We have had chickens for a few years now. They take ridiculously little maintenance. They are far easier to care for than cats, and endlessly entertaining. But the best part of all is realizing the benefits of backyard chickens goes beyond daily fresh eggs.
Our 12 hens, The Smartchicks, and their rooster, Big John, free-range on our fenced acre. They have a coop and henhouse that they are free to return to for shelter and water whenever they like.
We buy a little grain, but these birds LOVE leftovers. Mac and cheese, veggies, fruits, leftover oatmeal, any vegetable ends or peelings, anything that is going bad in the fridge such as rice or pasta, moldy bread. Totally into it. And being free-range they entertain themselves all day by hunting for bugs and weeds. They also enjoy grass clipping and the windfall from the apple orchard. Talk about self-sufficient. I don't really have that much garbage in the can anymore, either. Nice.
Their poop is awesome, too. I clean out their henhouse and add it to the compost bin with a little water. The resulting compost is "the shit". The garden loves it. I also make a chicken manure "tea" by putting a shovelful of fresh droppings into a bucket of water. Stir, stir, stir and let it sit for a day. Then I add the slurry to the base of fruit trees as a spring fertilizer. I soak the base of the trees to get the fertilizer to sink down to the roots. Pretty expensive if I bought it at Home Depot.
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