from original post: *Thanks to snowmagedden and 11 “snow days” this post is a bit closer to Easter than intended. I don’t know about you guys, but I am not very good at getting much writing done when there are kids underfoot.

UPDATE 2019- firing the blog back up and adding a few suggestions with *links* to the products that have helped us. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Chicken feed, literally.  🙂

If you have ever considered getting chickens for your kids, I hope this post convinces you to start your own flock…

but as a veterinarian, I know many misguided souls will grab a chick as an Easter gift for the kiddo, not realizing the work/responsibility involved. And even some well-planned schemes of having  “pet chickens” will turn into the search for another home (out of suburbia) after a few months. But I also know with a little effort, those homes can be found.

If you find out that chickens are not for you – hey, at least you tried. Everyone has a rural relative. Go. Reconnect with them. (& take Fluffy Bottom PoopsALot – then go back and visit her/them.)

Whoa . .  . I sound like a drug dealer – “Just try it. You can always quit.”

But do it. GET* THOSE KIDS SOME CHICKENS – at least once.

(* in some cities, you can even “rent” a flock. Try before you buy!) 

I have had pet chickens off and on since I was a small child. Having children of my own has only given me more justification for having them – so, there is little hope for me outgrowing the addiction. There are many awesome blogs out there covering the joys of chickens and how to expertly care for them, (such as http://www.fresheggsdaily.com) but I want to use this post to introduce you to some of the lesser-known benefits of having chickens as pets for children.

Expectations:

• Children + fluffy chicks = joy
• Children + eggs = learning to do chores with farm-fresh cheerfulness
• Children + chickens = endless and cheap kid-friendly entertainment

(well, I got that last part right!)

Reality:

Chickens will teach your kids to be good hand washers (ages 5 and up) – Not due to a developing awareness for health safety and basic hygiene (keep dreaming), but because your kids will tire of hearing you remind them to wash their hands after playing with their chickens. They will soon discover it is easier to just comply versus hearing a repeated lecture. Downside: the more you learn about why hand-washing is a good idea, the more horrifying it is to see a kid (usually, but not exclusively, the 5 and under crowd) lick something out of the chicken’s feed bin. Seriously. You will be up at night reliving this moment.

Chickens are fantastically terrifying.  (more on this in a bit)

Chickens are the ultimate dispose-alls. They will dispose of EVERYTHING you and your children do not eat. They will take this food and use it to make more eggs which you can use to make more food your children will not eat. <- a beautiful cycle, really.

We also throw every weed pulled from the garden into the chicken run. They love pecking at the green stuff/hunting for bugs and seeds. Check out one year’s garden plan for Box Turtle Farm.

Note: They don’t actually eat those Cutie peels, but throw them in there anyway (something for them to peck at and all citrus will decompose). I used to worry about whether our not an onion would be toxic to the hens and then I had kids – and other things to worry about. (Yes, onion can be toxic to chickens – but unless you have only one chicken and feed it only onion peels, you really should be worrying more about the kids’ hand washing than than onion toxicity. Common sense reigns – if your chickens have access to feed, they are highly unlikely to over-do it on anything you may have had on your plate. Our rule: If we had it plated up, it goes to the chickens. (As for stuff that hasn’t yet made it to the plate – such as dry beans, I can imagine those would be very appealing to the flock and toxicity could occur. If you find your dry beans are funky and want to throw them out, just put those straight into your compost.) Check out some other foods you will forget to worry about here: http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/04/7-things-you-shouldnt-feed-your-chickens.html

Chickens are inexpensive (yet still fun) pets.  Cheap doesn’t have to mean boring. (As for that hermit crab you have from a beach trip two years ago – well, that was not my call. Even if I have been tempted! Ha!) Chicks only cost a few dollars each and adults average about $10 – just a little money invested and a lot of fun to be had (and extremely rare vet visits – that should push them waaaay up your “pet list”!) Now, providing a safe dwelling will cost you either money, or time spent ingeniously rigging up a safe coop from items you have already or can acquire free. Remember: Chickens are not snobbish, but your neighbors may be. 😉

They eat creepy crawlies. LOTS OF THEM. Want some excitement and action to watch? Skip the video game – turn the chickens out in the backyard! They are not quite as good at ridding your yard of ticks as guinea fowl or ducks, but they do help. Especially the teenagers. We try to run young birds in the yard with the kids as often as we can because they are ferocious hunters of the nasty little blood suckers. (Ticks: the only organism on the planet I wouldn’t mind personally eradicating.) 

They have “doable” life expectancies. (~ 8 years if lucky.) Longer than a hamster, blessedly shorter than the parrot that never got out of the “No!” stage.  My hilarious sister once told me when her kids start talking about new pets, she sees the relevant life expectancies hover in mid air like clues on BBC’s Sherlock (awesome show, btw. – You can watch it for free on  Amazon Prime –30 day free trial. Yessssss.)

They will keep your kids moving. Have you ever tried to run down a loose chicken? Yeah. Don’t.

Let the kids do it. Sit in your lounge chair with your tea or whatnot and watch them fly by at a full tilt from one direction and then another. Oh, look! Here they come again! “Yes, you almost had her that time! Great job!” (The kids will figure it out eventually and so will the chickens.) My ex-husband and I secretly called this “superhero training” but it is really great training for any sport. “Cardio. Cardio. Cardio.”

They will teach your kids responsibility. When you bring those adorable chicks home from the feed store (or post office if you are already hardcore about this), you will be the reason they live or die. Good precocial genes can only do so much. Without a mother hen or a responsible caregiver, drafts, cold temperatures (buy an extra one of those heat bulbs), inadequate or filthy feed and water, or predators (“Rover, nooooo!”) could promptly snuff out your investment. (<- another good lesson for children, but probably one best experienced secondhand). This chicken rearing business isn’t difficult, it just takes a little responsibility. Once the chicks start to get “real” feathers in a few weeks, they are pretty hardy.

They will teach your child the value (actual energy cost) of obedience: You will be amazed at how trying to train a chicken to do anything will give your children some insight into their own behavior. Just remember: be consistently perfect with your children and they will be consistently obedient. 😉

Dinner is served. (No, I don’t mean the bird. For this post we are only talking about pet chickens!) If you have pet chickens and aren’t vegan, you will always have something to rustle up for a meal. Grab whatever you have in the fridge and add eggs. Bake. Easy. We call this: “Hakunah Frittatta.” No worries. We have eggs. 😉

But let’s talk about some more serious stuff. The best part about having chickens (even better than the hand washing, the fluffy cuddles, and yummy eggs) is that your children will have the hands-on opportunity to learn (at the very least)…

these four important life lessons:

1. Pecking order. If you look and act like a victim in life, you will be at the bottom of the pecking order, and if you start bleeding . . . possibly the food chain. (Chickens are attracted to and will peck at anything red.) Your best bet is to keep your head up, your eyes keen, and learn how to take care of yourself against a bully (outsmart or better yet – avoid them).

2. The early bird does indeed get the worm. (Or the cherry tomato.) If you see something you really want, get to it first and work damn hard to keep it.

3. Roosters (Extrapolation: all animals, even humans) when under the influence of hormones, will act like complete idiots. (2019: this is SOOOO much more important now that my farmhands are closer to adulthood- HOLY MOLY.) LIFE LESSON – Identify the dangers and avoid them. Chicken breeds have different temperaments, some even have “docile” roosters. There will be a later post about trying to find the “breed you need” – and another about why “you should have a roo too”, but for now, just keep the rooster locked up in the coop if your kids are playing with the hens. Consider: Roosters are capable of sneaky ninja moves and have two sharp spikes (spurs) that will easily be at eye-level to little ones. Avoid this- signed, Captain Obvious. 

4. Things that are alive, will one day die. Children can learn this gently from a goldfish –a species doomed to poison itself with its own prolific nitrogenous waste if confined in small, unfiltered spaces. (Lesson there: get a betta if you want a bowl-dweller and get the poor dear a pretty moss ball to help it breathe.)  Or . . . they can witness the inevitable demise of a member of your flock. It will happen. Death can come suddenly from the sky (hawks) or the more horrifying – slowly (the raccoon that pulls a chick through your protective wire, bit by bit.). No matter how confident you are in your Ft. Knox Coop, someday, you will lose a bird. The trick is to not lose them all or often. Hint: electricity is your friend. Put hot-wire everywhere you can. We’ve had hawks take a few, a neighbors dog kill several within minutes, and Marek’s disease (presumed) strike down a few favorites that were purchased at the feed store and were unvaccinated. *Opt for this vaccination for your chicks if you can. It is very inexpensive and effective at preventing a fatal chicken disease that develops sadly after you’ve already named/become attached to the little guys. 😦

and then there’s the Stranger-than-fiction bird loss –

And one morning I found this in the coop.

(not Owlie)

It had flown in through a small gap in the top netting, and was NOT HAPPY. But it wasn’t hungry either….

Out of 30 chickens, which one ((ONE!)) do you think it ate?

Yep. “Owlie.” (You just can’t make this stuff up.)

The disgruntled visitor flew out the front gate when I opened it. 😉

Your kids will get used to this “cycle of life” business. As soon as mine hear me say “Aw, Man. Something got into the coop!” they ask: “Who got eaten?” Next question is usually “Can we see the body?” (M and m are scientists.)

As for minor injuries on the chickens – to prevent all-out cannibalism, we spray anything injured/red with a cool-looking silver (aluminum) liquid bandage called Alu-spray. This includes sunburned chicken backs (when molts – normal loss and regrowth of feathers – occur during hot summer months) and minor wounds. Spray the affected body part silver, and BONUS! you have made an excellent “Robochicken” (kids love that)  AND covered up the delicious redness. That will keep the wounded bird off the menu. 🙂

and finally . . . The real reason your should get chickens as pets: they are COOL. Think chickens are just the docile little grass peckers that chortle pleasantly to each other as they bustle about? Need more excitement? In my experience (remember: our birds are spoiled, overfed pets) they will hunt down and kill anything smaller than they are and remotely interesting: mice, rats (watching a group of hens discover a rat’s nest full of babies is at the top of my “things I don’t want to see again” list!), snakes, lizards, unfortunate stray chicks (egad!), and any kind of invertebrate. Their ability to hunt is equally fascinating and scary.

Have you ever watched a hen stalk a cricket? She darts forward on strong legs that are armored in scales and end in long, sharp-clawed toes. She stops, tilts her head to the side, focuses, and suddenly stabs, pinching her prey between the double blades of her beak. The cricket rarely escapes.

Now imagine her bigger. MUCH bigger.

Our neighbor from our previous farm is MTSU (Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN)’s Geology and Paleontology professor and founder/curator of Tennessee’s new and awesome natural history museum (http://www.theearthexperience.org), Alan Brown. He would often come over while his daughter played with ours (and of course, the ever-entertaining chickens.) I loved hearing him talk about the similarities between our backyard birds (movement, feather structure, etc) and some of the giants of the past. He graciously contributed his expert opinion to this post and his message is clear: chickens are terrifyingly cool. 🙂

“Tyrannosaurus rex, arguably the scariest meat eater to ever walk the earth has more in common with a chicken than you might think. Take another famous dinosaur like Stegosaurus and using any number of methods (phylogeny, comparative anatomy, morphology) T. rex has way more in common with the chicken than with the Stegosaurus.

All birds come from a type of dinosaur called Theropods and T. rex is a theropod dinosaur.

Another mind-blowing fact is the T. rex is closer in time to the chicken as well. Chicken to T. rex 65 million years; T. rex to Stegosaurus 85 million years.” – Alan Brown

T.rex femur (cast) in relative position. Also, the exact moment Alan won the “coolest neighbor ever” ranking with the kids!      Be sure to like the museum’s Facebook page – always fun! www.facebook.com/midTNmuseum 

Yep. You’ll never look at that little hen the same way. 😉

If you want something really cool for the kids (and you) to play with this summer – skip the video games and get those dinosaurs, I mean . . . chickens! 

Here are some of our favorite products:

Easiest temporary fence – Play yard for chicks and chickens. Works to keep them out of small areas of the garden too. Set up with these simple (step in) posts

Chicken Relocation Tote/crate : Our chickens get hauled to different “paddocks” or parts of the yard in these- bonus: Easy to clean.

egg baskets: bonus- these work great as rabbit hay feeders. 🙂

Favorite waterer/feeder– Very easy to clean, truly don’t leak, and just flip the base to switch to other use. So you’ll need at least 2- depending upon how bad your chicken addiction gets 🙂

Are you convinced to give chickens a try? 🙂 or if you already own them- how is it going?