We had about 20 chickens and this is exactly what we did. Not sure why you got downvoted.

Talking about farmscale agriculture, it's hundreds of chickens at least. If it's pastured, they likely need to be moved quite often.

Chickens are likely easiest, but on a scale to produce a living for a family, I don't think any type of farming or ranching is low effort or easy to step away from.

I bet most people don't know chickens need light to lay eggs, their egg laying will slow down as the days grow shorter. Plus they will kill each other if even the slightest bit of blood appears. And the smell oh the smell!

This problems improve if given enough space and aren't crowded

We have hundreds of chickens most years now, and yea the neighbours can take care of them for a week or two. The biggest thing that keeps us from traveling in the summer is our "garden".

When I was a child we had some chickens. The most difficult part was keeping them safe outside dogs, cats kill them for fun. Foxes and other wild animals tend to really like them for lunch.

We learned the hard way that pigs also like to kill chickens for fun. Although it's possible this behavior was unique to our pig.