'Pets with benefits': The inner-city property where chooks roam free and neighbours don't complain

If you’ve got questions about keeping backyard chickens healthy and happy, Jessamy Miller is likely to have the answers. The columnist for Organic Gardener magazine, contributing author to books about chooks, and host of 3RRR radio program This Chicken Life spends a lot of time expounding the joys and benefits of keeping hens in urban areas. 

Miller’s upbringing has a lot to do with it. She grew up on her family’s rare breed poultry farm in regional Victoria surrounded by feathered friends, and even as a five-year-old she’d mosey around with a favourite pet chook in her little wicker “handbag”. 

Miller is now based in Northcote, in Melbourne’s inner north, and is “chook mother” to a flock of five bantam hens named Lulu (a blue Australian langshan), Peaches and Creamy (orange and white pekins), and Ginger and Millie (barbu d’uccles).  

The chooks free-range around the small backyard of her Edwardian cottage (shared with her husband and their two children) where avid gardener Miller grows veggies and tends fruit trees. While the chickens occasionally run amok in the veggie patch, they do play an integral role in the health of the garden by virtue of their scratching and foraging behaviours, which Miller describes as “basically a chook’s daily work”.  

“I’ve set up a really sustainable backyard, and what I’ve called a ‘chook loop’ with my waste,” Miller explains. She tosses a bale of pea straw into the hens’ run, which they love scratching around in and thereby enrich it with chook manure and dirt. After a time this becomes a great mulch and soil additive for the veggie garden.  

Miller and family eat well thanks to the robust veggies, and the chickens get the leaves of the brassicas as a tasty treat as well as kitchen scraps and quality pellets.  

The copious amount of chicken poo they produce is also a boon.  

“Actually, I could probably use more – it’s really great stuff,” Miller says. “Each time I harvest the veggies I want to replenish my soil with nutrients and improve it, so every poop they make I’m delighted to take.”  

And while backyard chooks are celebrated for their fresh eggs, some might be surprised to hear they make great companions, too. Miller calls them “pets with benefits”, with a curious nature and keenness to interact with their people.  

“They’re much more than a farm animal because they have so much personality and they can connect with you on an emotional level,” she says. “And they’re really easy to train because they’re motivated by food rewards and they’re creatures of habit. You can train your chook to be very tame. You can train them to actually do tricks if you want to.” 

Miller’s own chooks are “ridiculously tame”, maybe because she’s been there for them since they were still inside eggs themselves. 

“I hatched all these chooks in my incubator, and I raised them in the lounge room,” she says.  “My family just loves to play with the chickens. It’s a really fun little project to do.”

Miller’s husband Marcel knows the way to her heart. “My husband made me my dream hen house for my birthday about five years ago and it really fulfilled the wish list that I’d developed over all my years of chicken keeping.” 

She can walk inside the large pen to do maintenance, and it has useful design features to keep the chickens comfortable. “There’s a narrow mesh clerestory window under the roof which allows all the hot air to go out,” Miller says.  “[The henhouse] smells nice and never builds up heat or dust in there so it’s very clean and functional and hygienic.” 

There are also some enrichment objects Miller has provided: there’s a chook swing, a mirror to preen in front of (nabbed from hard rubbish) and their own xylophone to peck at “and make beautiful music,” Miller says.

Despite the number of chooks making that “beautiful music”, the chickens are embraced by the neighbours, who get invited in to share in the backyard shenanigans. 

“I give them henhouse tours and I let the children pat the chooks, and generally involve them in a bit of chook education,” Miller says. “They’ve never complained even though some of my chooks can be quite noisy.”