Hi all,
For those of you who don't know me personally, it's time to come clean about something :-). We own chickens, and we don't live on a farm. We actually live in a suburbanite neighborhood, and have discovered the joy of raising chickens!
Yep, you heard me right. How did this all start? Well, this city gal never realized that she had a farm girl lurking inside her (even though I've always loved animals and can be easily accused of having too many).
The children have always loved animals , so when they heard that one of our local farms was renting an incubator and providing fertilized eggs, they were all over the parents to hatch little chicks; being the sly mother that I am, I said "sure, as long as we can make it an educational process, and dad is ok with it"; thus began the science lesson on the life cycle of a chicken!
We started incubating our eggs and had baby chicks 21 days later! Yeah, it was so exciting! We incubated 18 eggs and had 9 chicks hatch, they were so incredibly cute! There were a few chicks that died within the first day, and that made darling daughter a little sad, but also served as a valuable teaching lesson on the natural process of death and animals (keep in mind, my children are tweens). Darling daughter has a very tender spirit when it comes to animals and small children, and is thinking about becoming a Doctor or Vet.
As the baby chicks grew, we became more and more attached to them and really did not want to take them back to the farm, but we also did not think we would be able to successfully raise them on our own. We prayed about it, counseled with dad (that means the children pleaded their case), and decided to keep 4 hens for egg production.
This has been a great chapter in discovering our world; the children learned a lot and we now have 4 chickens that are almost a year old, that lay eggs almost every single day (can we say yummy?).
If you are interested in learning more about the life cycle of a chicken, check out this site:
http://www.kidfarm.net (There is great information on this site, to include coloring pages for the younger ones.)
To learn about the incubation process, check out this site:
http://www.msstate.edu/dept/poultry/hatch.htm
(ok I was going to put pictures of the chickens up, but alas, I have to figure out why they won't upload, stay tuned)
We live in the city and have chickens too...they are more pets than anything...the kids hand feed them and play with them during their school breaks...they also graze in the field behind our home...fantastic for eggs, a natural pesticide and weed killer...
ReplyDeleteCarol Jo
Yes, our children love them as their pets also. They have named them Miley, Kiki, Jackie, and Skye. They gather eggs every day and whatever eggs they sell, they are allowed to split the money. Chickens are really a lot of fun :-)
ReplyDeleteOkay, dumb question but WHERE to you keep them? In what housing and what is involved in their care? I am so surpised you can do this in the suburbs. I live on a golf course. Don't think it's possible for me, but I like the fantasy. We've wanted to do life cycle of a chicken...but what to do with the chicks afterwards was my problem.
ReplyDeleteHi Karin,that's actually a good question. There are a lot of different types of housing you can use, and you can keep them anywhere. We keep ours outside in a rabbit hutch (that is surrounded by a dog exercise cage to keep predators out)with a roosting pole we put in for them to roost on, and the other side of hutch serves as their nesting box. Some people keep them in garages, or they may keep them in dog houses. It just depends, it's just really important to clean their area once a week or every other week, and make sure they get plenty of water and ventilation (not a direct draft, but fresh air). Check out http://www.citychickens.com/ for more info
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