We had chickens when I was growing up. The plus is fresh eggs and they eat food scraps and produce manure for the veggie garden, but they do require some work to keep their coop clean.

Did you give chickens a try?

When l was sharing a house we had chickens and a rooster and they do tend to be noisy but are charming!

No , but the neighbours at the back of the house do and they cluck every morning , but I don’t mind as it reminds me of the countryside . I watched on A current affair ” Australia’s tightest family ” and they had chickens to make eggs. Watch on Utube and it will give you some idea. It was fun watching the news on how you can be so versatile with savings .

they are very messy, require coups and nesting areas and local councils quite often require permits for you to keep them so I would definetly check that out.

They need daily maintenance and plenty of room to roam free as well as safe night quarters. I would suggest they need more maintenance than guinea pigs and a bit less than a dog. Their enclosure needs a good muck out at least once a week.

We had chickens when we were young. As far as I know most local councils don’t allow roosters. Some crow as soon as the sun rises, others crow during the night. In the country areas outside of towns I don’t think there is any restrictions.
Chooks need to be fed twice a day, the water containers cleaned every day and re-filled with fresh water. Some stand in it and make a mess in it. The leaves from some plants are poisonous so you need to make sure none fall into their water.
For safety they need to be in a fenced area in case a dog or cat ewnters your yard. Some won’t touch them at all, others will if they are running loose in the garden. They love some vegetable peels. I can’t remember if any of them or grasses are poisonous. I know they love silverbeet / spinach. In country areas or newly developed areas there may be foxes. You can shut them in a shed at night to protect them. Make sure they have roosts to stand/sit on so they aren’t one the ground / cement. You need to clean the floor in it regularly for their benefit as well as yours so it doesn’t get smelly. (your neighbours won’t appreciate the smell either. They need nests with shellgrit in them which they eat while they are actually laying their eggs.

I have never had chickens, but I think they’re great. I love the idea of being able to get fresh eggs and chickens are cool!

We had chickens as children & found them to be very easy to care for. My siblings & I loved going out to get the eggs everyday.
We are currently contemplating getting some chickens ourselves but are concerned about wether we are allowed to have them in a residential area.
Check with your council, that’s what we will be doing.
I don’t remember chickens being very noisy, the rooster was a different story!

Get some fact sheets and research owning chicken.

They need daily care, but the rewards are abundant.

If you are used to looking after a pet eg cat/dog/birds etc then looking after chooks will not be any harder. My parents had chooks for over 40 years and loved them. Personally, I prefer to buy my eggs and do not find much of a difference between shop bought eggs and home grown ones.

Thank you mums for your comments

If you don’t clean them out then yes they can smell. They eat all your scraps and give gorgeous eggs though so for us the benefits outweigh the negatives.

They can smell a bit. And the chook pen area looses all its grass and gets covered in mud/poo. But if they’re out of the way in your garden it’s fine! They’re not much maintenance, just food and water. And you can get chook food containers that you fill up and it lets out the pellets at the bottom so it takes a few days at least before you need to fill up. Also great way to get rid of food scraps… just don’t give them meat.

They are smelly and the rats and mice love their feed, and if you let them wander on your property, the rip the garden, if you have a rooster he might be noisy, but the eggs and responsibility are good for kids

Chickens are great and I would love to have some again. Never found they were too noisy and I had them in a coop with a special yard for them to roam in, not my garden so they couldn’t dig it to pieces.
Unfortunately now we have a lot of foxes so can’t have them any more.

We have 2 chickens. Initially when my husband suggested we get chickens, I was opposed. I too thought they would be noisy and an inconvenience to my already busy life. I could not have been more wrong. We bought 2 layer hens and have loved every minute of it. We have bought a fairly big coop for them, the pellet food is relatively cheap, and there is very little maintenance. Any household dinner scraps, they will love! Obviously a big clean out of the poo etc is required, but again, depends on the size of the coop you have and how many chickens as to how often. We get 1 egg from each of them per day and there is nothing like fresh eggs. Once you have them, you will never buy store bought eggs again. There are 4 people in my family, and 1 egg from each chicken a day is more than enough for us. However we don’t eat eggs every day of the week. So my parents and our neighbours love getting fresh eggs when we have too many. They make a little noise, but its certainly not annoying to us or the neighbours. I find dogs in the neighbourhood are far louder. My advice would be, go get yourself some chickens!!!

Chickens are pretty easy to keep and they love your food scraps! They’ll need food, water, shelter and be prepared for holes in your yard cos they love to scratch and gave dust baths. Don’t get a rooster and they won’t be noisey