Why Kids Love Chickens - And What Pet Chickens Can Teach Your Children
posted on 17 Nov 2009 15:07 by saifony1
Kids naturally love chickens. Chickens are easy to care for, even in a city back yard. By laying eggs, they teach your urban children where food really comes from. They draw kids away from TV and video games. Most of all, chickens are terrific pets and a great deal of fun.
Why Kids Love Chickens - And What Pet Chickens Can Teach Your Children
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Maggie_Kerr]Maggie Kerr
Perhaps the last pet you imagine getting for your children is a chicken. Or chickens, since a single chicken doesn't really like to live alone. However, pet chickens is a concept you might want to rethink, since kids and chickens naturally make such great team. Back yard chickens are all the rage right now and, even if you live right downtown in a city that ate up its farmland a hundred years ago, you can still get chickens for your kids. All you need is a decent back yard for your chickens to lounge about and, presto, you're keeping poultry.
You've already laid the groundwork. How many times did you read the story of the Little Red Hen or Chicken Little to your youngsters? How about the movie, Chicken Run? Chickens already feature large in your youngsters' imaginations. So it's a small step to getting some real domestic fowl.
After you've checked out the local regulations, you can either get some baby chicks to raise or buy some adult chickens. If you are really ambitious, you and your children can build a home made incubator and hatch some fertile eggs. Your kids will love to help you build a charming chicken coop and make sure the yard fencing is escape proof and predator proof. You'd be surprised at the amount of urban wildlife with a taste for fresh chicken and fresh eggs.
The magic of hatching eggs shows your kids new life emerging at it's very start. They will love to care for the baby chicks. They can learn responsibility by looking after the grown chickens, feeding, watering and carefully shutting them in their coop every night. Chickens crowd joyfully around whoever is scattering food. They provide endless amusement diving after table scraps, gobbling bugs from your garden, taking extravagant dust baths, and clucking madly after laying an egg.
The delicious, home grown eggs you and your kids can have for breakfast are a big bonus. You don't need to keep a noisy rooster either. Hens lay eggs just fine without a swaggering sultan of the chicken run so long as you don't expect the eggs to hatch. Children who believe eggs appear magically on the supermarket shelf will get a strong life lesson in where some of their favorite food really comes from. That's something the cat or dog cannot teach.
Your child will become very popular with little friends for having live chickens to show off. Chickens can even peform simple tricks and your kids will have a blast learning to train them. Best of all, your kids won't be stuck in front of the TV or playing video games when they are engaged with their own little flock of back yard birds, discovering how to produce food on their own and how the humble, friendly chicken can so deeply enrich their lives.
The Parents' Guide to Raising Backyard Chickens for Kids, gives parents all the knowledge they need to make keeping chickens at home a success just about anywhere. Get yours at: http://www.hamilhouse.com/parent-1.htm
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maggie_Kerr http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-Kids-Love-Chickens---And-What-Pet-Chickens-Can-Teach-Your-Children&id=2960297
Why Kids Love Chickens - And What Pet Chickens Can Teach Your Children
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Maggie_Kerr]Maggie Kerr
Perhaps the last pet you imagine getting for your children is a chicken. Or chickens, since a single chicken doesn't really like to live alone. However, pet chickens is a concept you might want to rethink, since kids and chickens naturally make such great team. Back yard chickens are all the rage right now and, even if you live right downtown in a city that ate up its farmland a hundred years ago, you can still get chickens for your kids. All you need is a decent back yard for your chickens to lounge about and, presto, you're keeping poultry.
You've already laid the groundwork. How many times did you read the story of the Little Red Hen or Chicken Little to your youngsters? How about the movie, Chicken Run? Chickens already feature large in your youngsters' imaginations. So it's a small step to getting some real domestic fowl.
After you've checked out the local regulations, you can either get some baby chicks to raise or buy some adult chickens. If you are really ambitious, you and your children can build a home made incubator and hatch some fertile eggs. Your kids will love to help you build a charming chicken coop and make sure the yard fencing is escape proof and predator proof. You'd be surprised at the amount of urban wildlife with a taste for fresh chicken and fresh eggs.
The magic of hatching eggs shows your kids new life emerging at it's very start. They will love to care for the baby chicks. They can learn responsibility by looking after the grown chickens, feeding, watering and carefully shutting them in their coop every night. Chickens crowd joyfully around whoever is scattering food. They provide endless amusement diving after table scraps, gobbling bugs from your garden, taking extravagant dust baths, and clucking madly after laying an egg.
The delicious, home grown eggs you and your kids can have for breakfast are a big bonus. You don't need to keep a noisy rooster either. Hens lay eggs just fine without a swaggering sultan of the chicken run so long as you don't expect the eggs to hatch. Children who believe eggs appear magically on the supermarket shelf will get a strong life lesson in where some of their favorite food really comes from. That's something the cat or dog cannot teach.
Your child will become very popular with little friends for having live chickens to show off. Chickens can even peform simple tricks and your kids will have a blast learning to train them. Best of all, your kids won't be stuck in front of the TV or playing video games when they are engaged with their own little flock of back yard birds, discovering how to produce food on their own and how the humble, friendly chicken can so deeply enrich their lives.
The Parents' Guide to Raising Backyard Chickens for Kids, gives parents all the knowledge they need to make keeping chickens at home a success just about anywhere. Get yours at: http://www.hamilhouse.com/parent-1.htm
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maggie_Kerr http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-Kids-Love-Chickens---And-What-Pet-Chickens-Can-Teach-Your-Children&id=2960297