This is the best time of year to consider whether you want chooks.

We’re heading into breeding season. There’s lots of sex happening in the farmyard and in a month or two chicks start hatching.

What will you get? Day-old chicks? Six-week-old chicks? Point-of-lay hens?

Or do you want hens and a rooster so you can hatch your own cute babies?

First things first. Why have chooks at all?

Many people want the eggs. In that case you might be looking at the top laying breeds like the Australorp (300 eggs a season), the Leghorn (260) and Marans (220).

The Rhode Island Red is a reliable bird for eggs (170 a season) and meat. It’s hardy and loves a free-ranging lifestyle.

So is the Sussex, a great dual purpose bird laying 180–220 eggs in a season, with a placid nature and heavy enough not to be too tempted to fly over the fence.

The Wyandotte lays fewer eggs (160) but comes in stunning laced colours, has a lot of personality in my experience and goes broody easily. If you have other breeds such as the Barnevelder that don’t go broody easily, get a Wyandotte to sit on your eggs.

Some people like cute. Silkies are striking looking birds with a upright powder-puff crest and legs so short that their underfluff almost touches the ground.

Fewer people buy chooks for meat these days.

When I was growing up you couldn’t buy a frozen chook in a supermarket, unlikely as it sounds. My dad chopped off the head of a chook on the old faithful chopping block and we kids didn’t watch.

But if anyone wants chooks for food, they’ll buy the heavier breeds, Orpingtons, Australorps, Plymouth Rocks or Langshans.

Anyone wanting a blokey bird should look at the Indian Game, a hardy bird bred in Cornwall and Devon, sometimes for fighting. With their smooth feathers and muscular breasts they’re said to be an independent, strong-willed bird with real character. Maybe not best around children.

So why would anyone want chooks? My friend Kevin says chooks are part of living.

‘Eggs are good. Manure’s better,’ he said. ‘With a compost heap it’s all part of the cycle. Free-range chooks look after the bugs on your property and well, you can’t get a better egg than from a free-range chook.’

A NW Coast woman who came to buy chooks from me a few years ago had a completely different attitude.

‘I’ll call them Booty, Bunty and Bobo,’ she said, ‘and the rooster will be Shazam. They are sooooo cute, I just can’t wait to get them home and get to know them!’

I’m like Kevin. I like my chooks’ eggs and chooks are part of my life. Many’s the time when I’ve come home from work stressed to the gills, sat on the deck and just watched the chooks in the yard.

They have their spats, their funny habits, their idiosyncrasies. One often makes a funny squawk like she’s jumping out of her skin, another comes just close enough to keep a wary eye on me.

They’re calming, grounding. When you’re around chooks, Earth seems like a more serene place.

Of course there are roosters and some people have an irrational aversion because of crowing, a territorial behavior. 

Margaret Thatcher may have said, ‘The cock crows but it’s the hen that lays the eggs.’ But my old boy is especially good at looking out for big birds above when I have cute clutches of chicks.

Whatever you decide about your chook future remember – happy chooks, happy life.