Permies Poll: How do you view your chickens?

People keep chickens for a myriad of reasons. I have made a poll asking, how do you view your chickens? Are they just kind of like a hobby and are your pets? Do you rely on them as a resource such as their meat? Maybe they fit into your homestead plans with compost generation? Let me know! If there is a descriptor you would like added, just comment and I will add them. You do not need to use all your apple votes, but maybe you will need them all!

They are mostly pets for me. Eggs and compost generation is just added bonuses! Forbid we ever have another egg shortage, there is a little built in local resilience for me.

I consider my chickens my employees - they work for me in exchange for housing, feed, and kale when I have enough to share.
They control bugs, eat weeds, produce eggs, produce limited amounts of meat unless we do specific meat birds for sale, and they're entertaining.

Most of my chickens are in portable, bottomless shelters, so I don't get to harvest their poop, but our field is much healthier than before we got chickens, and I've got a geese house and 2 duck houses that produce poop for composting and garden bed support.

My chickens are a wonderful resource for my place. I have never had to harvest one for meat but I have started getting "dual purpose" chicks just in case. They have become the working girls of the half acre giving all for very little upkeep. We eat and sell the eggs, as well as provide eggs for the dogs to eat. They clean up the gardens all winter and soon I'll let them into the greenhouses to run off the freeloader voles and mice. Not one grasshopper gets by them in summer and they simply make me happy when they run out to greet me like the dogs do, after work. Their poop and spent bedding are main components of my compost, and they love to receive kitchen scraps and eat the raw meat off beef bones from the butcher before the dogs get the bones. Some day I will raise meat birds as well but for now I buy them from the local Hutterites by the case. Love my hens!

My girls compost  food waste from 3 + households and also from random dumpsters.
If that was all they did, they would be earning their keep.
The compost puts them over the top.

Chickens convert all kinds of scraps into eggs. And maybe, occasionally, meat. The eggs provide perfect nutrition so that I don't really need meat. With the veggie gardens and my flock of 25 chickens, I am pretty darn self-sufficient.
But they are also a delight to watch and tend to - especially in the winter when everything is covered in a foot of snow and we have daylight for 6 hours.

I love my layers and even if they don't lay as regularly as they used to I'm happy to keep them around to help compost and eat bugs in the garden. I did however order some chicks for meat birds to be delivered in the spring so I don't plan on getting as close to those birds.

I voted with my imaginary perhaps future quail ;))
Definitely eggs and maybe meat, cute pets for sure! Of course they will generate compost and also their bedding will be mulch. Maybe I'll finally grow a decent salad... and other leafy vegetables. They will cost some, in the beginning, and they will probably not earn much although I may sell some too. They will definitely be a new hobby just like aquarium is/was, and it evolved into a garden pond.

I keep them as a move toward self-sufficiency, but they are definitely multi-purpose!

We sell and eat the eggs (and give them to our kids every chance we get). We have butchered a few and will again when we need to cull, though that is not a task I enjoy. I use deep bedding in one coop and that goes as mulch/compost elsewhere. I have a portable coop I hope to use to move around and fertilize future growing spaces.

Our favorite part, though, is the "chicken TV" we get to enjoy in the summer when it is warm enough for my wife and me to sit out in the evening after work and just watch them doing their chicken things.

Jay Angler wrote:I consider my chickens my employees - they work for me in exchange for housing, feed, and kale when I have enough to share.
They control bugs, eat weeds, produce eggs, produce limited amounts of meat unless we do specific meat birds for sale, and they're entertaining...

My pigeons get retirement benefits.


So far, I haven't had chickens: word has it they are a gateway drug (to farming)

Since I start every winter off with about 150 pigeons (falcon tax was heavy at about 50 this year but none last year, and an average 35),
I hate to think how many chickens I would have in 8 years should I partake.

Egg layers when they are laying eggs................... pets when they aren't.            ;-)

I view my 12 hens as egg layers and a really good source of chicken litter for my quarter-acre + vegetable garden that can never get enough of stuff like that.

Ah chickens!  My hard working snuggle buddies.  They provide eggs. (haven't gone the meat route...yet?...) They eat up kitchen scraps.  They turn my compost bin for me.  Their deep litter goes into my garden beds.  They clean up the strawberry bed every winter.  They eat the bugs.  They clean up the meat bones before the bones get pyrolyzed for biochar.  They inoculate the biochar.  They keep the duckweed in the bathtub pond down to a reasonable level.  Their eggshells keep slug damage low on my plants.  I've got a broody hen that raised the last batch of day old chicks we bought.  They stir up the deep litter in the goat pen.  And we sit and snuggle on the swing every evening.  I've got two that burrow their heads in under my arms for a nice long snuggle.  Their personalities and antics bring me much joy.  How do I view my chickens?  PRICELESS!!!

Jay Angler wrote:
Most of my chickens are in portable, bottomless shelters, so I don't get to harvest their poop, but our field is much healthier than before we got chickens, and I've got a geese house and 2 duck houses that produce poop for composting and garden bed support.

Jay...Truly bottomless shelters?  Or open mesh bottom shelters?  I've thought of doing meat birds on my sedgefield but I haven't built an open mesh bottom for my makeshift chicken tractor (basically 4 sides and a top, no bottom).  We've only used it to integrate new additions to the flock so they've never been left in this tractor overnight.  Concerned about the opossum, raccoons, and rats in the area getting to my birds.

I always thought my chickens were friends, neighbors, land partners, just generally “co-beings”.

I did cull them, eat them, make broth…. I provided food water shelter, protection.  They were one bad day birds, and they hatched and raised chicks.

My chickens are workers on the homestead. My rooster Rex is a terrorist. Love my birds.

Because my soil is very sandy, they are there to improve the soil, but I raise a specific breed for meat and a specific breed for egg laying and soup. They are my little dinosaurs. I am fond of them for the work they do for me, but I do not name them: Some day, they will have to go to freezer camp.
I have a part of my orchard in their run and those fruit trees seem to be doing much better that those outside of their compound. they have a lot less bugs, and the fruit are larger and better quality too.
Sentimentally, I prefer my ducks, although they are messy. Those are strictly for meat because my little pond would freeze solid.

My chickens are entertaining and a nutritious food source. I haven't been able to consistently have hens replace themselves. Brookings is a definite plus though!! I use a portable coop. A Justin Rhodes style chickshaw. It helps alot in eliminating manure hauling and spreading!!! Also with our long northern Michigan winters it means I can move the birds close to the house in cold weather and farther in the summer!! Our birds eat snow in winter and drink water in warm weather which not only eliminates a tough winter chore but also has eliminated frozen toes and combs.

Last vote in apple poll was on December 1, 2024