5 Benefits of Keeping a Small Poultry for Your Family

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Keeping a little kitchen garden or a little poultry for the family can be great fun. There is this sense of satisfaction you get when you go into the garden to pluck fresh vegetables just a couple of minutes before you start fixing a meal, or even after you have actually put your pot on the cooker.

 

What Number of Birds Should You Keep?

Well, but let me talk about keeping a small size poultry just for your pot. The number of birds you keep depends on a number of factors:

 

1. The size of your family and the mouths you feed.

2. The space you have in your compound.

3. The number you can effectively cope with.

For the family consumption you may have to decide what kind of birds you want to keep: broilers, cockerels, turkeys or egg-laying birds (there are others). Broilers grow to table size quiet fast, by age eight week, while cockerels take longer, up to six months sometimes.

 

You need a space you can raise them either from Day-old or from two to three weeks after somebody has brooded them for you.

 

Benefits of Keeping a Home Poultry

We will not go into the how of keeping a poultry right now, that will come later. For now, we will examine the benefits of keeping a small poultry for your pot.

 

1. You save a lot of housekeeping money.
2. Because you raised the birds yourself you will be more sure of their source, hygine and health.
3. There is great satisfaction in picking a bird or birds from your little ‘farm’ and even if you had them all slaughtered and kept to freeze in your freezers, you still will experience that satisfaction whenever you take them out for a meal.
4. It will give you pleasure to be able to give out by sharing with friends and loved one from your ‘farm’.
5. Keeping a little poultry can fast become a family hobby and even the children can find pleasure in helping to care for the birds and by that learn. Children particularly take pleasure and lots of fun picking eggs from the poultry.

 

I keep poultry, both broilers and layers. Keeping poultry is one of my past times, my hobby. I started with 20 birds broilers then added layers. Eventually I began keeping them in hundreds. Recently I disposed of all the layers because they were spent but decided to retain seven. I reserved those because my grandchildren were around and I wanted to be able to pick eggs for their breakfast. Those seven hens give us more than we need in a household that has both adults and children. Fresh eggs from within my compound, what a delight.

 

You do not need more than a few birds to keep your family in fresh eggs and healthy meat.