Kids and Chickens - Why is Chicken Keeping Beneficial for Our Kids

Old McDonald had a Farm ... which little child wasn't in love with this song at some point in their life? We live at least part of this song daily here at our little backyard farm and I see the impact of caring for animals on my children. 

We can go and see animals at the ZOO or a petting place but to experience the ownership that brings on responsibilities in the children is priceless. We have had chickens even before our kids were born, so they both came to live into the farm environment. Last year, we finally decided to get them each a pet chicken. Up until that time, all our chickens were sort of pets that had to go every few years because they would stop laying eggs. But I realized how important it was to them to have a feathered creature here to stay.

And that's how we came to Brownie and Whiny. This above is Brownie - they are both Bantams, miniature chickens. I like having small chickens for the kids, because they are easier for them to handle.

Many times I catch the kids hanging out with their birds. Here is T enjoying afternoon rest with Brownie. 

 Having chickens keeps my kids connected to the reality of where food comes from. They also learn responsibility and compassion towards animals, something that God intended for us to have and to teach to our children. When we come to a slight bump and we have to deal with some emergency in the coop, kids are always involved and they help us solve the problem. Here is Whiny when she nearly died as a baby and we helped her back to life by feeding her sugar water using dropper. 

They LOVE collecting the eggs from nesting boxes and feeding the girls!

During the winter months we grow earthworms for our chickens for healthy snack... what kid doesn't like to participate in something gross right? Our daughter used to be afraid of these wigglers and this exposure helped her feel comfortable and now she handles them without a problem!

 Generally kids love animals and it is up to us parents to nurture that relationship. To close this post, let me list some suitable chicken breeds for you to consider:

• Silkies
• Cochins
• Australorps
• Bantams
• Sussex
• Delaware
• Red star chickens

are all friendly breeds and are best to make special connection with your kids. Well, this is so exciting and I hope you will start your little chicken coop soon! 

Feeding Eggshells to Your Chickens

Feeding eggshells to the chicken has been around what seems like forever. If you are like us, you don't like to waste any leftovers and you like to use as much as possible. Of course, you can compost the eggshells but if you feed them to your girls, they will provide some extra calcium in their diet, which they so badly need. Every egg contains a large amount of calcium and if the hen is lacking it in her diet, the rest of her body will suffer. 

Benefits of feeding the eggshells to the chickens

1. No wasting leftovers

2. Providing some extra calcium to the chickens' diet

How to prepare the eggshells

You have to dry the eggshells before you can feed them to the chickens. The reason for that is (as I heard it from our grandmother) that the chickens don't eat any of the actual wet part because that might promote egg eating in you coop. I have double oven and I mainly use the top part. I have a big cookie sheet ready in the bottom oven and every time I have some eggshells I place them on the cookie sheet. You can find any spot in the kitchen... I heard people keeping them under the sink, in an empty cupboard, or in their pantry. Just make sure they are in a place, where they can dry.

After you dry the eggshells, you would want to break them up into tiny pieces. Hens don't really have the brain capacity to realize that you are feeding them the eggshells from the eggs that they lay but they could visualize the round objects and connect it (like when people place golf balls into the nesting boxes to promote egg laying there... golf balls are very similar to the egg shape). Hens sometimes start eating the eggs they lay because they lack the calcium in their diet or they are simply bored. I have never have it happen but I sure heard a lot about it. You can avoid this problem by drying the eggshells and breaking them into tiny pieces - see bottom picture.

Now you are ready to bring them to your coop. I mix them with their regular feed and they gobble it up no problem.

We have a new turkey!

We actually have 4 baby turkeys right now but that's only because we are keeping 3 for someone else till next week. We are not sure which one will be ours even though I feel the white one is the best and most friendly. However that one will be going away and we have to keep one of the dark ones. :-(

We had the idea to put them together with the new baby layers, hoping that since they are all babies they will get used to each other faster and there will not be a need for us to build a separate house for the turkey. So far it has not been working out so good. The chickens, especially Brownie, are pecking at the turkeys' backs and when the turkeys hide they actually go as far as looking for them in the corner just to get a peck. Can you see Brownie viciously eyeing the white turkey?

I will be googling what to do but so far we are keeping our fingers crossed that they will get over the introduction and become friends. I feel bad for the turkeys because they look a bit scared. Anyone has experience with this kind of friendship that happens early on? I know that adult hens will not like anyone new in their flock but babies.

Lethargic baby chick

As I mentioned in my post before, we got three pet chickens, that will be half everyone else's size and fancy looking! We are very excited about them and can't wait till the grow up so we can see how they will look. However, one of them wasn't looking too good since day one. Here she is - eyes always closed, sitting in one spot, never eating or drinking, and looking very weak. 

I did some research and found out that besides some chicken vitamins, I can use sugar water to give her some energy and get her started. So I used organic raw sugar and lukewarm water and gave it to her using a dropper. She wasn't opening her beak very well at first but when she got taste of the water, she started drinking it more. I gave her half the dropper and put her back in the box.

At first she was looking around and then all of a sudden she started walking around, she found water and spent lots of time drinking it. She slowly found her way to the feeder and ate some food from the ground. 

It has been over a week now since I treated her with simple sugar water and she is as alive as can be. (the above picture is from the same day I treated her - I will update her photo on the Facebook tomorrow if I get a good shot) She is the smallest of them all but the cutest and the biggest warrior. You should see her trying to fight the crowd to get to the feeder! i am amazed how this simple "medicine" worked. And I am happy we saved her. Now we have to think of her name :-)

Baby chicks video update

Now our baby chicks are eating worms! You can see in my previous post that we got about 1000 earth worms and that we built them a little earth worm farm. With time they started multiplying and now the baby worms are perfect size for these baby chicks to eat as a treat! My husband is having lots of fun with these ladies so take a look at a video he made.

Our new baby chicks arrived!

My husband and I decided to expand our Little Backyard Farm with some new addition - baby chicks! We currently have broilers, layers, and pet chickens. 

First, meet one of our pet chickens - Pingu. This is the first time we actually have pet chickens. We got three - Pingu is black, Brownie is brown, and the last one doesn't have a name yet because we are not sure if she is going to make it. She is acting a bit lethargic and we are trying to fix that. We believe these are Bantam chickens.

Here is one of our 10 Cornish chickens. We chose these to be our broilers. They will be ready in about 8 weeks. We still have to build the chicken tractor that they will move into. 

Here is the Rhode Island Red. We have these and one more breed we think is Americana to be our new layers. I really like my current layers - they are so friendly and calm. I hope these will be just like them.

At this point the new babies reside in our garage and they will stay there for at least the next three weeks. I will post a detailed description of their current home.

They seem to thrive and grow from day to day.

Feeding the chickens

Today was our girls' lucky day! We picked the best looking worms from our bin and brought them to the coop for the girls to try. Kids were super excited. Were the chickens?

See it for yourself...

We were throwing them down one by one and the girls were besides themselves. 

Who will get there first? We need to slowly make more space in our earthworm bin because new babies are being born every day. 

And since we are in the coop, we will pick some eggs.

Sorry girl for interrupting ;-)

Chickens and snow

Our girls have issues with snow. On other people's blogs I see pictures of their chickens walking around in a foot of snow and mine don't want to have anything to do with that white cold mess outside their coop.

Here they are thinking about coming out and roaming free...

Well, on second thought they decided to stay in... again.

They were just looking at me like I was crazy when I was trying to call them to come to me. Their head tilting was telling me that they didn't quite understand my request.

So they just stayed in and watched everything happen from afar. 

Is there a competition going on in the coop?

We have had our chickens for a year and a half now and they are actually egg-cellent layers ;-) We have never had lack of eggs even when the girls were molting. 

However, few months ago I started noticing extremely large eggs in the laying boxes. They are also a weird shape but never really double yolked, which I read they might be. 

Well, supposedly there is nothing wrong with any of those overachieving hens and it can happen on occasion. I am only concerned about the pain they must be in when the egg is coming out - ouch! I should check their private parts for any damage or even a stuck egg. That happened to us once before and we had to remove it by hand being careful not to break it while still half way in the chicken. Anyone knows more about this subject?

Chicken in the kitchen

The title really sounds more like a title of Bones episode... but are you asking why was there a chicken in my kitchen? See, some people use their chickens only for egg laying but we take a full advantage of their abilities ;-)

See if you have little kids at home you also most likely have flies (due to the kids' inability to close the door every time they enter or exit the house through the porch door). And if you have flies, there is a chance you might get maggots in your garbage... especially if it is hot the way it is here. Now you know where I am going with this. So one day I ended up with these little guys in my garbage can - which by the way made me sick to my stomach. But it is comforting to know that I wasn't the only one out of my friends who had these visitors come through my house :-) First thing that came to our mind is to go get one of our girls and give some special treat. Doesn't she look overwhelmed?

First she had no idea what the heck we want from her... But eventually she got the point and she ate every single one of them! This is what I call "win-win" situation!

Meet our girls!

Here they are! Our nine girls, the best we have ever had! 

We have 4 black Australorp chickens and 5 brown Isa chickens. They are so tame, letting us hold them, pat them, and one of them even follows us like a dog around the yard.

The kids love them too. They chase them, pat them and I often find them inside their coup playing school, house, and petting ZOO. And the girls are such great sports! What else could you wish for!

Oh yes, how about some eggs? Aren't these beautiful? Both of the breeds are such good egg layers! We get at least 7 eggs a day!