Chickens make great pets, they are docile, easy to keep and happily consume all your kitchen scraps, converting them into delicious eggs and rich manure. They are also excellent workers with their natural scratching and pecking put to use, they weed, clean up fallen fruit and eat bugs. The trick with them is to devise a system where they work for you, not against you, as they can be extremely destructive in the vegetable garden when left to their own devises.