Benefits of Raising Backyard Chickens for Beginners

Hello everyone, this is Jack. Guess what? We got chickens. We got four different varieties of chickens. We got some silver lacewind winders, we got some Rhode Island reds, and we have four different kinds of chickens here. The third variety we have is black lanchons. The fourth breed of chickens we have is speckled sussex. When this one was little, she would just fall asleep in your hand. And here's a video of of them when they were little. So this was about a month, month and a half ago. And here's the clip from there. I'll check them out. They're drinking water. So cute. Oh, the little one is drinking water too. He's looking into the camera. And in this video, I'm going to cover five reasons why you should get chickens. If you can, if you have the space, they're great to have. Number one, they will get rid of all the bugs for you. They'll go through your garden, they go to your compost pile, they go through everything, go through the bark, and they will get rid of bugs for you. Look at these chickens. They go through anything and everything. They scratch everything, they scratch through the bark, and they try to find any single bug that they can and they eat it. So it's a really good way to get rid of all the bugs. They're using their really sharp claws to scratch through the bark and they are trying to find bugs. Check out this one. Really hard at work. Scratching through anything, scratching through the bark, using dinosaur-like feet to scratch through the bark and trying to find any bugs that they can. Look at this one. Really hard at work. No worry in the world. Just trying to catch some bugs. That's all they want to do. Sometimes you just feed them grains or feed. They don't even touch it. They just come out here and they go through the bark. They go through the garden as well. They don't even eat the plants. They just eat all the bugs. The garden is coming along really well. We have some cucumbers growing there. We have some green beans, some corn growing way over there. And there's a chicken going through the garden eating the bugs. And we have lots of sunflowers going right there. And chickens are going through them and eating bugs over there as well. Here's our garden. Here's our tomatoes. We have some squash growing right here too. This is the garden behind our house so it's easy to get to. And here are all the chickens going through the garden, scratching away, eating the bugs. They go through the garden and scratch up the walkways and find the bugs. This way I have very few problems with earwigs, the roly-polies which are called sow bugs, you know, and all sorts of other bugs as well because these guys take care of them. Look at them scratching. They're going to the side of the berm and because there's moisture there and bugs try to hide out where there's moisture. So they scratch it up and then they find the bugs. So we are growing some lettuce here, some mint, some spearmint. And chickens are just going through the garden and they're scratching through and eating the bugs. And back there is my 64 Chevy truck. We are going to get that painted soon too. These chickens, they are doing a lot of work to get rid of all the bugs. I haven't had any reason to spray even neem oil on my plants since I got chickens. She's finding bugs and scratching through the berms and eating the bugs and also getting rid of some of the weeds too. Reason number two, you can feed them all your kitchen scraps and grass clippings and they will just eat through them. Just make sure not to feed them potato peels or bread because that's not good for them. But a rind of watermelon like this or a cantaloupe, something like that, they love it. Don't feed them too much sugar. Don't feed them too many fruits. You know, supplement their diet with, you know, have them free range and eat bugs and give them a little bit of grain. But our chickens here, they are not, like I said, they are not interested in the grain as much. They love, you know, kitchen scraps and they love to go through the garden, go through the bark and eat all the bugs. So, I'm going to feed this to them and let's see what happens. Well, she's interested in the watermelon. Well, they will go through the kitchen scraps very, very easily. You know, once I, you know, feed them kitchen scraps once a day, it's usually gone by the end of the day. And they will peck through the rind and eat all the inside but they will leave the shell of the watermelon. Look at her pecking away at the watermelon. They love to eat watermelon, cantaloupe. You know, sometimes, you know, we pick strawberries and strawberries are sometimes halfway eaten or they're not good strawberries. So, we just feed them strawberries too and they love to munch on these kind of fruits. All right. So, I have some grass clippings for them and they will go through these grass clippings. They won't eat it all. Rest, I'll just put in the compost pile. These grass clippings are really good food source for them as well. They're cleaning their beak in the grass clippings and eating grass clippings as well. So, I feed them grass clippings and they will just go through grass clippings and they love to munch on the grass clippings. It's a really good way to get rid of kitchen scraps and grass clippings. You know, I don't mow grass once a week or once in two weeks anymore. I mow a little bit of grass and I just give them grass clippings. That way, they're well fed and I get to, you know, get rid of the grass by mowing the grass and they turn the grass into eggs for me as well. She is interested in grass clippings too. They love fresh grass clippings. So, I give them a little bit of feed as well and sometimes they can't find enough bugs. You know, for the last two weeks, they have been just going through everything to find a lot of bugs and sometimes bugs are in short supply. So, I give them a little bit of feed and they go through the feed as well. So, if they can't find a lot of bugs, they don't even touch the feed. So, when I feed them with a little bit of these grains and they go through the grains, I know they're hungry. So, I keep them well fed but if they don't touch it, I know they're already full. You know, they've been eating bugs and they're all well taken care of. So, we don't use any weed and feed or any kind of chemical fertilizers on our lawn. So, we can use grass clippings to feed our chickens. However, if you use weed and feed or some sort of chemical fertilizers, weedicide, stuff like that, it's best to not feed those grass clippings to your chickens. And they will also mow the grass for you. They will eat the grass seeds. A really good way to get rid of all the seeds and they will clip the grass and eat the grass as well. Check it out. She's just munching on the grass. Is the grass tasty? I think she likes the grass. Number three, they will turn the compost pile for you. So, look at these working on the compost pile. I have made three piles of compost over here. Then, I put sprinklers. You know, this is an automatic system that I put in. So, every day the sprinklers come on and provide moisture for the compost. So, I have green material, some brown material. You know, I have, you know, moisture. So, all of it works together and all of these chickens provide the aeration. You know, they are actually turning the compost. So, that aids in decomposing the matter much quicker. So, look at these guys. They're working on that berm right now. So, I made a pile of berm way over there. You know, a pile over here and a pile over here and they've gone through this pile. They have decimated this. I got to berm it back up now and they're working on that one right now. So, they just keep moving and they turn the compost pile for me. So, look at all these chickens working hard to turn the compost pile. They absolutely love to find stuff in compost and they'll use their sharp claws to scratch through the compost and find bugs or anything else that they might find interesting to eat. Look at these working on the compost. I don't have to turn the compost pile myself. These guys are doing it for me and if you can see, I'm growing more sugarcane back there. So, if you look closely, all their bedding has so much chicken poop, which is a great source of fertilizer and it makes a great fertilizer. You got to let it compost because it can burn your plants if you use it directly. Look down here in the chicken coop. It's all littered with chicken poop, free fertilizer. So, once a week, I clean this up and then I put it into my garden. So, once I clean the chicken coop, I add all of the chicken poop right into my garden where I'm going to be planting next. So, I'm going to be planting this garden in about three to four months for fall gardening. So, you can see there's some wood shavings right in there. That's all bedding from the chicken coop. So, this is going to sit here, decompose for another four to five months and then I'm going to burn this up and plant radishes or, you know, carrots or potatoes, anything else I like in this area. So, this gives us some time for the chicken manure to incorporate into the soil and decompose so that it doesn't burn the plants. Reason number five, which is very obvious reason, eggs. These chickens will produce a lot of eggs. They produce anywhere from 250 to 300 eggs a year. So, they'll be a really good source of producing eggs as well. So, these are going to be organic, free-range eggs, which is going to be true free-range, not like, you know, when these companies have five by five or eight by eight space for them to just roam around and they call it free-range. This is true free-ranging. And we have a chicken box here where they're going to lay eggs. We have, you know, three nesting boxes back in there where they can lay eggs and they absolutely love being in this chicken coop. Look at this. They love to be pet. Sometimes they will, you know, just come over to you and they want to be pet. And a bonus reason, these chickens are very therapeutic as well. You know, it's really fun to watch them go through everything, you know, being funny and, you know, they're really good pets too. So, it's really good to have chickens around. They love to be pet. I just scratch their bellies and they enjoy it so much. I just hold them and scratch them and they just come right to you. Funny thing is that they go through the entire garden and they eat all the bugs. See, this one just came right by. Hello. Say hello to all the subscribers. They eat all the bugs but they never touch the plants for some reason. You know, they don't, they're not interested in the plants. These chickens are very calming and they make great pets as well. And we just love to stroke their really soft feathers. And when the sun is going down, they all rush to the chicken coop and they go right in the chicken coop. So, it's kind of getting the time of the day where they'll go into the chicken coop. Well, here's your chicken coop. This is one of the kits I bought because I don't have enough time to build one from scratch. So, I built this in about a couple of hours. You know, my family helped me, my sister-in-law helped me, my wife helped me. So, it was easy to build with a couple of people and it serves a really good purpose. I have a three gallon water in the chicken coop for them, for them to drink water because they go through a lot of water. So, I stack the water up and, you know, fill it up at least two to three gallons and it lasts about three days. So, when it's evening and the sun is going down, they automatically go back into their coop. So, I don't have to do any work to get them back into the coop. They know where the home is and they go back into their home. Well, these two stragglers are coming back home. They're a little late. Usually, they all stay together. So, they're all coming back home. It's evening. It's time to go to bed. Well, there you go. It's time to go home, time to go to bed. The other one is coming around that way. Well, it's bedtime. So, they're all returning home. There's a little ramp in there for them to roost up in the nest box up there. Well, then it's evening. They climb the ladder and they just go back into their coop. I really hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you in another video.