With spring and summer approaching, people are spending more and more time in their gardens. Why not add to your garden by bringing in some chickens? Here’s 5 reasons why you should definitely add them to your family.

Living a healthy lifestyle
The reason most people like to keep chickens is for the lifestyle that they stand for and provide. They provide you with a more self-sufficient lifestyle. Albeit a small portion of your lifestyle, it’s super satisfying, as you know the whole process and what the animal has been fed and how they’ve been treated.
Super tasty, fresh eggs
There’s something unexplainably rewarding when you walk down to your chicken coop and scope up freshly laid eggs- maybe it’s the fact that we are a small part of this process or maybe it’s caring for these incredible animals… we’re unsure but what we do know is it’s an amazing feeling. What some of you may not know is that when you buy a supermarket egg, these can be up to a month old! They definitely taste better because they are fresher, along with other things.
Secret Gardeners
Chickens are amazing gardeners, to a certain point, when they start to eat the plants and flowers you have, maybe it’s time to pop them back in their run! They eat all sorts of bugs and insects that could be causing damage to your garden. Chickens naturally scratch around in the soil to turn it over and release the bugs in the dirt, this is great for the soil in your garden as it moves all the nutrients around. Chicken poo is also an amazing fertiliser. It’s full of nitrogen which is perfect for the soil to help other plants thrive. If you also have your own compost heap or know someone that does, you can chuck all their bedding/straw into their as well, giving it' great nutrients.
Low Maintenance
People presume that chickens take a lot of hard work to look after, on our sort of scale, you’d be right, but as a homeowner with a few chickens in your back garden you couldn’t be more wrong. The most extensive part of keeping chickens is prepping for their arrival, ensuring the coop is built and the run is constructed. Once you’ve got that bit done, it should take about 20 minutes a day for you to feed and water your chickens! The hens need letting out in the morning, with feed and fresh water. If you’ve got a big water tank and food container, they should last all day, if not, you may need to check on them in the afternoon and re-fill their food and water. Finally, in the evening you will need to lock their coop up. All of this can easily be done in less than 20 minutes.
Responsibilities
Keeping chickens is a great way to teach your chickens the fundamental life principals. Although this won’t apply to everyone, if you do have children, teaching them with chickens will give them experiences they will remember their entire life!
To keep chickens you need to be responsible, consistent and dedicated. You can get your kids involved, by helping to let the chickens out each morning and helping to clean them out each week. This will help teach your children the importance of caring for others and the importance of being responsible. A huge part of having chickens is teaching your children about where eggs come from and the idea of the food chain.

Extra bits of information.

Early Mornings
Believe us when we say, hens wake up at dawn and they are not impressed when they are locked inside their coop waiting to get outside! You don’t need to be up at dawn but most mornings our girls are out before 6:30am. If you do still really want chickens and can’t stomach the early morning, you could always purchase an automatic coop door so you can still enjoy your sleep!
2. They Need Attention Every Day
Like most other pets, chickens are tying and you need to make sure someone is there every day to feed and water them. This isn’t a problem if you have people close by you trust who can care for them whilst you are on holiday. However you need to bare this in mind before committing to chickens.
3. Chickens Need Space
If you don’t have a reasonable sized garden you are going to struggle to keep more than a few chickens. They don’t like being kept in small spaces and when they are cramped it can lead to them getting agitated and fighting each other, which is not what you want!

It’s a brand new year, and we thought we’d give you some more information about us and how we look after our livestock.

We are a family built and run farm. We bought the land back in 2013. Since then we’ve developed the land and now house over 200 chickens. We have a brick barn and a mobile home for me to live in as the agricultural worker on the farm.

This is me (and Juno). I graduated with a degree in fashion design and worked as a designer for 2 years before joining my dad full time on the farm. I’ve always loved animals and being outside in the fresh air, it seemed like a no-brainer when dad asked me to join full time.

Here at Higher Oak Farm, we dedicate our time to ensure that our hens and cockerels are well looked after, well fed and most importantly have a good life. One of the biggest issues with industrial farming of chickens for eggs or meat is that the methods used on the birds do not honour many of their natural habits or needs. For example, overcrowding the hens and de-beaking them to ensure they don’t inflict harm on one another.

As well as having plenty of space our hens are moved around to different runs and moved onto fresh pasture on a monthly basis, rotating the hens around and moving the coops allows the soil and grass to re-generate and gives the chickens fresh pasture to scratch in. Moving then hens is also the perfect opportunity for us to clean out the houses and re-sawdust the floor.

If you’ve read our blog previously, you’ll know that at the back end of last year, we planted our own Orchard and had a local bee-keeper come and put 5 hives up on the farm. We also seeded a wild flower meadow and are working on an area where people can drive onto the farm and collect eggs from a vending machine to collect eggs as and when they want too. This allows us to have as much time as possible to collect eggs, feed, clean and look after the hens.

If owning Chickens is something you’re thinking about for this year but you want some more information on what it actual entails, please contact us at kirk@higheroakfarm.co.uk and we’d be happy to help!

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