Backyard Chickens: How to keep happy hens

About Dave Ingham

Dave Ingham (no relation to the food brand!) is the resident henkeeping expert on radio 702 Weekends with Simon Marnie and runs Rent-a-chook selling chickens coops and offering try-before-you-buy mini henhouses to Sydneysiders since 2001. Dave first got into henkeeping as an impoverished uni student when he and his mates planted a mega vegie garden - chickens were a natural extension. With home brewed beer plentiful free veg and eggs those students ate far better than their penury would otherwise have allowed. Some years many chooks and a few houses later Dave was invited to speak at a sustainability project about what he'd done to make his house more environmentally friendly. He was waxing lyrical about the benefits of keeping chickens and on a whim offered to lend an old coop and couple of hens to one of the group to try out. A no-commitment trial of chooks. Go on give it a go! Somebody coined the term Dave's Rent-a-chook and it went from there. Since establishing Rent-a-chook in 2001 Dave has seen henkeeping go from a hippie pursuit to something very common and entirely mainstream.