If you would have told me 5 years ago...no, a year and a half ago even, that Matt and I were going to have chickens in a coop in our backyard and that we would not only care for them and enjoy them, but that
insane-crazy-germaphobe me would be willing to clean off and actually EAT their eggs...yeah, I definitely would have laughed in your face.
So here I am, quoting J.Beibs and saying,
"Never say never."
Last April I was rounding up my first year of teaching, counting down the days left until summer, and maneuvering my
huge pregnant belly around my classroom. The summer fever was present in both the students and,
ahem, the teachers, so I readily welcomed the activity of hatching chicks in our classroom.
My firsties and I had the joy and responsibility of hatching 12 eggs, and we had so much fun! It was such a wonderful learning experience, and I have never seen anything like it. There is just something about the look of wonder on a child's face that is touching and special...and once you see that look you want to see it over and over again. That was the look I got to see when the chicks pecked and pushed their way out of the tiny shells and flopped, wet and tired onto the floor of the incubator while my students watched with awe.
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| Hello, World! |
Honestly, I watched with awe too. It was amazing, and I probably took up half the storage space on my iPhone with pictures and videos as the chicks hatched. That experience was one that really reinforces in my mind and heart the fact that we do have an all-powerful Creator. When you think about how quickly the chicks grow from a tiny embryo in the egg to a full-sized chick (about 3 weeks), or how the chick is squished and positioned perfectly inside the egg so that there is little room left before they hatch. And my favorite part: how the chicks have a tiny "egg tooth" on their beak that allows them to peck out of the shell and then disappears a few days after birth...wow. How perfectly fashioned and developed by our God. If you get the chance to do this activity with your kids...don't hesitate.
Do. It takes some work, but I promise you won't regret it and they will learn so much!
We ended up having 7 out of the 12 eggs hatch, and I discretely threw away the eggs with chicks that didn't make it. At first the chicks were so frail and floppy, but after a few hours they gained strength and fluffed up into little balls of cuteness. Most of the chicks hatched on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday so we only had them for a few days to play with. I rolled out large strips of paper on my carpet and let the students sit in a circle while the chicks ran around in the middle. The kids loved it and were so respectful of the chicks (even my very energetic students). When Friday rolled around, the teachers had the option of sending the chicks back with the company we got them from, or we could take them home with us.
Thanks to the title of my post, I'm sure you can figure out what I chose to do...
When I brought the chicks home in an empty fish tank in the floor of my car, I kept saying to myself, "This is only for the weekend...just to share the chicks with the little boys." Our neighbors and co-workers had three toddler boys and two infant boys, and we are very close with all of them. I thought that it would be so fun for them to have the opportunity to play with the chicks over the weekend, and then my co-worker was going to take the chicks to her dad's house for me on Monday. Once I was home...one thing led to another and Matt looks at me after we had set up their little "home" in the garage and says, "What if we kept them?"
Next thing I knew we spent our Friday night googling and learning all we could about raising chickens. I remember thinking multiple times, "Are we really, seriously considering this??" We went into town and purchased more feed, bedding, a waterer, feeder, and Matt began plans for constructing a chicken coop in our backyard...the rest is history.
I had brought home eight chicks (7 of mine, and one from another teacher), but within the first week we lost one of the babies. Thankfully Matt was the one who found my little gray chick dead-as-a-doornail on the floor of the pen, and he called me to break the news. I blame my preggo hormones, but I definitely cried. Other than that one, the other chicks grew quickly and within a few weeks entered what we liked to call the "ugly-awkward-teenager-stage." The chickens are starting to get their feathers and are shedding lots of their fluffy down, so their coats are all patchy and just ick. Their eyes look super beady too...not cute AT ALL.
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| The Ugly-Awkward-Teenager-Stage |
Finally, after a few months, they actually looked like, well, chickens! We could now tell which were hens and roosters (it's nearly impossible to tell when they are babies), and we had three roosters and four hens. The roosters were big and so beautiful. We had one that we called Thor because he was always bigger than the rest. He was tall, white with black speckles, and he was so proud and fun to watch. Then we had two other roosters that were a reddish brown with pretty blue and black tail feathers. Our hens were all reddish-brown. We had not planned on keeping the roosters because they are not needed for the hens to lay eggs (you won't believe how many people don't know that!), and roosters can tend to get mean and aggressive. We also didn't want to worry about them fertilizing the hens eggs and wondering if our eggs were actually...chicks.
Yuck. But the roosters stayed around for most of the summer, and we kept putting off getting rid of them. It's hard to give them away because most people don't want roosters for the aforementioned reasons, so we planned on butchering them.
I hated the thought of butchering them! I had raised them from chicks, seen them hatch...I was like their mother!
Yes, I was being overdramatic, thank you. That is until something changed my mind.
The crowing.
Yes, did you know that roosters do not only grow at the rising of the sun? Oh, no, no, no. They crow
ALL. DAY. LONG. All day, every day when we let the chickens out the roosters would strut around our house crowing their little hearts out. They crowed at the hens, they crowed at each other, they crowed at the grass, flowers, dirt,
whatever. Once again, blame it on the hormones, but I was nine months pregnant and I couldn't take the crowing any longer! So, our dear friend and co-worker Jimmy came and "took care" of the roosters for us. I was a little sad, and I didn't eat their meat, but when I remembered the incessant
cock-a-doodle-dooooooo, I didn't feel so sad anymore.
Now days we only have two hens left in our coop. Unfortunately we lost one to a raccoon last summer and one to a chicken hawk this last week. I realize how attached I am to them when things like that happen. It is pretty common when you have chickens to lose a few each season to things like that, but it doesn't make it any easier. The chicks that I mentioned in
this post are still in our garage in the brooder (a pen with a heat lamp to keep them warm), but this weekend we will be adding them to our flock outside in the coop. It looks like they will all be white, but I have asked Matt if we can go to the farm supply store and pick out a couple more colorful chicks in a few weeks.
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| So fluffy and CUTE! |
As I said at the beginning, I would have never thought I would be where I am today, but isn't that part of the beauty of seeing God's provision for our lives? I thought chickens were gross (I actually still think that), and I would have never dreamed of collecting and eating fresh eggs that had not been inspected and cleaned by a factory. But now I can see how fun the chickens are to watch, how yummy and pretty the eggs are that they lay, and what a wonderful responsibility this is going to be for my son as he grows up. He will remember having chickens, collecting their eggs in the morning, and seeing God's creation and love through those simple acts. What a blessing.
"For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."
Romans 1:20
Who would have thought you could learn that from chickens?
