We are thinking … well some of us are … that it might be a great study of science to have some baby chicks around here. We have at least a couple of hens who seem to like keeping our eggs warm.
We will have to keep them perhaps in our garden shed for a while. Chickens will … how shall I say it … prey on one another in nature, and they will prey on baby chicks unfortunately.
On the other hand, I have wondered if the real science lessons might come in allowing nature to take its course.
I think we do have an actual baby chick to hatch that I’ll do a weekly post with updates on the chick(s).
In the meantime, I have three little people here who are immensely enjoying having our “ladies” (as Grammy calls them) here at our house.
I go every morning with our three littles and check for eggs, check feed and water and deliver the expected scraps, which usually consists of strawberry caps, bread crusts, apple cores and things like that. We don’t give them any meat or dairy scraps.
In the evening, the older boys usually make sure their little hen door is closed after they are all safely inside. Thankfully, the ladies take themselves inside their house along with Mr. Squawks at dusk or soon after.
We are learning that Mr. Squawks knows exactly how to fertilize eggs (our little ones say “they are married right now!). 😀 We are also learning that hens like to graze and that the old saying of a “pecking order” is literally true.
We are also counting eggs and will keep an average. We are going to graph the daily morning and evening totals over a week-long period and then calculate the average.
All in a day’s work on the farm!
Now, will you help a Momma/Teacher out? What do you think? Should we try to hatch baby chicks? Would you be interested in reading weekly updates and seeing their growth and hearing of their daily pursuits??? Please comment and help a Momma/Teacher convince the adoring Prez that his wife has not completely lost her wits. 😀
Sure go for it hatch some chicks! My children learned many life lessons raising and showing goats for 4-H.
I know my city kids would enjoy watching the life cycle of a chicken unfold.
By the way, I LOVE your school room, what a beautiful blessing!!
Thank you Julie. It is indeed a beautiful blessing!
I’d follow it but I also think most of your lessons are interesting. Not so sure about nature taking it’s course if the bigger chicks will eat the babies!
I should clarify on the baby chicks. We would have them in a hatchery for at least a few weeks. Otherwise, they would just be too vulnerable to many predators notwithstanding the older hens. But when they get bigger, we would put them in with the hens. At first, baby chicks require a lot of warmth, even in the heat of the summer. We have the heat lamps from when we had babies before, so Mo and I were thinking we’d make a hatchery in the garden shed beside the henhouse. We would have to put a wire top on it so as to keep out all kinds of predators. It is a bit late for chicks and I haven’t been seeing as many fertilized eggs, but Mr. Squawks is still doing his “thing”, so I’m hopeful we would have some hatchlings! Mo said we’ll put a mark on the eggs we leave in the henhouse. So far, we haven’t seen any chicken snakes, but I worry about them as well. We gather eggs twice a day to discourage any of the crawling variety of predators, but the eggs have to be kept warm in order to hatch. We have some “ladies” who definitely like to brood, so I think we’ll try it and see what happens.
Baby chicks on your blog would be totally cool!! And fun for the kids!