggs  and Good Quality  Meat For The Family

Chicken meat and eggs are readily available and affordable in developed countries. But this is not the case with most underdeveloped or developing countries.

 

Where chicken meat and eggs are viewed as luxury food or are eating on special occasions and during certain festive periods.

 

You can simply walk to the nearest grocery store or supermarket and buy your eggs or frozen chicken at your convenience.

 

But this convenience comes with its own setbacks and health risk. You cannot guarantee the taste and quality of such eggs and meat. Most supermarket eggs have exceeded their shelve life. Therefore not safe for human consumption.

 

If you really want a steady supply of healthy good quality farm fresh eggs and tasty meat for your family. Keeping some chickens in your backyard would be a good decision to make.

 

All fears associated with supermarket meat and eggs will be eliminated completely because you now know where and how your meat and eggs are produced.

 

Your primary concern is the well-being of your family. You can only achieve this by ensuring that your family gets the best in terms of good quality meat and eggs.

 

 Eggs contain minerals and vitamins such as vitamin B₁₂. Eggs are also high in vitamin A. Deficiency of vitamin A is known to be the most common cause of blindness in the world.

 

Chicken is one of the best sources of protein, especially for children. Protein plays an important role in our diet. It is made of amino acids, which are the building blocks of our muscles.

 

READ ALSO: Vitamin A Its Importance’s, Sources, Risk and Side Effects.

 

5. Chickens Improve The Fertility of The Soil

They provide excellent compost manure for your farm and vegetable garden. The build-up litter from your chicken coop will provide good organic fertilizer for your vegetable garden. Therefore improving and increasing your yield.

 

Before using chicken manure great care and caution must be taken as chicken manure contain high nitrogen. Which is dangerous to plants if the manure has not been given enough time to properly form a good compost. Raw chicken manure fertilizer when applied directly can burn, and even kill plants.

 

Chicken manure fertilizer is very rich in nitrogen and also contains a good amount of potassium and phosphorus. The high nitrogen and balanced nutrients are the reason that chicken manure compost is the best kind of manure to use.

 

READ: How to Achieve Optimal Poultry Production with Good Deep Litter Management practice

 

Composting manure

 

Composting chicken manure softens the nitrogen content of the chicken fertilizer. Making it less harsh to plant. Thereby increasing the fertility of the soil and invariably making the manure suitable for your garden.

 

They improve soil aeration, which is the oxygen content of the soil. Since they love exhibiting their natural behavior if you keep chickens in your garden. They will naturally scratch and dig the soil to forage for seeds, insects, and bugs. They turn the soil upside down.

 

Chickens spread and turn the compost, they mix the soil layers and loosens the ground. Most importantly oxygen is added to the soil and particle size is reduced.

 

It is recommended that you protect young plants from chickens due to their foraging and scavenging nature. They could damage your young plant’s root or eat them off. So providing a fence or barbwire’s for your garden will help protect your plants from the aggressive foraging nature of your chickens.

 

You can protect your plants in your garden by rotating your chickens to a different location of your yard.

 

6. Chickens Ward Away Harmful Reptiles and Insects

Chickens are omnivorous in nature as they feed on both flesh, tiny frogs, ant’s mice, etc. As well as green vegetation.

 

Chicken can even eat small nonpoisonous snakes in your garden. They can produce great noise (alarm) from impending danger from poisonous snakes, predator birds such as hawk, owl, etc.

 

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7. Provide The Family With Good Rich Quality Vegetables

They help a lot in providing rich green vegetables, fresh from the garden for the family use. Due to the quality of organic fertilizer you derive from rearing chickens. These good quality organic fertilizer are used to fertilize the vegetable garden.

 

Their manure is one of the major components needed for vegetable gardening in your backyard. If you really want to succeed in producing real organic plants. Free from any inorganic material, then having chickens in your homestead will help you achieve this feat.

 

Having chickens in your backyard will provide you with a steady supply of quality organic fertilizer that is good for your soil and will increase your garden and vegetable yield.

 

8. Supply Extra Cash for the Family

Chickens play a vital role in the financial stability of the family. From providing a means of livelihood for the entire family. As is the case with large family-owned poultry farms. To a large farms with hundreds of thousands of employees in developed economies such as America and the western world.

 

Chicken play a major role for the rural poor and marginalized section of the society. With respect to their subsidiary income. And also provide them with nutritious chicken egg and meat for their own consumption.

 

A lot of families are able to have multiple streams of income by rearing chickens in their backyard. With minimal initial capital investment which provided them with eggs and meat.

 

In addition, eggs are known for their quality and nutritious protein content which is good for growing children. And is consumed by other members of the family.

 

The extra eggs from the homestead flock mean extra cash for the family. Eggs are sold to neighbors and at the farmers market. And the meat sold during special occasions and festive periods such as Christmas, Easter, and ‘Eid-el Fitri, ‘Eid el Kabir for the Islamic faith adherents.

 

You might be interested in READING:

How to Market Your Farm Produce, Best Strategy to Adopt.

Diary of Two Broiler Chicken Farmers in My Neighborhood

Drop in Egg Production, 13 Solid Ways You Can Reduce It.

 

 

9. Raising Chickens as the Solution to Poverty

Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates In 2016 proffer raising chickens as the solution to poverty. Especially for those living in extreme poverty of $2 or less per day. He came to that conclusion as a result of his work in sub-Saharan Africa through the Gates Foundation.

 

In his own view, chickens are easy and cheap to take care of with little investment required. Chickens will play two major roles by rearing and selling both eggs and meat. At a market price of $5 per chicken, and as a good source of nutrition for the family.

 

Farmers can attest to the fact that chicken compost manure is the best for fertilizing our backyard vegetable garden. They increase yield, which means more vegetables for the family. And the surplus can be sold in the community thereby providing more cash for the farmer.

 

Conclusion

When it comes to poverty alleviation, economic empowerment, job creation, multiple streams of income we can’t take it away from chicken production.

 

From rearing and keeping a few chickens. To have a large farm with thousands of birds generating large income and supporting several families.

 

Cash and nutrition are synonymous with chicken rearing. If you really want to improve the living condition of your family getting involve with poultry production particularly (chicken) would be a wonderful idea.

 

You stand to gain a lot from providing steady quality meat and eggs for yourself and your family. with probably fresh vegetables from your garden and also generating a steady flow of income.