Piano and Chickens

This morning we started off doing our schoolwork and hanging out.  The weather was sunny and warm in the morning so the kids were running in and out all morning.

After lunch we headed to Andrew's piano class.  He had a solo.  The girls hung out in class because immediately after class we headed to a co-op class.

The class was on chickens.  Back in December when we went to the 4H Discovery days, Cairn and Skylar had fallen in love with the chickens.  They talked about wanting to get chickens and even had a plan on what to do with the eggs.  (Feed them to Dad).  After a day or so the chatter died down and we didn't hear about it again.  At the end of January, Cairn brought it up again so when a Chicken 101 class came up on the co-op I jumped on it so she could learn more and decide if that was really something she wanted to do.

So we learned about why people have chickens (the eggs, free organic fertilizer, fun to play with). Then we learned about all the things a chicken needs - a coop, a house, water, food (lots of different kinds) and things to do.  They don't just sit in their house all day.  We also learned about how to clean out the coop and house.

 Skylar got to hold the eggs.  These eggs are from 2 different chickens.  This is when we learned that different breeds of chickens lay different colored and sizes of eggs.  You don't always know what color the eggs will be until you figure out each chickens eggs.  How do you do that?  You listen for the chicken to sing their "I laid an egg" song - then you run out, figure out who is singing, look in the egg nest and see what it looks like.

Did you know that the wattle on the top is warm?  In the summer, that is how a chicken keeps cool.  I felt it - it was very warm.

Driving home both girls talked about how they wanted chickens and did I think Dad would let them get 4 (that's how many we can have in our neighborhood).  I told them they would need to do some research about chickens, how to care for them (more details), get the prices of all the things they needed, and make a plan for how they would build a coop and care for them.  Then present it to Dad.  Cairn immediately got to research when we got home.  Then she did more research for about 3 hours at bedtime.  She stayed up late. She started crying at one point.  She said, "I don't know if I can handle all this." (talking about the work involved in chickens)

Andrew will take the chickens or not. He would rather do this.